Review - CYGNI: All Guns Blazing

Developer: KeelWorks

Publisher: Konami

Available on: PlayStation 5, PC (steam), Xbox Series X|S

Review system: PlayStation 5

RED ALERT! ALL UNITS SCRAMBLE AND INTERCEPT! At the edge of space, large alien machines run amok, destroying anything and everything in sight. The last line of defense rests upon you, a pilot of the elite Cygni team. With the last aerial aircraft carrier remaining, it's time to take off and fight the enemy head-on. Fortunately, you only happen to have one for the most cutting-edge fighter craft ever built.

CYGNI: All Guns Blazing is looking to do a lot of things. As a spaceship shooter, it's looking to bring back the reasons of why we love the genre, between its gameplay and strong presentation. It's a tough call in an age of rouge likes and auto battlers but CYGNI: All Guns Blazing sings its song well as it's a rip-roaring and ferociously good spaceship shooter, even with its short length.

For All Mankind

Biomechanical creatures have emerged to wage war with humanity on the fringes of a frontier, on a foreign planet. In CYGNI: All Guns Blazing, you are a lone pilot dedicated to fighting back. Your craft is equipped with heated offensive and defensive firepower, nimble, quick, and extremely deadly. As the enemy is in the hundreds of thousands, one pilot and her ship can indeed make a difference.

CYGNI: All Guns Blazing is a space shhip shooter or shmup for short. This genre has been around for decades, since the age of Galaga and Space Invaders. The goal is to shoot every enemy on screen, fight bosses, and ultimately survive. All the while. there are lives and a high score to keep track of as the enemy relentlessly sends its forces against the play. Every shmup, whether vertical or horizontal, has followed these rules, but each shmup does something different. Whether in story, presentation, or gameplay, there is always something different to the genre. In the case of Cygni: All Guns Blazing, it is a jaw-dropping presentation.

A top-down view of the cockpit of the players aircraft

Fire Everything

CYGNI: All Guns Blazing is grand and epic in its scope, introducing vast and far battlefields being torn apart by larger-than-life machines. I couldn't help but feel like I was on the set of Oblivion with Tom Cruise as the photo-realistic terrain is being torn up with mechanical movement and laser fire. The music thumps and pounds to constantly remind you that this is the mission for your life and failure means human extinction. Friendly units wage war all around down below and in the sky. This is a sci-fi war on a faraway planet and Cygni: All Guns Blazing underscores that.

Laser fire erupts in a dazzling display of white and purple. Missiles explode like the most dazzling fireworks you've ever seen. Artillery fire thumps and pounds the enemies lying far below. Laser beams inch closer and closer to your ship as the enemy attempts to trap you. It's a tremendous sensation the like of which no shmup has given me before. I couldn't help but be reminded of my golden days with RayStorm and Einhander.

Remembering the roots

CYGNI: All Guns Blazing is reminiscent of a familiar shmump that Konami published, called Ajax. Whether this is where Francis got his name in the first Deadpool movie is a mystery but Ajax put players in a special military squadron, flying a specialized helicopter and jet into enemy territory to fight aliens. The uniqueness of the game was fighting targets both at level and below the player's aircraft. This means enemies would shoot up at the player from the ground, such as tanks and AA turrets. In Ajax, players head an unlimited "bomb" shot for taking care of ground targets and an "air" shot for taking on air targets.

CYGNI: All Guns Blazing operates very similarly. The aircraft has a primary and secondary weapon. The primary fire is more of a vulcan that can perforate aerial targets. Missiles also target airborne targets but are finite. The ship has an air-to-ground cannon that rips apart targets below. The game is from the top-down perspective. The background, which is the ground, almost constantly has enemies to destroy, some of them in direct engagement with your ship and others fighting friendly forces. Engaging these targets and avoiding damage is essential to a high score.

Break the enemy

Finally, the ship can divert power. One button diverts more energy to the shield while another button diverts power to weapons. Survival in CYGNI: All Guns Blazing depends on balancing out firepower with protection. There are many segments filled with enemies and dodging incoming fire just isn't enough. Knowing when to apply defense and offense is essential, especially on the higher difficulties.

Playing CYGNI: All Guns Blazing is remarkable, profoundly fun, and enjoyable. The game bills itself as a love letter to the genre and it certainly feels as such as the gameplay and grand scope combine into one riveting gameplay experience. Enemies are downed and massive bosses are blown to pieces in this grand interstellar war. I do wish there were more tweaks to the gameplay, such as different views or a bevy of other weapons, such as in the shmups Phiosoma or Einhander. What we have works and works well.

Not Enough time

There is one glaring flaw with CYGNI: All Guns Blazing: Length. The game has seven stages. The stages do last longer than most shmups, with one level clocking in at 15 minutes. However, once those seven levels are up, CYGNI: All Guns Blazing leaves players wanting more. There is the fact that the levels are replayable, especially on each difficulty setting and the game has an arcade mode to challenge the mettle of skilled players.

However, outside of chasing upgrades and designing bullets for the ship, the experience is short. Given the world-building and the context, I just wish CYGNI: All Guns Blazing was longer by 7 or 14 more levels. Such a length would've put the game into legendary status. Perhaps there will be DLC or expansions, which have not been confirmed. I, for one, would welcome such growth.

CYGNI: All Guns Blazing rocks!

CYGNI: All Guns Blazing was set as a love letter to the genre and a means to define what the genre can do. To that end, it has succeeded in various ways. The presentation is spectacular and while the gameplay could've used a few more ideas, it's remarkably satisfying. For me, it's reignited why I love the genre in the first place: Big action, stunning presentation, and bosses that make you work for it. CYGNI: All Guns Blazing is a blazingly good game

CYGNI: ALL GUNS BLAZING IS HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

CYGNI: All Guns Blazing was reviewed on the PS5 thanks to a review key provided by Konami