Assault Android Cactus has been on the IndianNoob radar for a while. We had our first look at the game a while back and since then we have had itchy fingers. We finally got around to getting our hands on this game, and we were not disappointed. Check out the in-depth review below.
Assault Mania
Every once in a while we see an indie game beating many of the AAA games in terms of the ‘Fun Factor’ and Assault Android Cactus does exactly that. The game does not have much of a story and relies on gameplay a lot. The first thing I noticed about the game was its detailing. The developers have done a great job in designing the characters as well as the environments and the graphics feel feel very polished. The one surprising feature was that it’s playability by both- a controller and a keyboard mouse setup were pretty good though I thought that a controller did more justice to the game.
Less Story More Shooting
As I said there is not much to the story, and I personally prefer a more story intensive games, but I was having quite a bit of fun while playing this off road ‘Boogalooloo’ game(I just mean to say funky and cool). We get to choose one from a roster of 4 characters and as we complete each zone we get to unlock new characters. There are 25 levels of waves of enemies, large battle-ripped bosses and environments that keep changing. Unlocking characters is fun as each of them is unique and has varying strengths and weaknesses, but the better part over here is that, the conversations between characters and bosses vary with each character, which also gives us a background story on each character. While playing with the controller I was able to play with almost perfect movement, gliding among spooky robots, taking sharp turns and escaping explosion. With the mouse I was jamming bullets into the metalheads with impeccable accuracy and that was pretty amazing to watch.
Look First Shoot Later
One of the game’s greatest assets is that the game doesn’t feel repetitive even after quite a few hours of gameplay. Changing environments is a great feature of this game and keeps you on your toes. The level designs are awesome, though small. The continually incoming robots, the changing environments and some sweet guns keep you from letting down the controller. All the bosses are significantly different and require more of skill than luck or timing to beat. We can say that it’s a bash ’em up which requires skill. This is one of those games which is easy to learn, hard to master. The developers, Witch Beam, have added a feature in which you can buy different camera views using in game credits which you earn by completing levels or playing the Infinite Drive. In other words you can play in a FPS as well as in third person camera. Sounds Awesome.
Girls And Their Toys
Every character has its own special weapon which is mainly used for crowd control. There is no leveling up system in the overall game, but by going on a metalhead-smashing-crashing spree and by building up more combos you will reach your weapon’s maximum power on a particular level in a comparatively smaller amount of time. You have two health bars, to be exact, one is a health bar and the other is like a stamina bar. The battery is your health bar which keeps depleting continuously whether you receive damage or not and once its finished you have to start the level again. But don’t, worry killing more enemies will keep getting you loads of batteries to keep you circuitry functioning.
The so called stamina bar determines how many hits you can take. Once someone has hit you enough you will go into Power Down mode and then you’ll have to mash buttons for revival. But going down is not an option, because it reduces your highscore significantly which will affect the amount of credits you can get and not to forget thr global ranking. You get power ups when killing the bots, which make the game even more flashier and the enemies even more helpless. There are 3 game modes- Campaign, Infinity Drive (Survival) and Daily Drive (Co-Op). I didn’t get a chance to play co-op but upto 4 players can play it. The Campaign is the story mode, the Infinity Drive has waves of unlimited robots trying to get you and only ends when your battery is finished.
| (+) Great animation and art |
(-) Weak Story |
| (+) High Replayability – Always refreshing |
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