Cactus Cowboy – Plants at War

Don't judge a book by it's cover!
Without saying much, this game clocks in at about six hours. It's worth the play, trust me, this game is a great starting point for people just getting into VR as well as VR Veterans.

War, War never changes. This game is really really fun if you enjoy history or WW2 in general. Hands down this is one of my favorite vr games on this year (2024). Sure some things in the game aren't great, but they can easily get fixed. I would definitely try this game out if you have VR

I don't know if it's a prequel to Catus 3 considering the ending, but I don't wanna spoil. But damn it was good game too. I'm definitely gonna try Desert Warfare. This one felt easier caus ethere was a lot of health available but some ârt are not doable without it. I'm missing the platforming a little. But hey who cares. Anyway, don't forget it's free, a little buggy sometimes but damn good like Cactus 3

Spent about 2 hours playing, took a quick lunch, then spent another 4 hours straight playing from beginning to end, and now my legs are aching.
That aside, had a pretty fair good time playing through the game, had some difficult sections on the Normal difficulty setting but still did fairly well all around. Game's a bit goofy, a little bit grim in a dramatic action movie scene sort of way, controls pretty alright on a Rift S set, though picking things up off the ground is a bit wonky if you have weapons/grenades holstered, and sometimes a dropped thing might clip into an odd crate or spot in the ground never to be seen again, but in general it's still an alright-to-control game. There's collectable medals hidden on every level, but the game doesn't track which level or map has had it's medal collected which is annoying since there's 32 medals to go through and they have random pre-set potential spawn locations that are usually well out of the way and thus easily missed.
Gunplay is alright, didn't really "aim" down sights as much as I usually would since it feels like bullets don't quite line up with where I'm aiming most of the time, wound up "instinct shooting" a bunch and walking tracers for automatic weapons most of the time. Using bolt-action weapons is a tad frustrating if you're used to taking the trigger-hand off the trigger area to work the bolt, as it will flip-flop between either grabbing the bolt or grabbing the trigger area, generally better off just taking an automatic weapon.
Sometimes you'll have a tripod-mounted machinegun that may optionally be used, once you grab onto the firing handles you then need to reach over and grab the charging handle, and THEN you'll be allowed to fire the gun. Every gun that can be picked up and fired doesn't need a round chambered so this threw me off for a while the first time around, doubly so since these static turrets aren't a part of the tutorial section, and annoyingly you can't move around with the joystick while holding onto the turret in order to avoid enemy fire, which is problematic for smaller play areas or sit-down-to-play players.
I frequently forget that I have grenades outside of very specific circumstances, weapons don't auto-holster so you can easily drop a gun if you don't put in the 1-2 second effort of holstering, then taking a chosen grenade, then pulling the pin with the non-holding/throwing hand, and then throw it with varying degrees of force depending on if you're moving or not, THEN repeat it all for a follow-up grenade throw or resume shooting. All of which takes several seconds of time while enemies may be busy trying to close the distance on you and kill you.
Weapon variety is decent. Got the Luger and M1911 for pistols and a sawed-off double-barrel shotgun (only shotgun at all). 3 different SMGs in the MP-40, M1A1 Thomson, and a PPSH-41 with drum mag (but only 30 shots?). 4 different rifles, an M1 Garand (only semi-auto rifle), Kar-98k, Lee-Enfield, and a scoped M1901 that shows up once in a while. 3 different machineguns, an STG-44 is lumped in this category, a BAR, and an MG42 (no bipod deployment option). Stick and pineapple grenades with no major difference between them, static non-aimable artillery emplacements used to advance the plot, and a reloadable panzerfaust that cannot be holstered. Oh also a flamethrower shows up a few times, good fun, decent range.
If I were to add/change things, personally I would've chosen a Sten gun over the PPSH-41 since we have the Lee-Enfield already, added a Webley revolver for a little pistol variety, and a pump-action shotgun to give the shotgun category at least another option. Would've also liked to have sling-bands for weapons so we could drop them for a hot second to either switch to a different weapon or make use of grenades without worrying about outright dropping a gun, but I suspect having a selected weapon be given a sling band would've been problematic coding-wise, ah well. The game lets you re-select previous levels after beating the game, but it doesn't mark which level has had it's secret collectable obtained, I would've liked a little star or checkmark to show up beside the map name to make tracking things a little easier.
Overall, a silly shooting game involving sentient cacti duking it out against worms and bugs and things that claim to look like bugs but are probably robots, and also the silly central-european rectangular facial hair dude who shall forever be censored by youtube is now a pumpkin man thing with a stompy robot boss fight who shall repeatedly taunt you through the mid-to-end game when encountered. Game's free, game's for VR-only, give it a whirl.

I feel this game is a good pass time has a few issues where my guns and grenades go through the map when dropped but still fun

If you want some good old WW2 linear shooter it's for you. Good weapon handling, fast movement, lot's of bugs to shoot.

For being a free game, it is... interesting? I don't know how to describe this game other than a fever dream.+