Game:

Cactus McCoy 2: The Ruins of Calavera (2011)

Category:

Walkthrough

Duration: 6:43

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Cactus McCoy, the game where you play an anthropomorphic cactus running about shooting baddies with weapons like playing cards, roman candles, and sheriff badges. And it all takes place in a highly fictionalized version of the Wild West. Think, Indiana Jones, but sillier and with more cactus. And sillier. Wait, I already said that, but yeah, much sillier.

Despite the silliness of the entire premise, it's a great game. The graphics are top-notch, and the sounds are perfect. They really evoke the spaghetti western feel, giving the game great atmosphere.

Like previous levels, this one brings you to a cliché Wild West location. The first was the desert, the second an abandoned mineshaft, and the third, a speeding train. This level puts you smack-dab in the middle of a shady frontier town. It's even in the name of the level, "Shady Springs" if it wasn't clear enough.

This level has a lot more exploration than previous levels, and has quite a few difficult jumps. Certainly not Marioesque, but you do still need some finesse with the jumps to make sure you don't fall into any one of the many bottomless pits (Really? Bottomless pits in the middle of a village? What madman was on the town council for urban planning anyway?) that dot the level like periods on a paper after a child's initial discovery of punctuation.

Level design (and poor urban planning) aside, this level is perhaps the first one that will really challenge. It's easy to finish, but it's hard to finish without getting hit at least once. All the previous levels were simple enough if you were careful, but here you're going to get hit one way or the other. It's even reflected in one of the challenges, but we'll get to that later. First, the other challenges:

The first challenge sounds silly: Chicken Wrangler. To get it, you need to grab all of the chickens (pick them up the way you would weapons) and haul them through the level towards the chicken coop. This can be tricky to do, as while holding a chicken, you can't hit anyone. And despite how much fun it would be, you can't damage anyone by hurling furious fowl at them. My advice is to clear an area before moving chickens forward. Be careful, some areas can't be returned to after passing them, so make sure to move what chickens there are forward before moving.

Just how much harder this level is is reflected in the time challenge. While previous levels all gave you a minute thirty, this one gives you two minutes thirty. Again, beat the level at the very least once before tackling this challenge, as you're going to need to do quite a bit of enemy dodging and jumping to get this.

The Fireworks challenge is simple really. It's just like other challenges that require you to take out a certain number of enemies with a weapon, in this case, a Roman Candle. Unlike previous levels though, the Roman Candle is fairly numerous, so you can go wild with it if you want.

The fourth can be tricky. You have to first take out an enemy with a weapon, and then juggle the enemy in the air using your fists. You'll have to kill the enemy first, then quickly drop your weapon before the enemy vanishes off screen, and then punch the corpse around keeping it in the air for at least five hits. Tricky, but it's a fun challenge to attempt.

The final challenge may at first sound silly. You have to beat the level without dying, and after the previous three levels, this seems simple enough. Like I said above though, this level is more difficult and you'll actually have to be careful to not get killed at least once here. Still, it's doable, so keep at it.

Well, that's all for this level, keep in touch for the next one!

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