Sine Mora is a stylish reminder of Side Scrolling Shooter greatness

If you were a gamer back in day, you’ll remember just how popular side scrolling shooters were. Games such as Sol Feace, R-Type and of course Radiant Silver Gun were all great examples of the usually maddeningly hard, highly addictive and fun arcade genre.

Recently there haven’t been that many of these types of games, apart from the odd exception here or there. However, sine Mora is certainly a great example one one of the better titles in the genre.

The Graphics of Sine Mora

Although for the most part, you are firmly routed to the 2d, the camera spins around happily in the 3d (particularly during cutscenes) at times, and the enemies move in and out of the screen. On the whole, the graphics are vibrant, colorful and the sprites are well animated and everything just moves how you would expect it to. You transition into the water seamlessly, where you can see air bubbles rising up, and it does for the most part feel like you are under water. Interestingly though, in terms of controls (and despite the fact that you are, for all intents and purposes only in a air-plane) it doesn’t change at all being under water. There is no sense of momentum from being under the waves. However, it does look and feel cool.

The gameplay

Gameplay depends on how far you are into the game, and what route / difficulty you decide upon. The harder the game, the wider the enemies bullet / missile patterns fire, the faster they move, and simply there are more things to shoot. Also, the time limit becomes tighter and tighter. On a game like Radiant Silver Gun, progress was difficult – the game was bloody hard. In Sine Mora, this isn’t so much the case – you’ll be finding yourself stuck on a section a lot less if you opt for an easier setting. However you still feel like you’re being challenged.

As you would expect of such a title, there are power ups everywhere, which boost the time you’ve got left, your primary weapon damage, health, and also recharge your sub weapons and more. There are also numerous planes (which interestingly enough have different hit boxes)  and of course, different pilots. The overall game feels good to play, and for the price, there is a plethora of stuff to unlock.

Sound:

Sine Mora’s sound is solid for the most part, I’m sure a few might be put off with the fact it’s in Japanese and not English (there are subtitles which are in English however), but the music and weapon affects are all solid. Music in this type of genre is important, and thankfully they managed to nail it fairly well.

Closing Thoughts:

Despite somewhat tricky controls on keyboard and mouse (sine Mora is certainly a gamepad is better title), the game feels solid and is important. For those of us wishing a typically arcadey experience, you could do far far worse, and in my opinion, this game deserves to sell very well indeed.