Playing as Cactus Bruce (the talking, giant-claw wielding, pirate cactus) you must defend you’re island from the evil Corporate Monkey’s and their hostile business takeover (and foil their plans of taking over the world). To do this, you must use a giant, extendable claw to grab various objects and use them as projectiles to rid the area of all pesky monkeys (before they knock out Cactus Bruce with a barrage of coconuts, or you’re time expires).

This may sound a pretty simple task (and for the first few levels, it is) – however, as you progress through the game, you find yourself juggling between blocking incoming coconuts (and other anti-cactus devices) and staying on the offensive, by launching birds, fish, bananas, horses, plan pots and snowmen at unsuspecting monkeys. To keep things interesting, after every couple of levels or so, new characters are added to the mix, to help you along the way. These include: “Dan the Feather-Weight Gnome”, “Billy the Elastic Blowfish” and “Marvin the Explosive Snowman”.

The game itself is a mix between Puzzle-Bobble and Breakout – but has much more to it (and is much more interesting) than both, as you are forced to think about blocking incoming projectiles, as well as acquiring and firing your own. Unlike most puzzle games, ‘Cactus Bruce and the Corporate Monkeys’ has a story line that progresses as you go through the game; and is portrayed in a brief but humorous comic strip, which makes an appearance after every few levels.

The graphics are nothing spectacular, but do their job nicely, giving the game a stylish cartoon look and feel and you are easily able to establish what things are; i.e. a banana looks like a banana, etc.

Aside from being a fairly enjoyable and entertaining game, there are several additional modes to the game, which give it much more replay value, including: A challenge mode, a time attack mode, a quick battle (random map generator) mode and even includes a level editor, allowing you to create your own maps.

Overall, I think that ‘Cactus Bruce and the Corporate Monkeys’ is an enjoyable and humorous game. Okay, so it ‘borrows’ a few ideas from a couple of other games - but hey, if a talking pirate cactus isn’t original – I don’t know what is!


Gameplay 8
Graphics 7
Sound ?
Value 8
Tilt 8

Overall 8