Posted by First and foremost, I tend to play a lot of shooters, but I’ve never been particularly attracted to bullet hells. Bullet hell shooters are shooters where you have to dodge a myriad of bullets while killing enemies. However, Assault Android Cactus isn’t entirely a bullet hell, instead it’s more of a shoot ’em up with plenty of bullet hell moments. Still, Assault Android Cactus is both fun and infuriating.
The story is rather simple: four robots are leading a revolt on a space ship and it’s up to you to stop them and figure out who’s behind it. The narrative is rather straightforward and the game is divided up into five sections, with each section containing five missions, one of which is a boss. There are also a few side modes where you just battle wave after wave of enemies, seeing just how high you can get. There’s also a boss rush mode where you can fight all of the bosses, but I don’t quite have access to it yet since I haven’t beaten the final boss yet. Overall, Assault Android Cactus offers a decent variety of fun game modes, and I believe that it has local co-op, but I haven’t tried it out yet.
Gameplay-wise, Assault Android Cactus plays very smoothly. I haven’t really encountered any glitches, at least that I’ve noticed, which is always a good sign. When I first played Halo: Spartan Assault, it took me a little while to get used to the twin stick shooter controls, but with Assault Android Cactus, the controls kind of came naturally (then again it could just be that as I’ve grown older, I’ve just gotten better at games so it’s easier to play something like this now as opposed to a few years ago).
Throughout the levels, enemies will drop power-ups. Shutdown puts all of the enemies currently on the stage, this includes bosses during boss battles, into a temporary stasis, thereby allowing you to quickly defeat them if you’re being overwhelmed. Accelerate makes you move significantly faster and power-ups are drawn to you magnetically. Firepower causes two drones to hover beside you, tripling your firepower. When a power-up is dropped, it will cycle between all three so you could wait until it’s the one that you need before picking it up. When enemies are defeated, they all drop white pellets, which gradually power your weapon up and make it more deadly. Once a weapon reaches maximum power, it’s a serious force to be reckoned with. Unfortunately, going down means that your weapon gets reset back to level one. The final enemy drop is the battery, which I will explain in a bit more detail later on.
While playing, you can initially choose between four androids: Cactus, Holly, Lemon, and Coral. As you beat bosses, you unlock more characters. Each character has a different primary weapon and heavy weapon, so each character has their pros and cons.
Now the bosses are where the game gets really frustrating. The bosses are tough, and I mean tough. Each boss has quite a few different forms, and each form tends to be more brutal than the last, with the last phase typically being borderline impossible. Further adding to the difficulty of learning the bosses attacks and figuring out how to dodge everything, you have to worry about the battery. The battery takes the place of having multiple lives–a system I would’ve preferred–and instead puts you on a time limit. On the normal missions, this isn’t much of a problem because by the time that you need a battery, one is generally available. As for the bosses, batteries only appear after beating a phase. This has led to some irritating failures where I was so close but not close enough. Sometimes the battery mechanic just makes me think that some of the game’s difficulty is just artificial. Yes the bosses and their patterns are quite challenging, as are the thousands of enemies that get thrown at you during normal levels, but the battery gimmick makes it even more ridiculous.
This next little part isn’t so much of a review as it is a rant against the final boss. For the most part, the final boss’s odd-numbered phases (1,3,5, and 7) are simple enough, but the even phases (2,4, and 6) are just stupid. Remember what I said about the final phases for each boss being borderline impossible? Well of course the final boss recycles those final phases for her even phases, except the game’s fourth boss’s final phase which is arguably the easiest. But even when you’ve beaten all of the boss’s forms, there’s a final final form. And of course, the battery screwed me mere moments from victory. Then I had to restart from the very beginning of the fight. Little moments like this are just infuriating, but the satisfaction of beating one of these ridiculous bosses is incredible.
Finally, the game has quite a few little extra menus that you can toy around with. One such menu contains some of the game’s lore. Another menu contains concept art. Another menu contains extra modifiers and effects that you can buy, with the in-game currency, and activate at your leisure. These extra effects range from things as simple as changing the game’s visual filter to things as complex as changing the camera to a first-person shooter. These little extras add a lot of replayabilty and depth to the game.
Assault Android Cactus is a fun little game, albeit painfully frustrating at times. If you enjoy challenging games, then get this game. If you’re a bit more casual and just want to have fun, then this game could still be an appealing party game that you could play locally with friends. I was pleasantly surprised when I downloaded Assault Android Cactus and I would recommend it. I got it for free because of the Xbox Games with Gold program, so if you’re on Xbox, you can easily get and play this fun indie shooter.
Broad Scope Entertainment 