Sine Mora(Suda 51 shmup)

[Pharos]

Eurogamer review

[TrevHead (TVR)]

And he still gives it a 9.5 out of 10.

Imo the score is there for mainstream idiots who would ignore the game if it got a 8 and arnt bothered about the same gameplay elements that we are. For them a .5 deduction is about right imo.

Looking forward to playing this, unfortunatly it'll have to wait a week.

[Special World]

Now there is a review outlet I can trust.

[Ed Oscuro]

Now there is a review outlet I can trust.

Yes, it's good to know you can trust them not to know what they're talking about, after they reveal it with this comment:

The shark of the gaming bestiary, the scrolling shmup reached an evolutionary peak very early on and has had little incentive to mutate to adapt to the new gaming climate in the years since. As far as bullet-hell blasters go, what worked in 1987 still works just fine in 2012, thank you very much.

You heard it here first: Bullet hell games were standard in 1987 (well, maybe he's played some Dangar recently) and shooters haven't evolved from that peak.

One thing that has changed is the sort of comments they give - I could expect exactly the same writing from a domestic American gaming rag. No fond memories of the author's days as a Euroshmuppy Europuppy, instead we get the mandatory wall of useless text about how the story stacks up (do game reviewers EVER learn?) and then the slide into even more snarky facts, such as the game not being the natural, merely cosmetic progression of games 25 years ago, but now 30 years ago!

The following two paragraphs are simply hideous:

It's all about the multipliers of course. Keep that fire button pressed down, keep racking up kills, and your score will blossom. Take a hit, or use your secondary attack, and the multiplier is reset. It's a simple yet ruthless bit of design, giving more casual players the leeway to at least see the whole game in a few play-throughs, while taunting the hardcore with the knowledge that any reliance on the game's helping hands will be noted and punished - not with lost lives but deflated scores.

If that seems like a lot of time to spend explaining the mechanics, you have to remember that for a shoot-'em-up, the gameplay is the mechanics and vice versa. The genius of Sine Mora is that it not only understands this, but openly acknowledges that its most dedicated players understand this as well.

How far can you throw a European? I'm guessing it's not much farther than you can throw an American.

[Enemy]

anyone know at what time they update on xbox live to show new releases, or has this missed the published release date?

[bcass]

Usually around 10am to 12pm (GMT).

[kid aphex]

Usually at 2am (or 09 GMT) me; I've waited up for several new releases
Here's hoping

[BPzeBanshee]

When I stayed up for Guwange XBLA it came up on 8:30 PM my time (+9:30 GMT). Can't say if this will be different or not though.

The trailer does certainly look very good, demonstrating gameplay pretty well. The review and the cutscenes on the other hand, look like a very silly oversight, but I guess we'll find out real soon whether it plays like such or if it's a non-issue.

[Iron Peach]

I have to work all day

[kid aphex]

http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/Produ ... 0258411234

Link is up and working

[Special World]

Ed Oscuro: Whether or not they got everything straight, Eurogamer likes to review Cave games and has given them solid scores so far. I also feel I can trust them as I've been going to the site for a long time now and find I agree with them a lot more than Game Informer / IGN/ Gamespot/ etc. Their reviewers are actually pretty good and often make really solid points about the games they're reviewing.

[Enemy]

seems up now on UK XBLA, downloading demo as I type.

[MrChiggins]

I played it for 10 minutes and I already have two major gripes:

*There are 3 pre-set button configurations.
SPOILER ALERT: Primary fire is mapped to A in all 3 of them.
Some of us like playing with arcade sticks.
The only configuration that's kind of comfortable is...
A = Primary Fire
B = Secondary Fire
X = Time Capsule

*It's a widescreen game with no option to turn widescreen off.


Other than that it seems pretty fun.


EDIT: I complained about the control settings on their facebook wall. Everybody who feels the same should do the same.

[E. Randy Dupre]

If that seems like a lot of time to spend explaining the mechanics, you have to remember that for a shoot-'em-up, the gameplay is the mechanics and vice versa.

Because mechanics and gameplay are two completely different things in every other genre!

[Special World]

Unmappable controls are so retarded :\

[Enemy]

WTF with these borders, am i missing an option here ?? why would they think that anyone would want it bordered to f**k on a 16:9 tv.

[yosai]

*There are 3 pre-set button configurations.
SPOILER ALERT: Primary fire is mapped to A in all 3 of them.
Some of us like playing with arcade sticks.

How the hell did that get overlooked? Idiots.

[ZenErik]

This game has good reviews in the west. That can't be a good sign.

[Klatrymadon]

The ship feels a bit too loose and quick to do any precise tap-dodging with, to me. I end up using slo-mo not because anything's particularly hard, but because it's the only way to move cleanly through bullet patterns. I dunno, maybe I'll get used to it.

The borders are definitely a bummer, aye. My widescreen monitor's small enough as it is.

[Weak Boson]

I was a bit disappointed by the lack of control mapping options but as it happens type B is perfect for my stick so I was able to get on with the game. I tried story mode first. Pretty cool from what I've seen, would have to play more to really make a judgement but I'm intrigued. Playing on challenging it's been fairly easy going, though I did pick the novice route in the first mission. I have died of course but so far even with sloppy playing it's not hard to make progress. The same can't be said of arcade mode, though. I played a few credits on hard (which is the easier of two options) and never made it past the first boss. The stage itself was fairly easy to survive but I was nowhere near destroying everything. Looking forward to playing more.

[Zaarock]

Played through story mode on the "challenging" difficulty.. very disappointed tbh. The visuals and music are great, but the stage design and gameplay system has lots of issues;

Level design:
- Bad pacing at many parts (spelunking in caves and tunnels in a shmup, wow cool) & repetition of same boring popcorn enemy waves to stretch levels out.
- Boss fights with miniscule hitboxes (say, only the middle bullet of all your shots can hit the only remaining weakpoint of one boss and barely damage)
- Enemies spawning from behind you sometimes without warning, and boss lasers and some attacks being basically undodgeable unless you know exactly how it works (as in, cheap attacks) most stupid part like this I can think of is the wrecking ball boss sequence.
- Imbalance between levels in how many powerups are dropped, stages with few item drops are perhaps too much easier/harder depending on if you have lost powerups before them or not.
- Sloppy bullet patterns: I just get the impression the devs are trying to make bullet hell style patterns for the first time, which can understandably not be good.. but it's still not good. Some patterns are completely pointless and basically miss the player completely while others are very hard for the player to visualize. The bullet patterns are also very inconsistent throughout they game, they don't stick to a similar pace or some kind of rules in terms of speed or how a projectile sprite is expected to work etc.
- Hard to see projectiles: missiles and minimised size normal bullets(why even use these) are way too hard to see sometimes.

System:
- Too many powerup levels: you're generally either far too weak or too powerful because you usually lose all your power at once and it'll take ages to restock (some stages have basically no drops too) or you'll have a very easy time with maximum powerups which makes it look like the levels weren't designed with that damage output in mind.
- Some of the subweapons are really bad (cluster bomb, bomb), while others are extremely powerful in the right situations.. I'm assuming this is a balancing issue.


I'm ok with the inconsistent pacing at parts for the purposes of the story mode, which is the main mode of the game. But it's just bad for anyone who wants to replay the levels. Music was good throughout the whole game and worked pretty well with the pacing. The hungarian voice acting for story mode is pretty good I guess (afaik they hired some well know VAs) I found the visuals in the last few levels to be impressive and the final boss was decent.

[Udderdude]

Bad pacing at many parts (spelunking in caves and tunnels in a shmup, wow cool) & repetition of same boring popcorn enemy waves to stretch levels out.

This doesn't surprise me at all, after the dev here admitted the game has a 50+ minute play time. There's no way that was not going to be padded.

[DJ Incompetent]

Thanks Zaarock. 'Was waiting for a review from the right hands.

[Illyrian]

http://www.destructoid.com/review-sine- ... 4060.phtml

Awesome, can't wait to try it this evening!

[Klatrymadon]

I'm having fun, but I can vouch for everything Zaarock said, sadly. Part of me knew all of this was in store as soon as I fired my first shot and the popcorn enemy didn't die.

Just as a heads-up, don't ignore the in-game chatter in Story Mode. There are times when they'll be talking about how to approach the next section, as I discovered after flying into the same booby trap several times in the foundry stage.

[DrTrouserPlank]

Not a big fan of the trial. It's firmly in euroshmup territory. The visuals are great and it'll sell well to the mainstream who aren't put off by the 1200 point price tag, but as a pure shmups experience it lacks the arcade feel and is driven more by it being an "experience" rather than the experience being the gameplay itself.

[Zaarock]

Thanks Zaarock. 'Was waiting for a review from the right hands.

Something positive to add though: that was just my experience from story mode.. The patterns are a bit different(better I'd say) on arcade and they seem to have cut some of the filler areas of story mode, so it's a more fun. Also, the reflector is pretty much all you should use on it heh. reflector + seeker missiles is a pretty fun setup (missiles are great at killing something to get some extra time)

edit: reflector also blocks lasers from bosses so that's a lot of the cheapness gone

[DJ Incompetent]

Thank you.

Anything on the scoring side I should know? I have a tournament I wish to win.

[AntiFritz]

I wouldn't say its all bad but the movement physics just seem off to me. Also the hit-box seemed slightly too big for some of the boss battles patterns. Don't particularly like the whole time = health mechanic either.

[Deca]

I will not even consider purchasing this game until it's patched to have mappable controls and I can play it on my stick, thanks for the heads up.