User Score

Mixed or average reviews- based on 53 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 37 out of 53
  2. Negative: 7 out of 53

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  1. Dec 12, 2012
  2. Nov 21, 2012
  3. Nov 10, 2012
    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 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 Collapse
  4. Nov 12, 2012
    Just bypass the misguided story elements if you can.
  5. Jul 2, 2013
    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.
  6. Sep 30, 2013
    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.
  7. Jul 2, 2013
    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.
  8. Nov 23, 2012
    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 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
  9. Oct 28, 2013
    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.
  10. Coq
    Feb 9, 2014
    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)
  11. May 14, 2013

  12. Oct 15, 2013
    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.
  13. Mar 2, 2014
    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.
  14. Nov 10, 2012

Generally favorable reviews - based on 5 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 4 out of 5
  2. Negative: 0 out of 5
  1. 78
  2. 80
  3. Dec 30, 2012