Konami recently released CYGNI: A hail of bullets From developer KeelWorks. It’s a La Galaga-style vertical shooter now available on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S.
Konami provided me with the Steam code for the purpose of this review, but all thoughts are my own. If this sounds like a game you’d like, you can purchase it from a variety of stores, including Humble (affiliate link) for a suggested retail price of $29.99.
In CYGNI: All Guns Blazing, humanity’s final battle takes place on the planet CYGNI, where players must defend the remnants of a destroyed colony from the ruthless attacks of biomechanical aliens.
Immerse yourself in a heart-pounding battle for humanity as cutting-edge visual effects, sound design and intense action combine for an unforgettable next-gen experience.
I’ll preface this review by admitting that I’m not the most familiar with shmups. I’ve played a few here and there, but none very extensively. I still enjoy playing swan Even done it in easy mode.
Let’s start with some technical notes. First, I did try swan On my Steam Deck, even on the Steam Deck settings, it doesn’t run very well. What I mainly play is swan My gaming desktop has a Ryzen 9 5900X, Radeon RX 6800 XT and 32GB DDR4 RAM running at 3600 MT/s.
I was really a bit confused when I discovered that it couldn’t maintain a steady 60 frames per second (fps) (the highest the game allows you to set) with everything maxed out. I got even more confused when I lowered the detail level to High, but still couldn’t maintain 60 fps.
It’s better than “Ultra”, but still no dice. Unfortunately, there is no option for AMD FSR. I’m sure if I tweaked some settings via AMD Adrenaline and/or lowered MSAA to x2 instead of x4, I could get a more stable frame rate at 60fps.
I’m not sure if this is a technical miracle resulting in very demanding requirements, poor optimization, or both, but my machine isn’t sloppy and should probably be able to run better.
Enough of the boring technology. I think I’ll start with the gameplay. Overall, it’s exactly what you’d expect. You’re in a fighter jet/spaceship, shooting down enemies.
You basically fire some lasers out front, but you also have missiles and beams for attacking ground units. You can also purchase side drones to enhance your firepower, different firing arcs, and more functionality between missions. Overall, pretty simple. However, there is more to do.
For starters, you can aim the main laser, adding another layer of strategy when performing missions. Yes, your laser has different firing patterns, but by moving your mouse or right stick, you can angle the firing direction, which means you don’t always have to shoot directly. You can even buy an upgrade to turn on the homing laser!
There’s also a system that lets you transfer power between shields (aka health) and firepower. When you kill enemies you gain more power, which as far as I know always affects health, which is my complaint (if my health is full it automatically boosts my firepower) .
Interestingly, you can switch between different shooting modes as your firepower increases (you can adjust this in the Upgrades tab between missions). Firepower can also be used to fire missiles (I don’t think this was ever explained), hitting air and ground enemies.
Just as interesting swan I’ve been playing and there are some things I don’t really like. For starters, while the environments, ships, and effects throughout the game look great, tracking your ship can be really difficult. I would often lose my boat due to visual clutter and things moving too fast.
Another problem I have is that it seems difficult to get enough money to purchase upgrades. I don’t know how they calculate how much you get at the end of a mission, but I find that I often end the mission with only about $20, while many upgrades cost over $100!
Since they never share (from what I’ve seen) how you get money, I don’t know what I can do to unlock more upgrades. Third, I wish there was some kind of avoidance mechanism. I wish I could press a button every now and then to dodge enemy attacks. My second to last complaint about the gameplay is that there are often too many aerial enemies.
Many times, powerful ground units will cause you trouble, but there’s nothing you can do about it because you’re too busy fighting swarms of air units that will respawn as soon as they’re wiped out. I think there’s still some balancing that needs to be done, especially since it often feels like it takes quite a while to take out most enemies.
Finally, one of my biggest complaints is that the levels are quite long (I think my fastest time was around 11-12 minutes) and there are no checkpoints. This means that if you die against the boss, you have to go all the way back to the beginning of the level, which feels terrible.
Other aspects of the game that I didn’t talk about are audio and video. The sound is okay, but it feels like nothing special. The visuals are nice, but feel jarring at times. There is a unified look and feel between the menus and actual gameplay.
However, the cutscenes made me feel uncomfortable. You often have a fairly realistic setting, but the protagonist’s character is too cartoonish to fit.
Finally, to be honest, I have no idea what this story is all about. Maybe about 99% of the story is stuff you read before starting a mission, but it’s easy to skip them. Cutscenes provide some story, mostly just “we have to defeat these monsters for a reason.” I wish the cutscenes had provided more of the story, but that’s what it is.
In the end, do I love it? swan? No, but I wouldn’t say I didn’t like it either. It’s a fun game that I think just needs a little balance. The MSRP is only around $30, which definitely makes it feel less bad.
