Konami just released Cygni: All Guns Blazing, its best new game in years

Konami is best known for franchises like Silent Hill, Metal Gear, Bomberman, and Contra, but it has drawn quite a bit of ire for how it has treated them over the past decade. That said, the storied Japanese game developer and publisher has been on a bit of a rebound recently. It’s reviving its older franchises with collections and brand new games like Contra: Operation Galuga and Super Bomberman R 2 and publishing some quality indie-level games like Skelattack and Super Crazy Rhythm Castle. Cygni: All Guns Blazing finds the middle ground between those two things and is Konami’s best game in years because of that.

Cygni is the first game from KeelWorks, a Scottish indie studio, but it’s also a flashy shoot-’em-up that wouldn’t feel out of place in an arcade. It stands alongside classic Konami sci-fi shoot-’em-ups like Gradius while also providing its own unique takes on the genre. While Gradius is a side-scroller, Cyngi plays out from a top-down view, Galaga-style. Players control an ace pilot as they assist Earth’s forces in fighting against a biomechanical species of aliens that humans awakened on the titular planet of Cygni. While gameplay certainly takes precedence over narrative, it still has some interesting themes regarding the environmental impact of war and colonization in the brief cutscene snippets between levels.

Cygni is still quite enjoyable if you ignore the lore, though. Each level plays out as a visual story of its own, with distinct acts that shake up what players are doing. That should satisfy players who want to engage with this game on a deeper level, although your eyes should also be glued to the shoot-’em-up action taking place on screen. Players can shoot at what’s in front of them and fire off missiles, and they have a limited number of hits their shield can take before dying.Cygni sets itself apart by giving players a bit more control over where they shoot.

Not only can players orient the front-facing fire on slight angles, but by using a