Easily one of the most polished and underrated twin-stick shooters I have played, I’d go as far as saying Assault Android Cactus is the gold standard of its genre. Perhaps the most standout thing about it is how elegantly the game’s difficulty is linked to the scoring system – which some might consider to be a strange thing to say, given how many modern games have ‘moved on’ from using scoring as a core mechanic. While Assault Android Cactus can be enjoyed as a challenging ‘play-once’ title, it also has an accessible approach to encouraging the player to chase high-scores, wherein the mechanics of the game really shine.
Getting the highest possible rank in a level has two simple requirements: don’t die, and destroy each enemy within three seconds of each other. The caveat is just as simple; the larger enemies in the level take more than three seconds of gunfire to kill. And that is all it takes to turn every single aspect of the game you were once familiar with into a meticulous, adrenaline-fueled balancing act. Your positioning around the ever-changing map layouts, the timing of your powerups and secondary weapons, even the precious time you spend dodge-rolling instead of shooting, all become life-or-death decisions as you strive to score the next link in your combo chain. As your skills improve, the enemies evolve from mere obstacles into valuable resources in themselves, ‘spending’ squishier enemy kills to buy time while you whittle down the bulky ones. Mechanically, I think it’s a work of art.
Jeff van Dyck is perhaps best known for his work on the Rome: Total War soundtrack; needless to say the OST for Assault Android Cactus is also worth a listen. The track I’ve picked out isn’t the same kind of upbeat techno as the others, but it is the most memorable one thanks to its context. Most players won’t realize that AAC‘s ‘game over music’ is a fully-produced vocal track, until after a level has thoroughly wiped the floor with them and left them staring at the ‘game over’ screen for a straight thirty seconds. It’s at that point where you’re treated to a hilariously melodramatic backdrop to your defeat, which rightfully puts you in the mood to hit ‘retry’ five minutes later. I think that this, too, is a work of art.
I’ve only picked out two flawless elements of Assault Android Cactus to share here, but the game is in fact full of them, and I can’t recommend it enough. It’s given me my first ‘real’ taste of an arcade score-chasing experience, and I feel that I owe it to myself to play more of the retro quarter-munchers that inspired it.
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