Cygni: All Guns Blazing review: intense SHMUP action

Upon jumping into the Cygni’s first mission you’ll be presented with a cutscene reminiscent of Foamstars’ art style where pilot Ava is getting ready for a mission while upbeat pop-rock plays. There’s an odd shot of Ava’s butt and panties as she pulls up her suit. This whole cutscene, panty-shot and all, feels entirely out of step with the rest of the game. It absolutely did not prepare me for the absurd bullet hell experience that awaited me. Cygni: All Guns Blazing is a fast-paced shoot-’em-up, and it’ll have you gunning down thousands of robots and ships in both the air and on the ground in hopes of ending the war. What is the war? I’m not entirely sure – every cutscene other than the first one was intensely serious and dreary, made with a fraction of the budget. The tone in Cygni feels inexplicably jarring, but the guns and the explosions? Oh yeah, they’re good. Cygni is tough – so tough, in fact, that I had to swap to Easy mode after just a few minutes of play. It almost seems intentional, though. Playin