CYGNI: All Guns Blazing review

During the ‘80s, Konami delivered succession of celebrated coin-op shooters, from Super Cobra, Gyruss, Gradius, to TwinBee. But by the time Axelay was released on the Super Nintendo in 1992, the publisher’s longstanding reign of delivering scrolling firefights was winding down.

Franchises like Gradius, Parodious, and TwinBee would be honored with compilations, but new entries slowed to a disheartening trickle. In the 2000’s, Konami would attempt to revisit the genre with Otomedius, but the outcome was a barely serviceable shoot ‘em up that leaned too hard on legacy. Mercifully, that’s not the case with CYGNI: All Guns Blazing.

More Housemarque than Hudson Soft

Intriguingly, Konami’s latest entry in the shooter genre has little connection to tradition. You won’t see a Vic Viper-looking ship nor hear anything that references the output of the Konami Kukeiha Club. But what you will find in Edinburgh-based KeelWorks’ inaugural outing are seven stages of relentless action that rivals the bedlam of today’s toughest bullet-hell shooters.

CYGNI: All Guns Blazing’s moniker is no exaggeration. Survival means cleaving your way through swarms of enemies and dense patches of projectiles – a deed that demands your unremitting attention. And understandably, not everyone might be up for that kind of challenge.

The Mighty Orca

Across each vertically scrolling stage, your ship has a remarkably adaptive arsenal. Instead of merely firing upward, you can use the right stick on your controller to bend your stream of firepower, arcing your air-to-air weaponry about thirty degrees. If you’d rather have your main gun lock onto enemies, that’s an option, although you’ll have to relinquish a bit of shot power. Meanwhile, ground-based foes will sporadically tempt with the possibility of scoring bonuses and energy containers. But as Xevious once taught us, simultaneously fighting ground and sky-based battles can be a treacherous undertaking.

But those energy vessels are indispensable. Your ship, called the Orca, also provides another possibility: sacrificing some of your ship’s five-part shielding to augment your weaponry. Enemy artificial intelligence is particularly ruthless, with opponents sporadically attempting to flank or even approach the Orca from behind. One of the best countermeasures is diverting power to your weaponry and unleashing a volley of homing rockets to suppress the threat. Making these decisions in the heat of battle is tough but also increasingly necessary if you tackle CYGNI’s higher difficulty settings.

Razor-Sharp Reflexes Wanted but Not Necessary

On All Guns Blazing’s easiest level of challenge, expect an intense, but lenient test of reflexes and visual perception. Here, you’re awarded a trio of ships instead of a single Orca, but there’s little reduction in the number of enemies. As such, formations of hundreds of opponents will move at breakneck speeds, making constant movement indispensable. But unlike most bullet hell titles, pixel-perfect navigational precision isn’t required. Yes, contact with an enemy will remove a portion of your shielding. But energy containers are so plentiful, it’s possible to beat some stages by taking advantage of the temporary invulnerability after Orca takes a hit.

Expectedly, each stage culminates in a protracted boss battle against a humongous foe. Encounters against these elevated enemies often showcase CYGNI’s use of the Unreal Engine, as animated monstrosities lash out with wild weaponry and unleash legions of adversaries. These showdowns are especially cinematic, with the first two encounters pitting you against machinery with giant arms and a spinning sphere that generates asteroids for armor. Best of all, while these adversaries have distinct abilities, All Guns Blazing eschews the typical fixed attack patterns.

A Powder Keg of Pixels and Particle Effects

Between the near-photorealistic explosions and smoke that ends each spectacle and rewarding players with currency for unused energy vessels, expect some agreeable rewards. But one notable shortcoming is CYGNI’s action movie-style soundtrack. Sure, there are some John Williams/Hans Zimmer-like swells and the respite from guitar rock is welcome. But the symphonic score doesn’t capture the pace and urgency of the on-screen action.

Undoubtedly, there are a few other missteps. CYGNI’s stages are book-ended by animated sequences that rival the detail of a CGI film. But the storytelling feels like an assemblage of science-fiction clichés where even a cheeky panty shot doesn’t add much excitement. Being able to upgrade the Orca’s drones and missiles, as well as tweak the spread of your firepower is welcome, but the game should offer to explain how the process works. And not earning any rewards unless you beat the stage boss feels a bit punitive. Finally, performance was sporadically marred by framerate drops on a multitude of different rigs. Even an RTX 4070 Super couldn’t deliver rock-steady 60 FPS action.

Conclusion

If you appreciate the kind of retina-searing, adrenaline-emitting action found in intense bullet hell shooters, there’s a strong chance you’ll get hooked by CYGNI: All Guns Blazing. Sure, it can be unflinchingly tough, demanding your complete attention for each of its fifteen-minute-long stages. But the thrill of dangling from the precipice of survival as you struggle against swarms of enemies makes CYGNI indispensable for shooter junkies.

CYGNI: All Guns Blazing was played on PC with review code provided by the publisher.