Sine Mora

1. Jumpbrick

   Dec 12, 2012

   10

   Absolutely top of the class. I'm not a dedicated Shmup player, but as a true lover of games like Zero Gunner, Ikaruga etc. this game picksAbsolutely top of the class. I'm not a dedicated Shmup player, but as a true lover of games like Zero Gunner, Ikaruga etc. this game picks up where those leave off. . .It innovates, it challenges and has awesome replayability. Hands down the prettiest Shmup I've ever played. The music is great, the controls are tight (I played it with a 360 controller) . . .and the first shooter in memory to include a story, and a good one at that!… Expand

   • 7 of 8 users found this helpful
2. GreenSkullRider

   May 26, 2017

   9

   Este es un shooter de scroll lateral muy bien hecho, largo, divertido, difícil, bello, con una historia algo confusa pero llena de personajesEste es un shooter de scroll lateral muy bien hecho, largo, divertido, difícil, bello, con una historia algo confusa pero llena de personajes carismáticos y jefazos. hoy en día en rebaja en steam, un videojuego imperdible, un digno exponente de un genero hoy en dia perdido.… Expand

   • 0 of 0 users found this helpful
4. randylin26

   May 14, 2013

   8

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

   • 0 of 0 users found this helpful
5. SwordOfSodan

   Nov 12, 2012

   8

   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 theseSine 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

   • 3 of 3 users found this helpful
6. csabber

   Oct 15, 2013

   6

   Sine Mora is a rare game of it’s kind. In a generation overwhelmed by FPSes and RPGs it's very hard to make a good Shoot 'em Up which appealsSine Mora is a rare game of it’s kind. In a generation overwhelmed by FPSes and RPGs it's very hard to make a good Shoot 'em Up which appeals to both fans of the genre and one-time players. The developers tried to make a game that balances between casual and hardcore shmup game experience. How they managed it, is a matter of an other question.
   
   Yes, you can pick up Sine Mora and play it without having played any shmups ever before. And yes, you can have fun with it if you are a veteran player. Sadly, you can side in either of the two groups, the fun will start to fade away quite quickly. The game tries to please both sides at the same time which, in some cases is impossible. Sometimes it tries to cut corners with inconsistent bullet pattern and difficult hit detection to please the casual fan base, in other times it gets so difficult that a one-time player will probably quit after a couple of fails. It's a balance often Sine Mora just can't get right.
   
   The game introduces an interesting time based mechanism. You and your planes don't have any health; instead you get a time meter constantly counting down. Once it hits zero, you are dead. To keep the meter running you have to shoot down enemy planes and vehicles which will add time to the counter. It's really interesting and the devs should be praised for coming up with this unique approach which actually works really well.
   
   The story is something that bugs me. Sine Mora introduces a world, background story, multiple timelines and several characters that would be too much even for a game with a dozen-hour length of game play. But no, our game’s campaign lasts around 2 to 3 hours which is frankly, disappointing. You will never get the idea of the story as it's overly complicated for a game of this magnitude. To make the matter worse, different characters are introduced every 20 minutes and that's where you lose any interest of understanding the underlying story. Just give me the next Boss and let's get on with it! And the game does. There are huge boss battles in every 15 minutes, which on normal are pieces of cakes, but on harder difficulty give players a hell lot of trouble.
   
   If there's one thing in which the game excels it's the graphics department. It looks absolutely astonishingly beautiful, for its genre it is over the top. The environment is colorful, detailed and alive. Levels are varied and vivid, and you have to really look hard for graphic letdowns in the game. Audio-wise the game keeps up the pace with an excellently composed soundtrack that is worth listening to. The sound effects sometimes feel weird and weak, but you can get used to it. The voice over is where the game really lets us down. For one thing, there's no English voice track. For whatever reason the devs decided to include only the original, Hungarian voice over. For those who can't speak the language, you won't miss a thing. Voice actors feel unmotivated and rather reading than acting their scripts. Also, it is littered with Hungarian trash language that sometimes feel uncomfortably awkward.
   
   After breezing through the short and puzzled campaign for a casual gamer there's sadly not much to do further. All the other game modes where you can change your planes and pilots are for veteran and experienced shmup players. If you are a one time player you can give it a shot, but be prepared to fail many times. Some of the bosses and levels can get so difficult that it will frustrate even the most talented players. And this isn't because of the lack of skills from the player, but rather the aforementioned flaws: inconsistent bullet patterns and odd hit detection.
   
   Sine Mora tries so hard to please everyone that it fails to please many. Every gamer hard-core shmup player or casual can have a shot at this beautifully confusing piece, but after a couple of hours we move on with ambiguous feelings.
   
   Rating: 61/100; Replay Value: 2/5; To Beat: 2.5 hours (campaign); Played on: normal.… Expand

   • 0 of 0 users found this helpful
7. cubadoo1

   Nov 21, 2012

   6

   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 shortHaving 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

   • 3 of 5 users found this helpful
8. SX_Predator

   Sep 30, 2013

   0

   This game was so boring, repetitive and tedious. Mouse sensitivity is completely screwed up so you end up mashing the arrow keys and holdingThis game was so boring, repetitive and tedious. Mouse sensitivity is completely screwed up so you end up mashing the arrow keys and holding down 'S' the whole time. The story was hard to follow, especially with the seemingly stretched out cutscenes that are in an odd language that I'm sure hardly anyone understands. The only plus of it was the amazing graphics.… Expand

   • 1 of 3 users found this helpful

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