Unlike Lara Croft, who, through her enormous bosom-propelled success as rampant adventuring archaeologist managed to get a string of toys made in her image (including dolls), the Ladies in Cy Girls have done it the other way around! The Cy Girls are actually a range of ass-kicking heroine dolls in Japan (probably the only place where a game based on a set of dolls would be even considered), but you have to hand it to those crazy Japs, they got the right people behind the project -because with Konami at the wheel you don't expect any crap. Or at least not total crap.

   

 Konami have tried to bring some innovation into the already-saturated third-person shooter/puzzler market. Their first move was to have two main characters, both with different attributes to add to the missions. Big deal, so what? Seen it loads of times. Heck, even Streets of Rage had that! But wait for it…. Cy Girls is a bit different; they've split them up, and put them running parallel missions on separate discs!

 This may not sound like the most innovative of moves, and it really isn't, but the missions, and puzzles for each character (and level) are different, to suit for their different styles, so you don't just do the same thing with a different character as in a lot of games.

  Now, onto the characters themselves. The two characters are portrayed in a very "East meets West" style. Ice is a blonde American, with big breasts and a conveniently tight costume (what genius!). Obviously she is the West of the pair, and is the guns expert. Aska is the fishnet-clad Japanese ninja, being the East, and a master of flipping about and slashing stuff. They essentially play like Dante (of Devil May Cry fame) split into two, with Ice being able to jump through the air, firing bullets until she hits the floor, and Aska being able to run up walls and slice hapless henchmen from behind. Both characters seem to take influence from other games- Aska taking the Tenchu route of stealth, and ninja-flippery, and Ice being a more Metal Gear Solid style, being able to crouch behind walls, peek round 'em, then fire off a few rounds.

   

 Both characters have very funky moves to pull off, the only problem being, as with DMC, that they're not particularly hard to pull off; just a simple matter of either pressing attack when in the right place, or simply pressing jump and attack. The game tries to counteract this problem by giving you truckloads of enemies to plough your way through. This isn't as repetitive as you'd think the first time you knock them all down, but go out of the room, and come back in, and whoosh! Another set of enemies appear out of nowhere in exactly the same way as before. This constant respawning starts to grate when combined with some of the puzzles that the game throws at you.  The puzzles are not the most complex thing in the world, and usually involve reaching a point, going back to flip a switch, going back to the point, now open, picking up a card/code from inside, running to another point w-a-a-y across the map to open and advance. Needless to say it's not exactly an enjoyable experience, and not usually spelt out as easily as I have. Couple this with the enemies you've killed respawning every time you go back into the room, and you may soon be grinding your teeth down to the gums.

   

 To try and innovate the genre, Konami has also included in the game the "Cy" bit of Cy girls, with both the main characters having to "dive" into a surreal virtual world every so often. This has a feel somewhere between the Matrix and Tron, with most of the character's actions being through a command form (triangle, square and x), instead of simply pressing one button. This does provide a welcome change from the samey gameplay of the main part of the game, but doesn't really do anything totally original or attention grabbing either.

 The graphics are quite good, with some smart effects, such as blurring out things further away from view, and holds steady at a constant 60fps, but Cy Girls isn't particularly stunning, with some fairly bland corridors, low-detail structures and mostly indistinguishable enemies.

 Type in "generic crappy American voice overs" into a search engine, and Cy Girls might well come top of the list. With someone always on your communicator, "helping" you get around, they're always saying something, and generally it's something stupid or pointless, selected from the five generic sayings they had recorded. For the men, it sounds as if they've got a tramp off the street to come along, and say lines in non-specific accents, the worst being a Japanese ninja who has a strong American accent, and a Mexican bloke who does the worst Ron Jeremy impression ever. This is where you can really tell the game was made for Japan…

   

 Cy Girls has tried some innovations in these days of so many samey games, but has broadly taken ideas from other games, and then divided itself into two discs to try and create a more substantial gaming experience. Really it's just been stretched too thin, with the same concept being overused too much. The fact that some of the puzzles are more frustrating than they should be really puts you off some of the good touches the game does have, as some concepts from MGS and Tenchu are still there, just in a simplified form.

  This is for gamers who want an easy experience, and don't want to learn long strings of move lists in order to pull off some cool stunts, or maybe just the lady fans of PS2 (all 3 of them) could enjoy this, as it has some ass-kicking heroine leading ladies, but the game lacks sufficient depth, challenge or variation to hold the interest of the more seasoned gamer.