Sine Mora

 PC
User Score
7.3

Mixed or average reviews- based on 86 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 48 out of 86
  2. Mixed: 30 out of 86
  3. Negative: 8 out of 86

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  1. Valleymsx
    Nov 10, 2012
    8
    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 fourSine 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
  2. 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 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    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
  3. Certate0
    Nov 23, 2012
    8
    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 withLoving 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… Expand
  4. jcasetnl
    Jul 2, 2013
    5
    I'm not sure what people will make of this game. There's a lot of good but unfortunately a lot of annoying.

    The arcade mode only allows you to play on Hard and Insane, so if you want a "pick up and play" kind of experience, prepare to die a lot. To that end I started off in Story Mode, yet the story itself quickly became too cumbersome for me it isn't terribly interesting or    I'm not sure what people will make of this game. There's a lot of good but unfortunately a lot of annoying.

    The arcade mode only allows you to play on Hard and Insane, so if you want a "pick up and play" kind of experience, prepare to die a lot.

    To that end I started off in Story Mode, yet the story itself quickly became too cumbersome for me it isn't terribly interesting or well-integrated into the gameplay (basically back and forth dialog and reading paragraphs on the screen not cut-scenes), but it brings the action (why we play this type of game) to a dead stop. I love a good story and play RPGs and Adventure games all the time, but the role of the narrative should have been to get me pumped for the next stage and it didn't do it. Bottom line: learn that Fast Forward key and prepare to use it, my friends.

    The next glaring problem with this game is you can't change the resolution. A lot of games in this genre are known to be lacking in this area, resulting in screen stretching and the like. Sine Mora has found a new way to suck, however, by fixing the resolution at 1080p and then scaling the output based on whatever resolution you're in. Not a problem if you're playing on your 1080p television, but if, like me, you're on a 20" 1680x1050, you get to see huge, wonderful black bars above and below the screen (think widescreen movies on old 4:3 televisions). So Sine Mora's tiny sprites are made even tinier. Seriously nearly half the screen is black bars.

    Other people have covered the games features so I'll skip that except to mention the game has what is basically "bullet time". You can slow down time and weave through showers of bullets. It makes the game more accessible but at the same time, I don't play these games "to go slow". Max Payne's bullet time is not just to slow things down, it's so you can fly into a gun kata ballet of death, so while time slowed down, the action never really did.

    On a pure gameplay level this one is just average. Action games should, at their heart and stripped of all their various gimmicks, just be damn fun to play, and this one is just so-so. The levels are so broken up by dialog and awkward pacing you never sink into that zen of you and the game.    … Expand
  5. 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 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 inAbsolutely 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
  6. 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 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 theHaving 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
  7. 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 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.
  8. Sherak
    Jul 2, 2013
    8
    A solid shooter with awesome graphics and great gameplay, not sure on some of the critic reviews mentioning the length of the game as modern bullet hell style games have never been long nor should they be in my opinion.
    If you like a good shmup you'll like this.
  9. GolovA
    Nov 4, 2015
    6
    I am torn between two extremes here. On the one hand i want to like the game very much. On the other - toss it out the window.

    The graphics are (i won't avoid this word) pretty much stunning for such a small-scale and type of genre game. The entire world is modeled in 3D. That is pretty innovative for a side-scroller. The Boss fights look awesome! Not only the bosses are    I am torn between two extremes here. On the one hand i want to like the game very much. On the other - toss it out the window.

    The graphics are (i won't avoid this word) pretty much stunning for such a small-scale and type of genre game. The entire world is modeled in 3D. That is pretty innovative for a side-scroller. The Boss fights look awesome! Not only the bosses are imaginative, but you get to see them from all sides - and in all of the evil glory! The main story itself is also good - it is not a childish naive template (which i would imagine for such a colorful game with characters from some fantasy world), but a pretty sad, cynic, and dark plot. The gameplay is also pretty fun, even though in single player campaign you do not get to choose your flyer.

    The problem comes in progression design, and here how it basically looks - you fly and fight for about 3 minutes, fight a boss, fly for another 2 minutes, fight another boss, fly another 2-3 minutes, fight another boss - Next Chapter. The pace is just all wrong, and all the chapters can be finished in 2-3 hours tops.

    Another major problem is the disbalance in level pacing - so you shoot for 3 level, and then a level comes which basically consists of a maze, through which you need to navigate using a mouse (i like using keyboard, so the mouse wasn't my first choice). But even with a good mouse, and with sensitivity set pretty high - those mazes are obnoxiously tough and just take away from the entire experience of the otherwise joyful, yet very short and improperly paced game.

    Until the game is properly paced and slowed down, and those tedious maze levels deleted entirely - i would not recommend this one.    … Expand
  10. Tubey
    Oct 28, 2013
    5
    Instead of re-invigorating the shmup genre, Sine Mora offers a lacklustre (and downright irritatingly presented) storyline and repetitive, uninspired gameplay.

    The choice to use Hungarian voiceovers with subtitles was ridiculous as it completely kills any possible immersion with the title in one fell swoop. Enemy boss names are needlessly elaborate, none of which are memorable in any    Instead of re-invigorating the shmup genre, Sine Mora offers a lacklustre (and downright irritatingly presented) storyline and repetitive, uninspired gameplay.

    The choice to use Hungarian voiceovers with subtitles was ridiculous as it completely kills any possible immersion with the title in one fell swoop. Enemy boss names are needlessly elaborate, none of which are memorable in any way, shape or form as they progress through the usual rigmarole of phased battles.

    Graphically, the title impresses. This isn't a rush job of a title, so it pains me to be critical of it. I want to like this game as you can see the developer effort and passion, but too many things let it down too often; so much so that playing it feels like a chore. As a veteran of the SEGA and SNES classic titles akin to this, there's no similar level of enjoyment.

    And therein lies the issue. There's no innovation here, nothing new, nothing to breathe life into a genre that after this title may not just be dying; it may be dead.    … Expand
  11. Coq
    Feb 9, 2014
    7
    Very fun game, sadly terribly short. My experience was over in a mere 2 hours, but it was very enjoyable while it lasted. Worth it if you can get your hands on it for cheap (I got it in the Humble Bundle)
  12. 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 leader boards.

    Cons: Although good story, it is somewhat confusing, playing it once wont make you understand the whole thing in an instant.
  13. 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 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    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 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
  14. Sjalka
    Jun 28, 2014
    10
    stylish, extremely beautiful, fair and yet difficult as hell. The only downside might be the use of anthopomorphic animal characters - some like it, some hate it and most don t care if the game is good. because it does everything right - well, and also cause there is rather little competition in that genre on pc these days, a clear 10/10 from me.

    can't help but feel that this world and    stylish, extremely beautiful, fair and yet difficult as hell. The only downside might be the use of anthopomorphic animal characters - some like it, some hate it and most don t care if the game is good. because it does everything right - well, and also cause there is rather little competition in that genre on pc these days, a clear 10/10 from me.

    can't help but feel that this world and storyline - and especially the art style would have made a much better role playing game like fallout than a shoot em up, but that's just me hoping for a diesel punk open world RPG one day.    … Expand
  15. JakeDuffie
    Mar 2, 2014
    9
    This is a game I am often glad to have in my steam library. I only paid $3 for it, and it is still a steal at the $10 it costs when it isn't on special. I would heavily recommend the free demo, as it shows you exactly what you are in for if you choose to buy.

    The visuals are the best part of this game. The menu GUI is clean and pragmatic, and in the game GUI is very easy to get    This is a game I am often glad to have in my steam library. I only paid $3 for it, and it is still a steal at the $10 it costs when it isn't on special. I would heavily recommend the free demo, as it shows you exactly what you are in for if you choose to buy.

    The visuals are the best part of this game. The menu GUI is clean and pragmatic, and in the game GUI is very easy to get information from at a glance, while not being intrusive during the tense firefights. Every level is completely unique, and beautiful in their own way. The backgrounds are stellar and varied, the enemy design looks great, and the bosses... The bosses are huge, gorgeous killing machines, and every single one of them look like they could be a final encounter.

    The sound is also magnificent. The music is a low key, minimal style techno, that isn't memorable, but lets you fall into exactly the right kind of trance you need to be in, in a bullet hell like this one. All of the sound effects are exactly what they should be, and I have zero complaints in the audio department.

    The gameplay is what makes or breaks a game like this one, and Digital Reality made a ballsy move, replacing health with time. instead of taking damage, every time you are hit, you lose a few precious seconds, and a couple of your accumulated firepower powerups will be knocked out of you. (These can be picked back up, but can easily lead to being hit again, if you aren't very careful). Fortunately, the time mechanic works like a charm. It is balanced well. I never ran out of time while I felt like I was doing well, and ran out when I felt like I deserved it. The game gets very hard, very quickly, but this is smoothed out by the controls being incredibly tight, a well implemented time-slowing mechanic, and all of the levels being an absolute blast to play though.

    There is a story to this game, which is actually pretty good, with MUCH better translation than I would ever expect from a shmup, but it is all easily skipped over if all you are interested in is the gameplay. It actually causes a little bit of dissonance, having have a solid story in such a mechanics driven game, but this is more of an observation than a complaint.

    I have a single gripe with this game, but it is very minor. Every once and a while, there are levels that require navigation through caves or structures, and it can feel like a bit of a slog, when fast paced bullet hell is replaced with slow moving wall avoiding. If not for these levels, I would have given this game a ten. It serves to vary the experience a bit, but it just isn't worth it in a game that is already so rich in it's other facets.

    I recommend this game to any fans of the genre, but I would recommend this game even more to those who aren't. Like most great games, it is very easy to learn, and very hard to master. This game does an excellent job at teaching it's mechanics, and while this game may be difficult, it is very fair.    … Expand
  16. 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 personajes carismáticos y jefazos. hoy en día en rebaja en steam, un videojuego imperdible, un digno exponente de un genero hoy en dia perdido.

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
77

Generally favorable reviews - based on 5 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 4 out of 5
  2. Mixed: 1 out of 5
  3. Negative: 0 out of 5
  1. PC Master (Greece)
    Feb 6, 2013
    78
    Unless they want something more soothing and relaxing, Sine More will be mostly cherished by hardcore gamers that will lose their sleep trying to reach the top of the leader-boards. [January 2013]
  2. LEVEL (Czech Republic)
    Feb 4, 2013
    80
    Modern and catchy shoot'em up excels in almost every aspect. If they added a longer story line Sine Mora would be flawless. [Jan 2013]
  3. PC PowerPlay
    Dec 30, 2012
    70
    Beautiful to look at, challenging to master, over in the blink of an eye. [Jan 2013, p.84]
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