CYGNI: All Guns Blazing

Konami is no stranger to great shoot ‘em ups. This is the company that gave us Gradius, one of the greatest action game franchises to come out of the 1980s. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, as Konami is also known for shooter series like Salamander, Parodius and TwinBee, not to mention one-off classics like Axelay. So, when they heralded their newest game, CYGNI: All Guns Blazing, as “the vanguard for the next-generation of shoot ‘em ups,” believe me when I tell you that Konami is one of the very few companies that could back-up that kind of over-confident boast. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that this game actually delivers on the hype, but I definitely went in hoping that this would be a return to form for a company that is so vital to the history of the shooter genre. Is this the next-generation shoot ‘em up we’ve all been waiting for? Find out now when I review CYGNI: All Guns Blazing.

The name may be different, but it’s the same old shoot ‘em up song and dance. When an Earth colony on the planet CYGNI is decimated by a powerful, biomechanical alien race, it’s up to a small group of daredevil pilots to push back at the surprise attack and end the war once and for all. They’ll fight through seven increasingly challenging stages, all wrapped together using gorgeous cinemas and a surprisingly wordy story.

Yes, you’ve been here before. It has the same story as hundreds of other shoot ‘em ups and the biomechanical robots are straight out of The Matrix. The gimmick here isn’t originality, but rather a stunning next-generation presentation. From a strictly visual perspective, CYGNI is easily one of the prettiest shooters to ever hit the market. It’s full of absolutely massive boss fights and stunningly detailed backgrounds. This game looks amazing. But does it have more to offer than just killer graphics?

Fortunately, the answer is yes. Sort of. While the gameplay doesn’t exactly reinvent the wheel, there are a few ideas that set it apart from all the other vertical shooters on the market. For one thing, you can aim your firepower a few degrees to the right and the left using the right analog stick, helping you take out the enemies that are trying to attack from the sides. You can also switch to homing shots, which will target different enemies with about half of your shots. It’s incredibly handy as enemies begin to fill up the screen, giving our hero nowhere to move. What’s more, the ship we’re flying can also target the ground with a powerful laser, similar to the classic arcade game Xevios. This forces you to keep track of two different layers, both the background and the foreground.

By far the most unique element of the game involves the shield. For the most part, the shields do exactly what you expect – they keep your ship safe. However, you can prioritize firepower over the shield at a push of a button, making your attacks more powerful at the expense of leaving your ship vulnerable. But watch-out, because with so many enemies and bullets clogging up the screen, it’s insanely easy to get hit, so you’re going to need to pick up all of the items in order to refill your shield. The items you pick up when your shield is full will become cash you can spend to upgrade your ship and firepower between levels. We’ll talk more about that in a moment.

The real star of the game are the seven levels, all of which are stunning to look at. That’s the first thing you’re going to notice when playing CYGNI. The second thing you’ll notice is how long the first level is. Clocking in at more than fifteen minutes, the opening stage has us fighting three incredible bosses, each bigger and more impressive than the last. In any other shooter, this would have been split up into three separate stages, but here we are thrown into one of the most intense introductions I’ve ever seen. If this was just the first level, then I couldn’t wait to see how the rest of the game topped it.

Sadly, that opening stage set my expectations a little too high, because nothing ever tops it. Don’t get me wrong, the rest of the game is a lot of fun and you’ll marvel at a lot of the boss fights, but most of the levels are considerably shorter and more straight-forward. In fact, that first stage is the only part of the entire game that has multiple bosses in a level. A lot of the game’s best moments are found in the first fifteen minutes, which is opposite of what you expect from this type of shoot ‘em up.

That’s not the only problem plaguing CYGNI. One of go-to staples of a shoot ‘em up is picking up new weapons and power-ups as you go along. Unfortunately, there’s nothing like that here. The items that the enemies drop are used exclusively to fill up your shield and buy new abilities in between levels. This wouldn’t be so bad if the different weapons and abilities you bought in the upgrade shop offered a nice variety, but that’s not the case. The different weapons are all basically the same, with minor changes. This game allows you to switch between multiple load-outs mid-battle, but why bother? Just imagine being able to switch between a spread shot, flame thrower, lasers and more types of firepower. Talk about a huge missed opportunity.

Speaking of which, the air-to-ground laser attack is also disappointing. Sure, it gets the job done and it’s fun to see enemy units on the ground blow up real good, but this part of the game feels like an afterthought. The problem with the ground laser is that you can only shoot one weapon at a time. This means that you’ll spend most of your time focused on the enemies right in front of you, as there are way more of them and they tend to be a lot more aggressive. There are times in this game where too much is happening on the screen to even consider using the ground laser. And it’s clear that the developers must have realized this was going to be a problem, because they have included sections where the only enemies are on the ground, finally giving you a chance to pull the other trigger button. However, these sections become fewer and fewer as the game goes along, with some levels barely including any ground units to attack.

I hate to say it, but CYGNI reminds me a lot of the classic game Silpheed on the Sega CD. When that game was getting ready to come out in 1993, Sega hyped it up as the next-generation shooter that would change the genre forever. Unfortunately, despite being a perfectly fun and exciting action game, Silpheed was never going to be able to live up to expectations. It was, for better or worse, a fairly standard vertical shooter with fancy polygonal graphics happening in the backgrounds. In other words, it was the same old game with a fresh paint job.

The same is true today. The only thing “next-generation” about this game is the presentation. And it’s not just a good-looking game, but also an intense one. The game does an excellent job of throwing what feels like hundreds of enemies at you all at once, filling up every inch of the screen with bad guys to shoot. From that perspective, CYGNI: All Guns Blazing is an impressive action game. Is it truly “the vanguard for the next-generation of shoot ‘em ups”? No, certainly not. But it’s still a lot of fun.