Cygni: All Weapons Blazing | PC Gamer

The common stage in Cygni: All Weapons Blazing is about quarter-hour lengthy, give or take, however it doesn’t really feel that method. It seems like a two-and-a-half hour particular results showcase that should have ended with a fade to black and “Directed by Michael Bay” in massive, daring letters. Cygni’s audio-visual bombast is tough to overstate, with its Unreal Engine 4-powered hordes of alien jet fighters screaming towards you from above and beneath. The sheer variety of fashions, bullets, and particle results on display is regularly overwhelming, and in case your consideration lapses for a second, you’ll lose all sense of what’s occurring.

After only a couple hours of taking part in, I felt like my senses had been jackhammered to sludge —and it was intoxicating. That may look like an overreaction to mere motion setpieces, however an extravagant, 16:9, fantastically polished, graphically souped-up shmup like this can be a uncommon factor certainly. Don’t get me fallacious, I like my pixel artwork, however dodging incoming trains, taking potshots at a flying house whale, and blowing aside glossy alien tanks is riotous when it appears and feels this good. It runs like a dream, too, except for some body drops within the particularly chaotic ultimate stage.

Mechanically, its shoot-’em-up antics will likely be fairly acquainted to any followers of Ikaruga or Radiant Silvergun. All of the bedlam of a bullet hell is on provide, however its tempo is a contact extra palatable for individuals who don’t infuse their faucet water with Purple Bull. In reality, Cygni is sort of accessible for a shmup; in a style the place you sometimes can solely fireplace straight forward, the sport permits you about 30 levels of leeway to the left or proper, which implies you may fireplace at cheeky angles and comfortably zoom across the subject prefer it’s a twin-stick shooter. You may as well take a number of hits earlier than you die, which could simply turn out to be useful, as essentially the most harmful enemy in Cygni can also be my aforementioned favourite factor about it: visible chaos.

Each second is spent delousing waves of incoming ships with lasers and rockets, which is commonplace fare for the fashion, however the place a style traditional would possibly prize readability and clear, apparent visible cues, Cygni is raring to drown the participant in heaps of enemies from each angle. However whereas it’s simple to overlook a number of photographs and get misplaced within the tapestry of grinding steel and neon lights, it’s forgiving sufficient that it by no means feels inescapable.

Every stage begins you off with sufficient shields to take 5 hits earlier than a sport over, however sure enemies drop further shields after they die. You may as well reroute protect energy to your weapons, buying and selling a success level for further harm and spend that energy outright for ultra-powerful rockets, which might hit enemies in your flanks and rear. 

You’ll be able to all the time commerce that harm again for these hit factors, however don’t do it in time and also you’re toast. Since this can be a shmup we’re speaking about, you’re often making these choices within the span of milliseconds, and it provides a pleasant pinch of high-stakes technique the place I simply anticipated undiluted, twitchy motion. It provides me the form of blazing adrenaline rush I assume a canine experiences once I shake a bag of treats.

Cygni’s fairly beneficiant with these pickups, and admittedly, the wealth of shields littered about trivializes sure sections. Whereas the sport is at its finest when you’ve gotten simply sufficient shields to make some choices with them, it doesn’t strike this steadiness completely, and also you’ll typically be showered in sufficient to tank every thing on display and preserve a full harm increase. Perhaps that is the sport’s method of offering a breather or flexing what number of explosions can occur concurrently, however on repeated playthroughs, these moments bore.

There’s additionally floor warfare (like Xevious, however quite a bit busier) perpetually carrying on beneath the life-or-death dogfights in your aspect of the y-axis. You need to use the temporary home windows of downtime to try to squeeze further factors and free shields out of the cannon fodder beneath, and also you’ll often fend off large walkers and artillery platforms making an attempt to steal your consideration from the air fight. Each your air weapons and floor weapons can dwelling in on targets for much less harm or be free-aimed for full harm; one other gold nugget of risk-reward that pays big dividends for efficient multitaskers. Once I had gotten farther than ever on a selected boss combat that was giving me bother, I opted to right away intestine my shields and spam rockets at it—whereas it left me weak to a sport over if a single bullet grazed me, the additional salvo was sufficient to cinch the combat. 

All these further hit factors and homing weapons imply it’s a bit of gentler than a few of the old-school greats, however I beloved the way it all the time appeared to egg on daredevil conduct. Regardless of the torrential downpour of enemy fireplace, I by no means felt like I used to be trying to find the magic pixel the place a selected bullet sample would by no means hit me; quite the opposite, I needed to fly by way of the bullet hell to all corners of the display, hoover up as many further shields as potential, and instantly convert them into rockets. 

The one main waste of potential I discovered is with its story, which feels odd to say a couple of shmup. I didn’t go in anticipating a plot in any respect, however the sport sandwiches every stage in-between a pair of cutscenes and even has a lore library the place you may be taught in regards to the celestial our bodies you paint with strafing runs over the course of the marketing campaign. Sadly, there’s not a lot distinctive or substantive to dig into, and the cutscenes come off bland—a dispensable little bit of context the sport doesn’t profit from.

On the flipside, Cygni left me itching for extra of its moment-to-moment, regardless of my minor gripes. It’s a lean playthrough with solely seven ranges, however the impulse to enhance boss occasions, undergo the sport with a pal in co-op, and maximize excessive scores ought to lend excessive replayability. Arcade mode is the all-or-nothing endurance check style veterans will need to look into, however there’s further postgame tinkering in varied equippable upgrades and weapons on your ship. You’ll be able to even design customized firing patterns on your important air-to-air gun, which is certain to stimulate the imaginations of anybody seeking to obtain absolute optimization.

This all culminates in a stunning sport that provides all of the exhilaration of an ideal bullet hell shooter, however gives the participant some distinctive instruments to each make enhancing simpler and reward daring gambits from seasoned shmuppers. Taking down every boss was a shot of catharsis, and as quickly because it was over I used to be headed straight again to arcade mode for one more spherical.