Assault Android Cactus is a game about a space police officer called Cactus. Cactus is an android which has android overlords who must be stopped as they’ve become villainous.

The combat is a twin-stick style shooter where enemies must be killed to gain more energy to keep fighting leading to a fun, fast-paced setup with quick and sometimes difficult levels. This mechanic is worked in with a battery timer which slowly decreases over time but will be reduced more by the player dying, but the death isn’t too bothersome as Cactus will jump straight back to its feet for more shooting. The simple rule is kill everything to win.

Boss fights in this game become more like a bullet hell as the player dodges and weaves between projectiles that pretty much cover the screen while battling to tear the enemy down.

This game will go up to four players which means Cactus is not the only character on offer. There is in fact a choice of a few different characters, each having different weapons and playstyles. This also means that there is something wonderful but rare when looking at other games of today – unlockable characters. Brilliant, not DLC.

As with any game of this style you can expect to find ranked scoring telling you how well you’ve done after every level which gives a bit of replayability as the player can battle the same hordes over and over in an effort t beat their own score.

The above describes the basic campaign mode which is set as four levels, then a boss. As well as campaign, there’re infinity drive and daily drive modes which have interesting variations such as moving floors and walls.

There is something called EX options in the game which I’m not fully certain I understand but it looks like using in game currency the player can enable AI team-mates or visual effects which are all nice editions to a game.

Overall, this game is fairly impressive with its fast action and bright colours but it just can’t keep me glued. I ended up feeling like the only motivation to play was to see all the bosses which isn’t a good reason to play and I soon put it down. I would definitely recommend it to people that like this type of shooter and those that like beating their own scores.

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The art that I’m using as the featured image was found on the store section of the Xbox website. It shows main, green haired character (Cactus) facing off against a giant robot which I think is one of the bosses. It looks cool but doesn’t say much about the game itself. The name Assault Android Cactus is awful but I like the artwork.