Parents' Guide to My Friend Pedro: Ripe for Revenge

Like the original version for Switch and PC, this acrobatic shooter suffers from some serious control issues, but add an annoying greedy streak as well. A spin-off of the 2019 game My Friend Pedro, My Friend Pedro: Ripe for Revenge is a side-scrolling shooter in which you have to help your friend -- a sentient banana -- when his family is kidnapped. It's a good thing you're as skilled with guns as you are with gymnastics, since the bad guys are hiding in places where there's a lot of walls to jump over or bounce off, passageways to run under, and other obstacles that require you to constantly be jumping and flipping while also shooting in mid-flight.

It's just too bad the controls are so awkward that you feel less like Neo from The Matrix and looks more like a cow on roller skates trying to navigate a flight of stairs. Not only are the movement controls twitchy, and take way too long to get comfortable, but you have to tap your targets, not just the screen, to shoot people, which adds a layer of complexity that undermines the fun. It also doesn't help that, in the free version, dying sends you all the way to the beginning of a stage (not surprisingly, the $2.99 Premium version adds checkpoints; it's funny how that works). All which makes what should've been a beautifully ballet of violent gymnastics into an awkward slog. Or, to put it another way, My Friend Pedro: Ripe for Revenge is still rather green.