Cy-Girls Review

Based on a line of Japanese dolls and an accompanying cartoon series, Cy-Girls is a few nifty little ideas thrown together in a package that, overall, seems to lack effort. You play two super hacker girls as they journey through their separate but parallel running stories.

Each character has essentially their own game on two separate disks; considering Ice is armed with guns and Aska is armed with a sword they both play surprisingly similarly. This wouldn't be too bad, but unfortunately they both handle quite badly. You will find yourself running in awkward circles around a bad guy whose flaky AI has left him having forgotten that he was being shot at, as you orbit him trying to get Ice to lock on to him rather than his friend half way down the corridor.

The levels are equally unimpressive, it is quite hard at times to keep track of where you are due to an apparent lack of imagination in level design, though thankfully there is a map overlay that shows areas you've passed through. You make good use of that map as almost every puzzle seems to consist of walking halfway back across a level to throw a switch or pick up an item that, irritatingly, you were unable to do the first time you passed through. At various points your character can "dive" into a cyberworld version of the level, which means that you yet again have to wander around the same rooms you've been back and forth over and over already, only now with a slightly more Tron look going on.

This could have been an interesting part Tenchu part Metal Gear Solid style game with a clever interweaving dual storyline and varied action styles; instead it is a sloppily produced tedious affair with little going for it other than the fact that it had the potential to be good.