My Friend Pedro follow-up Shotgun Cop Man is Celeste with guns

digitaltrends.com:

My Friend Pedro developer DeadToast Entertainment just announced its next game: Shotgun Cop Man. Published by Devolver Digital, the action shooter will launch this year for PC and Nintendo Switch at a $10 price point. Ahead of its reveal, Digital Trends demoed its first 17 levels, taking us through its tutorial, first world, and a boss fight.

Shotgun Cop Man is a 2D shooter about a cop who has to go to Hell and arrest Satan. That’s all you really need to know there. It’s not too dissimilar from My Friend Pedro, DeadToast’s 2019 shooter that had players engaging in aerobatic violence pulled straight from a John Woo movie. Shotgun Cop Man is much smaller in scope, opting for comparatively modest visuals over cinematic spectacle. My Friend Pedro‘s DNA is still very much present, though, as it’s a game that ties mobility and shooting together.

The basics are simple enough. I need to move through platforming levels filled with enemies and traps like buzzsaws. There’s just one catch: I don’t have a jump button. To cross gaps, I need to use my guns to propel my body. If I want to jump, I need to aim my right joystick towards the ground and fire. Similarly, an airdash would require me to quickly aim in the opposite direction and fire. A basic sidearm is mapped to one of my triggers, which allows me to short hop, while my shotgun is on the other and can send me sky high. I only have a few shots in each gun and they don’t reload until I touch the ground.

The easiest way to describe it is “Celeste reimagined as a twin-stick shooter.” The first 17 levels put me through a gauntlet of quick platforming challenges that would require me to time my shots carefully so I could both blast enemies and avoid obstacles at the same time. That may sound like a complicated juggling act, but I picked it up quickly. The early levels start me off easy as I blast my way up to high platforms with my shotgun and fire my pistol to wipe out the little demons on the other side.

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