Sine Mora Review
Publisher: Microsoft Games
Developer: Digital Reality, Grasshopper Manufacture
Format: XBLA
Release Date: Out Now
This game deserves praise. It is has incredible graphics, almost revolutionary for the genre of side-scrolling shoot-em-ups and the premise is simple yet addictive. Taking away the concept of health bars or numbers of ships/lives, in Sine Mora, all we care about is time.
Taking a hit from any stray bullet will result in some extra time knocked off the countdown until the end of the level while shooting down enemies will give you a time boost. It’s an interesting deviation from the norm for this genre as no longer does a hit result in a level restart or one of your fleet of lives being removed. It does change how we view a level in retrospect as when a player can see they have 3 ships and they are down to their last one, they are far less likely to take risks that you would take when you see you still have a minute of time left on the clock. This doesn’t mean taking a shot to your ship doesn’t come with consequences, any upgrades to your ship’s guns will be knocked off the ship if hit, but you’ll have a few seconds where you can try to catch them again but doing so in a reckless nature is a recipe for receiving a serious dent in your time remaining and in the long run may not be worth it at all. It’s a fantastic twist on the genre and one that works surprisingly well on fans and beginners of the shump faith.
The graphics are where this game shines, Sine Mora is simply gorgeous with glorious backdrops, animations and effects. The art style combines a cartoon-y level of scale with stunning detail. Frequently I ended up flying straight into walls while gaping at the landscape I was flying past, something which I hope everyone does at least once as it really is a shame to concentrate simply on the ships and bullets.
Which brings me nicely to my next point, Sine Mora is hard. I’ll admit, I’m not the best when it comes to these bullet hell adventures but I didn’t think it’d take me as long as I did to beat the game, especially under review that it really only has 8 acts. The gameplay is addictive enough that you don’t realise just how much time you are investing in the game, and often I caught myself saying “Just once more” after every death. The fact that the time is what makes or breaks the level means that you become adept quite quickly at how much time you can afford to lose in a level before it becomes impossible to pass. It really is the weapon add-ons that decide whether or not you will progress past the level as they range from lasers and homing missiles to extra planes fighting with you. And it also nicely ties in the importance of time with the idea of time altering abilities, including the ability to speed yourself up, effectively making everything else slow motion and turning back time, for when you make those little hiccups
The story behind Sine Mora is far more obscure than I’m used to with these kind of games. There is a great level of detail and attention paid to this, from the fact that the narration is in an indecipherable language and the themes being discussed are quite dark, starting with a pilot out for revenge for the murder of his son. It certainly makes a change from the usual “Aliens have invaded and we have one plane left, go forth and conquer”.
With this generation of super powered consoles, some genres were in danger of being left behind as we focused on bigger and more adventurous games, but Sine Mora brings us right back to our roots with an excellent example of the gameplay we grew up with, with graphics that do it justice. A fantastic game for anyone to have in their library.
Overall: 8.5/10
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