Sine Mora(Suda 51 shmup)

[cj iwakura]

What little the trailer shows looks great. Cautious optimism.

Uh, what's euroshmuping mean? Xyanide? That's the only Euroshmup I've played.

I enjoyed it, but it was certainly chaotic. It felt like some parts are just impossible to avoid getting hit during.

[kid aphex]

Uh, what's euroshmuping mean? Xyanide? That's the only Euroshmup I've played.

Soldner X is a good modern example.

[Weak Boson]

Encouraging words, Reiker. I say by all means court the causal market. I'd very much like to see more people get into shmups and the arcade vs. story set up seems like a way to do that without many compromises. Can't wait to hear more about this.

[Sumez]

Apparently Sine Mora was showcased at Gamescom, surely gameplay videos should pop up soon?

[hipgnosis]

Here you go:

http://www.youtube.com/user/Gamer365On# ... lcgCDEtRwA

Looks quite good actually!

[Ghegs]

Looks nice graphically, but the stages seem a bit barren of enemies and the bosses barely even fight back. Maybe that was just the demo's fault. It was cool how the bosses have lots of individually destroyable turrets and other parts.

Wondering about the mechanics...there's a multiplier, a timer counting down, and it seemed the player can go into bullet time mode where the enemy bullets are slowed down.

[THE]

I like the GFX a lot. Reiker can you sell the assets to us? I would love to make a Progear with it for the Arcade.
Gameplay seems to be casual, that's ideal for XBLA/PSN.
Please condense the arcade mode to 50% or put 3 times of enemies in there

[Zeron]

Yeah the arcade mode needs to be pumping out more of everything.

[BPzeBanshee]

Looks nice graphically, but the stages seem a bit barren of enemies and the bosses barely even fight back. Maybe that was just the demo's fault. It was cool how the bosses have lots of individually destroyable turrets and other parts.

Wondering about the mechanics...there's a multiplier, a timer counting down, and it seemed the player can go into bullet time mode where the enemy bullets are slowed down.

I'm with you on this one Ghegs. Reminds me a hell of a lot of Progear too.

I'm a little worried about the barrenness though, but also the screen aspect as it will give me black bars on my TV if it's forced widescreen aspect, though I suppose that's them "accomodating to the wider audience" too. Having an Arcade mode that has a bit more than that going at once would be great, though maybe just a simple difficulty setting would do.

[stryc9]

Why don't they just stick inertia in now and be done with it + where are all the enemies

[denpanosekai]

- Graphics look fantastic so far
- Soundtrack sounds like shit so far (forever spoiled by Soldner-X 2)
- Is there even music playing during the first boss?
- Great boss design, I'm assuming that's Suda51's input
- Not digging blue bullets on a blue background
- pickups shouldn't be reusing same exact colour palette as bullets!!!
- I'm cool with orientation shift once in a while. hope it's neither once or twice, nor too frequent.
- no 2P mode NO BUY

[Zeron]

.
- no 2P mode NO BUY

What the fuck?

[sjoecool1991]

no 2P mode NO BUY

If you really think that, I think you are playing the wrong genre.

[xris]

The demo video looked pretty good. It does look like the difficulty was dropped for ease of play for the public demo.
Lol, planes underwater, but it gave some change up for dodging scenery.
The train at the end was really cool, and had some great patterns going.
Great music. An option to turn off the dialog box would be good.
Not really what I had expected considering it has Suda 51 attached to it, but looks promising.

[dan76]

It looks promising. I'd agree with what others have said in the it needs more bullets, maybe a bit more speed as well. It's very slow and as I was watching I thought it would be a bit of a chore having to play through that first level more than... once. Got to up the difficulty.

Like most 2D polygon shooters it seems to have that floaty playing under water feel. I guess it's the smoothness. I really like the light on the front of the ship though - It would be cool to have a level in complete darkness where you have to light your way ahead.

[denpanosekai]

no 2P mode NO BUY

If you really think that, I think you are playing the wrong genre.

Oh really? So Cave and other fine STG makers from the past 20 years have been putting in 2P mode for no reason whatsoever??
I play for score when I'm alone; survival with friends, family, girlfriend. What's wrong with that?
I just don't want them to be lazy and not include 2P just because it's a downloadable game, is all.

[Udderdude]

I really hope the developer guy is still here reading this, because this is when he's going to have to start taking feedback seriously if he doesn't want a face full of SHMUPS RAGE when this thing is released and still has a ton of obvious problems.

Obviously, the blue bullets on blue sky have to go. That's just silly.
The explosions on the boats are huge and obscure the enemy bullets completely. Bullets should be on top of everything (including the player ship!)
The screen constantly shaking any time anything dies is a huge pet peeve of mine. It really shouldn't happen unless it's a REALLY big enemy that dies.
Huge sections of dead time when nothing is happening, there's nothing to shoot and enemy bullets are already long gone.
Enemies in general seem to have way too little health.
Enemy bullets seemed a bit too slow.
As was mentioned, pickups shouldn't be reusing same color as the bullets.
The highlight was definitely the level 1 boss. Very cool.
The entire starting part of level 2 seemed extremely boring. All you get is a few mines dropping on you. In fact everything in stage 2 seemed easier than stage 1.
The giant train was cool. Seems it's possible to wipe out entire phases of it with that charged shot, though. It shouldn't do that much damage.
Didn't see any evidence of any scoring system. Hope something is added.
Consider adding difficulty modes where the harder modes have enemies that release bullets when they die.

[Deca]

but also the screen aspect as it will give me black bars on my TV if it's forced widescreen aspect, though I suppose that's them "accomodating to the wider audience"

get it

No but seriously can this game PLEASE have a 4:3 mode or is there just no way

[defected78]

I cant see anything of Battle Garegga in that. Was hoping for the industrial hell vision. Thats so bright it looks like Wii sports resort.

[MauJustice]

I actually think it's looking really good. Can't wait.

[Kiken]

So there's a kakusei mode (the blue meter in the upper-right) and time equals your health (much like Sanvein); take a hit and you lose about 10 seconds off the timer.

Not only does the game need stronger enemies and greater enemy volume... but also the player ship needs a lot more firepower. There's just way too much empty space and meandering at the moment. Hopefully, this is just the "story mode" (which we were told would be more cinematic and on the easy side) and the arcade mode will be much more aggressive.

[kid aphex]

While things like the graphics and tone of dialog are great, there's one huge problem that I'm, unfortunately, unable to specify...
Typically I'm thrilled to see/read about ANY new shmup, and most I accept with open arms and mind, but I almost couldn't even be bothered to watch all 10 minutes of the demoplay.
It just felt tedious.
I don't mean to be coming down on the developer hard, because I can't even really identify a single aspect of the game that's 'bad' enough to ruin the whole.
Instead, I feel strongly it's more of a "perfect storm" situation, wherein lots of tiny problems that could easily be fixed/adjusted are really stunting the quality of this game.


1. Even though the music sounds beautiful, it seems only to enhance the perception of the game's pace as plodding. I'm not suggesting you rewrite the score...the music only contributes to the feeling of tedium, it's not solely responsible for it. Fix other problems (below), and the music won't seem as dragging.
2. The 1P's gunfire looks weak---I kept waiting for it to power up and become something that was visually exciting.
3. Not enough enemy gunfire---no interesting patterning of the enemy gunfire. Like the 1P's gunfire, I kept waiting for the enemies shots to develop into something more dynamic. If your shmup's movement/advancement is this slow, you really need some interesting bullet patterns to entertain the mind of the player, otherwise we're going to fall asleep.
4. Very slow scrolling and slow dynamic camera movement. I actually really enjoy the cinematic moments of what I'm assuming is the story mode---and I don't think it'd be IMPOSSIBLE to include them in the arcade mode if they were just adjusted a bit. It seems like you want the dialog to take place solely during these cutscenes, but I think it would help with the pacing of the game if you not only sped up the movement of the camera, but allowed the dialog to extend into the actual gameplay. Also...would it hurt to make the camera's movement during these cutscenes even more dynamic?? You've got this great opportunity to speed around the environment from all sorts of angles, use it!

The TLDR version?
There simply isn't enough going on to challenge the BRAINS/EYES/HANDS of a veteran shmupper. I understand you want to appeal to a mainstream audience, but in my opinion, it's this sort of pandering to their skill-less-ness that makes it so easy for modern reviewers to disregard shmups as boring.

Many of the other problems have already been brought up, and their consistency should legitimize them.
They may seem small, but they're what's definitely keeping the game from being recognized by the genre's fanbase as noteworthy.
If you care about making a great SHMUP, then you should take them to heart.

[Reiker]

Thank you very much for your feedback!

When the show is over, I'll try to address every concern of yours - either by answering or by directly modifying the game.
Also, you need footage from the Arcade Mode - this is Story Mode - Easy Difficulty.

[bcass]

Looks absolutely gorgeous. Note to Cave - this is how you do 3D in a shmup.

[Udderdude]

Thank you very much for your feedback!

When the show is over, I'll try to address every concern of yours - either by answering or by directly modifying the game.
Also, you need footage from the Arcade Mode - this is Story Mode - Easy Difficulty.

It's good to know this is simply an easy mode. Getting us some footage of the game on arcade skill would be nice. Especially if someone is demonstrating the scoring system properly.

[Sumez]

I don't get why people are so crazy about that 4:3 mode.

Come on, most shoot'em ups out there are still 4:3 or 3:4, and ALWAYS have borders on a widescreen TV, and people never complain about that! Widescreen TVs are the standard now, it's what most people have, and most people will be playing the game on, so by all means focus on 16:9 as the standard gameplay mode!!
Of course, including a 4:3 "mode" for the people who want to play this on their 1995 CRT or arcade cabinet or whatever is a nice treat, but compared to everything else I'd say it's low priority if I were the one making the game, as balancing the scoring and challenge between two different ratios can be a bit of a headache if you're taking this stuff as seriously as I expect most people in here do.

[Sumez]

It's good to know this is simply an easy mode. Getting us some footage of the game on arcade skill would be nice. Especially if someone is demonstrating the scoring system properly.

Of course, they should be careful not to scare potential buyers away with a crazy hard mode as one of the first released gameplay videos, I think it's fair to keep their pace.

[Special World]

The shooting segment in Shadows of the Damned was one of the worst things I've ever played. It almost destroyed all my enthusiasm for a game I was loving til then. Consider me unexcited.

[iconoclast]

The shooting segment in Shadows of the Damned was one of the worst things I've ever played. It almost destroyed all my enthusiasm for a game I was loving til then. Consider me unexcited.

The shooter segments were incredibly awful in SotD, but those were done by Grasshopper while Sine Mora is from Digital Reality. I wouldn't be worried about this game because of that.

[StarCreator]

Lol, planes underwater, but it gave some change up for dodging scenery.

If Cave can do it in Akai Katana, why can't these guys?