Sine Mora is the last japanese production by Suda 51 Team. Developed by Digital Reality and Grasshopper Manufacture, the game is awesome shoot 'em up. The gameplay world is rendered in 3D but the game shows in 2.5D in a side scrolling. Full support of 1920x1080 with 60 FPS. I'm a really fan of shoot 'em ups, and this game is brutal, like Ikaruga or Gradius V. Sine Mora have four difficulties: normal, challenging, hard and insane. Variuous game modes: Story Mode, Arcade Mode, Score Attack, and Boss Training. Really a good game. On Steam for 7 … Expand

Sine Mora is a horizontal side-scrolling shooter in the vein of classics like Gradius and R-type - something we need a lot more of on PC these days (they're fun, have nostalgia factor for a lot of fans and don't require massive budgets and development teams). So I was delighted to see the vids for Sine More on the Steam website and knew early that I was at least gonna give it a try.
Cut to today - three days after buying it and playing it a lot - and I'm not disappointed. On my i7-920 with a GTX 580, this game looks amazing and plays butter-smooth. Just make sure you're playing with a control pad, though. Like a lot of games these days, this one seems tailor-made for playing with an Xbox controller.
As I said, the game looks amazing, but it's not something that ought to tax most reasonable rigs. The main reason it looks so good is the colour palette and the slightly cutesy and whimsical designs. The art really is excellent, though I felt the front-end/menu system felt like it belonged in a different game entirely. The stark white background and falling black feathers felt like something better suited to a slightly gloomy JRPG.
Sound is good throughout, though none of the music will grab you. The SFX are spot on and help you get into the shooting action. The language spoken by the characters really threw me, however. The voice-over made it very difficult to read the story (presented in pages of static text between levels). I'm not against voice-overs in languages other than English or Japanese, but trying to read a fair amount of English text while someone speaks over it in what I'm guessing is perhaps Hungarian, was strangely difficult.
That brings me to what I think is the games biggest downfall - the story.
Those pages of static text are there to cover loading times, but I really with they weren't. The story is so grim and depressing that it really has no place in a colourful shooter like this. I was pretty surprised, and not in a good way at all, to read in-game about one of the characters being raped. The rape victim happens to be a great pilot and is subsequently coerced against her will into service by another character - an embittered father who has lost both of his legs. Geez.
That rape sets the writer up for a horrible use of the pun 'wormed his way into' shortly afterwards.
It doesn't stop there, though. Later in the story, we read about an entire underclass of people being physically disabled by their enslavers. They have all their senses permanently crippled so they can hardly even interact with the world around them anymore.
This is all far too heavy and grim for a cute shooter with chubby airplane designs. It's a ridiculous mismatch and, for me, really brings the game down. This otherwise fun and furious shooter just didn't need this double-shot of depression at all. I no longer read the static text - I'm not interested in whatever disturbing atrocities the Hungarian writer wants to force on gamers' imaginations next. I'm here for the shoot-em-up action only, thanks.
And in that, fortunately, Sine Mora really does deliver. Boss battles can be intense, but the game is forgiving enough that you rarely die outright from a single mistake. Instead of an energy bar or lives, you have a clock which you must add time to by shooting enemies. And the power-up system, though pretty bare-bones, works well enough to make upgrading your main guns a big part of the fun.
It's worth mentioning a little feature that stood out from other shooters, too: if you press a certain button, you can rapidly speed up in-game cut-scenes, meaning to can get back to the shooting action all the sooner. This made me think, however, that the great thing about the old classics was how little they relied on extraneous bells and whistles. R-type and Gradius didn't need static pages of story-telling or swooping, cinematic fly-bys where the player is not in control. Things were a bit better when, between levels, we only got a few seconds to breathe and shake off our thumbs before hitting the Bydo Empire again.
All in all, though, if you like old-school side-scrolling shooters with up-to-date graphics, you'll love Sine Mora.
Just bypass the misguided story elements if you can.… Expand

Having read the reviews for Sine mora on the xbox 360, i was very much looking forwards to this game 1 of a dying breed . And to cut it short i was disappointed ,graphically its probably the best shooter made to date but as a game its lacking . If only these visuals was married to any CAVE shooter that would be magic . Im a massive shmup fan of 40 years of age so ive played all the classics and this game doesnt get close . If your desperate for a shmup then go for it but if your expecting a classic im sorry .… Expand

Loving this game for something quick to jump into. May not be the best Shmup ever made but it has a few interesting ideas, like the ability to slow time in order to avoid catastrophe or grab an extra power up before it floats off the screen. Definitely suited to a controller and very easy to pick up. Graphics are great and stages are varied and interesting. A range of different craft with different sub weapons are also a nice touch. Boss battles are very frequent and there is an option to practice against bosses you have unlocked outside the normal game mode. Four difficulty settings will keep casual gamers and hardcore enthusiasts happy. The story line is very dark and adult which added substance for me. You can skip or fast forward if you're not interested or on your 12th play through. Worth the money for any fan of the genre… Collapse

Pros: Graphics are gorgeous, and well designed story. Gameplay is fantastic, can be played multiple times just to reach top scores in leader boards.

Cons: Although good story, it is somewhat confusing, playing it once wont make you understand the whole thing in an instant.