For some unknown reason, I was under the impression that Assault Android Cactus+ was a shoot-em-up. It’s not. It’s a bullet hell twin-stick shooter… I’m reluctant to admit this, but I’m not great at bullet hell twin-stick shooters. Does that mean I hate the game though? Let’s get into it.
The game begins with an establishing cutscene. Cactus, your main character, is charged with regaining control of a massive spaceship where the droids have gone haywire. Further cutscenes are few and far between, which is a shame cause I found them incredibly charming. The models and writing remind me of PS1 era games such as Spyro, and that pang of nostalgia was nice. Plus the characters themselves are full of personality and entertaining to watch; I wish they had more spotlight time outside of the gameplay.
Diving into the first level you get to choose from four characters, each with different weapons at their disposal. I personally liked Cactus best with her machine gun and flamethrower, but other characters have shotguns, homing missiles and all sorts of weapons to try out, just not all of them particularly good, especially if you’re going for high grades (more on that later). You unlock new characters after each boss too and all of them can be selected by co-operative players for local co-op, a feature I couldn’t test by myself sadly.
Now in the levels themselves your task is simple. Shoot. Kill. Enemies will spawn or climb onto the stage around you and as you kill them your weapon will increase in power or the occasional power-up will drop. I really like the power-up system in place as over time, a power-up will cycle between giving you the option of increased firepower, freezing the enemies momentarily or speeding you up for a spell. So if you aren’t fond of a particular boost (as I was, I only ever wanted firepower) with skilful play you can dodge around enemies and pick it up when it’s the one that you want.
Levels are hectic, chaotic, and most importantly fun. Clearing a stage isn’t too difficult and you get plenty chances to get back up and refill your health meter, shown by a battery ’cause haha, you’re a robot. It all sounds pretty good so far right? It gets better before it gets worse. From the main menu you can spend reward credits on artwork, codex entries and, to my great pleasure, “EX options.” EX options do wacky things like let you play in first-person, make the music adapt to how intense the action is, or even just give the models human proportions. They’re delightfully silly and I love when games put in fun things for players to tinker around with. But here’s where the problems start for me.
EX options cost credits. Credits are awarded by finishing levels and defeating enemies. Your grade affects how many credits you gain too, so an A rank will get you about 300 credits. The cheapest EX option, is 500… Basically, you have to grind for these, which just makes me sad. HOWEVER, there is hope, for if you can get the fabled S+ rank, you will be awarded with close to 1000 credits. “What is required for S+ rank?” I hear you ask. Oh boy, here’s where things fall apart.
S+ rank is achieved if you clear a stage without your combo chain breaking. Easier said than done though right, cause literally everything seems designed to make this nigh on impossible, and incredibly frustrating. Here’s a list of things that drove me up the wall whenever I tried for S+ rank.
Massive blocks or pillars on stages that can’t be shot through
Camera angles that shift or don’t cover the whole stage
Large enemies that are incredibly difficult to kill before your chain breaks
Large enemies that can one-hit kill you with their attacks
Waves of one-hit kill mines dropping around you
Delays between waves requiring perfect reactions to kill a weak enemy
Waves of one-hit kill mines dropping around you 300 enemies into a stage
One-hit kill gimmicks such as lasers travelling across the whole stage
What’s so annoying is that it makes the game stop being fun for completionists (such as myself). While it can be incredibly addictive to constantly restart the same stage over and over, it inevitably leads to frustration. And whenever I did get an S+ rank after an hour on one stage, it always felt like I’d got lucky, rather than conquered the odds and mastered the level. All it takes to fix this in my opinion is a tweak to the chain system where it increases based on the size of the enemy you kill, rather than it being based on “you have 2 seconds to kill any enemy, go.” If you want that sort of chain system, don’t turn enemies into bullet sponges or have them get stuck behind walls. AND STOP WITH THE BULLSHIT MINE WAVES PLEASE.
I so badly want to like Assualt Android Cactus+ but when a game makes playing to the best of your ability feel useless at best, it’s hard to remain fond of it. Sure, it’s packed with intense levels, interesting ideas, and runs smooth as silk, but it simply makes the requirements for unlocking everything too god-damn frustrating for me. I absolutely recommend ignoring the ranks and just playing through the campaign, ignoring the S+ ranks entirely. Overall, it’s fun, but infuriating. It’s infunriating.
But Starch is the best character and no-one can convince me otherwise.
A digital copy of Assault Android Cactus+ was provided for Switch by the developer.
Find Assault Android Cactus+ on Switch here: https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/assault-android-cactus-plus-switch