Review: Sine Mora

I remember the first space ship game to which I devoted good hours playing was ‘Nemesis’, a title that Konami gave us in the format of an MSX cartridge many years ago. Then came its sequels, and little by little, with them and other titles, I developed a taste for the so-called shooter. ’Sine Mora’ is the latest shoot’em up that I have thrown down the gauntlet and I can firmly say that it is possible to improve this much needed genre of games.

Sine Mora: a shoot’em up with Dieselpunk graphics

Digital Reality and Grasshopper Manufacture have decided to go all out for a title that belongs to a genre filled with retried titles who do nothing but copying each other. With some exceptions, such as ‘Ikaruga’ at the time, the mechanical calcarse often less than gracious. Lucky for us we note that Goichi Suda (producer of ‘Sine Mora’), Theodore Reiker (game director) and other members involved in the development of ‘Sine Mora’ wanted to create a solid game and a series of most welcome developments with respect to the vast majority of shoot’em ups.

I think sound is the best adjective to define ‘Sine Mora’. From that aspect-style graphic Dieselpunk every note created by Akira Yamaoka (artist known for his excellent work on the series ‘Silent Hill’), the feel of the game is made for stability and robustness, that all is measured a thousand times so that nothing goes wrong, so that the choreography is perfect and all the while the gameplay is good.

Not in the best of our dreams could we have imagined landscapes as we fly on board the various ships that the game puts at our disposal, each piloted by a different character with his own voice, its own history and their own reason to join this mission, you must rescue a kidnapped girl whose existence is of great importance and save the world from its destruction. The argument is not the most original in the world, you see, but it is true that it has much more depth than most games of this type and little by little we will discover through certain dialogue that are shown before each mission and the conversations that keep the riders together.

Scenarios are not only deep, beautiful and well designed: the enemies, especially bosses, are gems of design. They are usually large mechanical monsters with several weaknesses that we destroy. In fact, the size of some of them is such that we bring them down by sections (our ship will fly to the new zones).

A hell of bullets and brutal machines

‘Sine Mora’ is very nice, yes, but also is one that will completely fill the screen with bullets of pastel colors. That is: Bullet Hell is a full-blown. And the giant enemies, are beyond simply to be hidden at the end of each level, as they are very numerous. In fact I enjoyed the special role and I would actually say that everything revolves around them. When one of these brutes mechanics makes an appearance, the game pauses momentarily. A few seconds suffice us to know their name and look at its impressive appearance before it starts to spit bullets mercilessly.

Another major difference with other games of this type is the way in which ‘Sine Mora’ is the way it treats the health of the ships. No shields or health meter, just a countdown. If it reaches zero the ship will explode upon receiving an impact and how to avoid this is simply to slaughter enemies. Demolishing buildings and getting extra time during which we can absorb the damage from unexploded bullets to pieces.

Logically ‘Sine Mora’, like all good shoot’em up, provides us with several improvements to our weapons and a totally devastating secondary weapon (each ship with its own special attack). The enemies drop a series of colored balls with dots and improvements. And watch out because the bullet that does not destroy us we will snatch for weapons improvements, although we will have the opportunity to recover right away if we are fast at catching these balls again.

In short, ‘Sine Mora’ is a great option for those of you looking for a shoot’em up that is powerful visually, with an storyline that is something deeper than usual in the genre, and with a varied and entertaining gameplay. Its various ways allows us to secure a few extra hours beyond the actual story mode.