- Tested on PC with a RTX 4070 TI in 3440 X 1440 ultra wide screen.
- Code transmitted by the publisher.
- Played about ten hours.
- The first contact had the game paused this summer... before coming back this autumn!
- Home gameplay captures.
- Funfact: it wasn't a big deal to take screeners in full!
Since Konami moved away from the video game, preferring the Pachinko and winning bait, few games have been stamped by the publisher to be successful. Out of the summer black hole, Cygni: All guns blazing did not go unnoticed and boasted of being the renewal of the shmup to believe a number of criticisms. To target the stars, did KeelWorks' game burn its wings?
A shiny bodyshell
The shmup is as old as the video game and seems to resist the dread of time, even if its hour of glory seems behind it. There remain some passionate and seasoned dolorists who have never left the boat and who sail insolence between the dumplings like Sarkozy between the convictions. The taste of risk, perseverance... the crisis of epilepsy: a triptych well known to lovers of the genre. Real living fossil of video game, the shmup knows many subgenres and so many enthusiasts to defend them and fight.
That it seems far away the time of Spacewar! (1961) thatand we see the graphics of Cygni to the seriously attractive plastic. Developed by Pixar's elders, the title is spelled out by its staging as the splendor of its graphics. The game even pays for the luxury of short cinematics who seek to tell... um... a story I imagine? Well, storytelling is often the poor parent of the kind and as it's not invasive here, let's not spoil our pleasure. Ingame the artistic direction flies and there is a real fireworks fire at all speed. Low hat for the technical part even if rare slowdowns can occur at times.
Even the OST draws its pin from the game although it takes a little time to adapt to forget the frenetic music of Japanese shooters. Be grieving from the music of teknivals carried by gothic voices of teenage girls like the Japanese prods of them, Cygni prefers to play a partition closer to the space opera It's a carnival! It's now less engaging but the OST also knows how to break free in some inspired levels where unlikely electric guitar riffs come to marry with electro. It's the composer Vatche Kalenderian to whom it owes the soundtrack recorded in Hollywood in the studio of EastWest please.
The KeelWorks game is clearly looking to free carcans of the genre. First because he does not choose the school of accessibility. Far from the mantra « Easy to play, hard to master », Cygni is not easy to access and it is the case to say! To limit the break, the developers had the right idea to include a rather clear tuto and minimalist retro aesthetic in order to go straight to the goal. All the opposite of his artistic direction charged ingame! After taking a beating in the first of the seven levels of the game, we quickly understand that we will have to dig to understand its logic. This is not the most elegant way to tame a video game but this step is essential to progress.
Frozen wheels
A trigger for classic air-to-air shooting and the other for secondary air-to-ground shooting. Left stick pressure allows to activate drones in reinforcement while right stick allows to lock opponents on the ground or to do damage to areas manually. We move the ship while adjusting our shots to the direction given to the stick. We learn all these techniques one by one even if we understand to our great dismay that all these options are to be unlocked while playing. This first point is certainly questionable because these assists are of very great help and certain options such as loaded laser shooting are essential to shoot down the biggest enemies to the overly loaded PV gauge. Problem and not least, to improve your ship, you have to finish the level of a trade without dying in normal, which makes the first steps in Cygni particularly bitter and frustrating, especially since each level lasts about fifteen minutes on average, compared to less than five in the vast majority of shmups. Shouldn't we have chosen unlimited lives and preferred to put forward the scoring?
Passed a few squabbles from the first level, it seems obvious that the game was designed to be played in an easy first step and then come back to take our revenge in normal, once all the techniques were unlocked. Suffice to say that it took me a while to swallow my ego and lower the level of difficulty; a ban which had to be crossed for the purposes of the test. Again, it's a strange gamedesign choice, especially when the player has to break his teeth instead of directly announcing the color.
Second pitfall, Cygni opts for a vertical scrolling and an unusual 16:9 format, which does not facilitate the esquives, the fault to a lack of reactivity of the player against the small distance between the top and bottom of the screen. It's not for nothing that shmups always choose one or the other but not both. What we gain in staging, we lose in readability. Worse still, enemies appear from all sides and have a systematic nose poached towards our ship with a particularly wide hitbox. The latter is hyper nervous and given the unlikely number of enemies on the screen, it is a real challenge not to collect damage, not to say that it is impossible on such long levels. You float like a soap in a prison shower or like a fly that doesn't know where to land. It's grim, of course, but for accuracy, we'll come back! A defect that could easily have been corrected had the game opted for a secondary loaded shot whose main merit is traditionally to ostensibly slow down the speed of movement, the only way to flirt between the balls of a manic shooter.
The shmup who wanted to govern them all?
Fortunately, unlike many schmups where only one contact is enough to blow up our ship, that of Cygni is otherwise more robust thanks to an original system of rotation of our energy between shield and firepower. With a pressure on X, we can switch our energy up to six levels, each allowing to choose its own direction of fire like that of drones. A mechanics that is often confined to the choice of the starting ship in the schmups and which is here adjustable in real time. If the idea is fun on paper, it's a whole other story to adjust its firepower in full action. This gives a funny ballet where you are willingly looking to avoid all the balls on the screen and where you go on the energy bonuses that pop on the screen.
When the ship is about to explode, we sacrifice our firepower to strengthen our shield. If it looks quite complicated, it's not really very subtle and since the opaque score system and the profusion of enemies prevent a serious strategy, Cygni's depth is quite relative. However, the dilemma between shield and firepower gives the impression of being underexploited. Same for the sensible ground strikes allow us to support our army so that it returns us the same. Too bad because there was clearly the material to dig this side of the gameplay.
Another singularity that will irritate lovers of the perfect run, it seemed impossible to eliminate all enemies on screen. Even knowing the levels, each part is different, the fault of random patterns, which will cause the purists to tear their hair out. And since enemies come from every side, you often feel blurred when you take a lost bullet in your back. Some ships do not hesitate to shoot us outside of the screen, which is yet one of the gamedesign golden rules not to reproduce. Others come squarely from the bottom of the screen... What an indignity!
I love you. Neither do I...
Nevertheless and despite all these approximations, flying over the campaign in a few ten hours has some memorable sequences. Two specific levels are particularly original: the third with an unbridled counter-way race on a motorway and a waterfall worthy of F-Zero and the sixth which is carried by an unexpected atmospheric soundtrack. The bosses too are always well brought even if we are far from the patterns to master with the fingertips of a cult game like DoDonPachi (read our critical).
Actually Cygni Has a difficult facade. Unlike Cave games, the KeelWorks title does not bring satisfaction or adrenaline discharge from the one who overcame the impossible. It's a pity that Cygni preferred extended levels rather than shorter but otherwise more intense runs. The game would have gained in depth where some sequences flirt with free and useless filling while penalising the rhythm of the game. The longer it takes, the better it is: a starter mistake unfortunately! We will also recommend changing the key of the missile throw, placed by default on the right stick: a not very daring choice when we know how easy it is to inadvertently press this button in the action fire!
Far from being bad, Cygni produces a curious impression once the generic has been reached. So many new ideas fly over leave a bitter taste in the mouth, as if the developers kept a line that they could not fully exploit. However, Cygni bursts the schmups released to date in terms of staging, even sacrificing its readability. Will the Japanese be told about the strategy? Let's not go so far because the campaign paradoxically knows how to show fantasy in a few sequences where developers have dropped out. The Scots of KeelWorks may have been overwhelmed by their own ambition and should have paid more attention to the background than to form. Cygni is to be taken as is: a friendly show game despite its flaws. Remains a refreshing title that comes to type in the anthill rather than copy the tenors of the genre. A boldness that we readily recognize and forgiving mistakes, which is more for a first game! Who knows if KeelWorks will transform the essay for their next production that is now expected with curiosity.
For
- Splendid visually
- Inspired DA
- Vibrant staging
- Original gameplay system
- Nice Bosses
- Explosions everywhere, all the time!
- Tuto welcome
- Surprising OST
- Sound Quality Design
- Ability to reconfigure keys
- Cinematics pretty
Against
- Sacrifice
- Underexploited mechanics
- Frustrating at the beginning
- Score system too back
- Inconsequential history
- Soap vessel
- Unequal rhythm
- Limited bestiary
- The esquive loses its superb with the shield
I think the lack of readability is resilitory to me!