Sine Mora(Suda 51 shmup)

[bcass]

Not sure what to make of this yet. I do know that I don't like reading pages of text in a shmup. Those borders in 19:9 need patching and I can not believe that the devs read and blatantly ignored my request for skippable logo screens.

I'm not sure why stick players are complaining though, the game was clearly designed around analogue controls.

[rapoon]

Not sure what to make of this yet. I do know that I don't like reading pages of text in a shmup. Those borders in 19:9 need patching and I can not believe that the devs read and blatantly ignored my request for skippable logo screens.

I'm not sure why stick players are complaining though, the game was clearly designed around analogue controls.

unmappable buttons is inexcusable for a shmup.

[emphatic]

I'm not sure why stick players are complaining though, the game was clearly designed around analogue controls.

Because fight sticks are digital?

[Cuilan]

Downloading the trial right now.

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.

That makes it sound almost exactly like a more pretentious (and more expensive) WispLisp Array of List.

[Klatrymadon]

the game was clearly designed around analogue controls.

Ah, you're right. After switching to the standard 360 controller, the ship is much more manoeuvrable through tight patterns.

[MommysBestGames]

*There are 3 pre-set button configurations.
SPOILER ALERT: Primary fire is mapped to A in all 3 of them.

It's hard for me to imagine a reason a dev wouldn't support fully remappable controls. I hope they do support remaps in a patch.

That said, I'm downloading the demo now and am excited to give it a try.
I like hearing that Arcade removes some of the padding.

[hail good sir]

MPVs

[Zaarock]

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.

There is no inertia, so there shouldn't be any "movement physics". there are a couple of parts where you get pushed back in the water levels though.

Got up to last boss of stage 4 on arcade hard, but lost all my lives because I didn't know how to do the last phase properly.. practice mode helped afterwards though. Looks like GE-22 is the best plane by far, it has the most damaging shot with no powerups and the most spread.

[Bluce_Ree]

I agree with Zaarock's assessment. Would add that there are just too many boss battles and while the game is gorgeous at times, the designs are just so generic. After seeing them in Assault Heroes, Gatling Gears, 1942: Joint Strike and various other XBLA titles I can't believe they are still trotting out spider mech bosses and trains loaded up with turrets as if we've not seen them time and time again.

Visually things can get muddy too. Trying to spot weaknesses in the various bosses can be difficult when everything is in Gears of War greys and browns and the bullet patterns are ridiculous at times. Not in a cool Cave type way but rather the fact that at times (on the easiest levels) you'll be faced with weaving magic bullets, homing missiles, screen-wiping lasers and regular bullets all at once.

Technically, Sine Mora is great (especially for an XBLA game) but it's just not really any fun.

[Moniker]

Played the first two missions of story mode. Loving it so far. I don't have any screen or controller issues with my setup, so can't think of any complaints. One of the characters even used my shmup rage-quit curse verbatim: God fucking damn it! Fuck!

[DrTrouserPlank]

You can turn off the screen vibration in the options just in case anyone doesn't know and found it as annoying as I did.

[dpful]

Any "better/worse than" comparisons?

[Vally]

Just breached 212mil on Arcade Hard putting me at the top of the scoreboards.

I knew you guys wouldn't like it. It's definitely a very fun game to me though.

I thought the trial was very poor, simply because you either got the easy Story mode (which was still quite fun mind you), or you got the insane Arcade mode which just isn't fun with those wobbly suicide bullets.

Arcade mode on Hard however is my absolute sweet spot and I've already clocked quite a few hours on this. There are definitely some memorisation aspects to it (how to handle those green worms in the tunnel, the turrets in the caves, etc) but once you've got them nailed down it's no problem.

Game is definitely geared towards analog movement. Playing with the stick on a standard pad.

I seem to be the only guy in the top 10 at the moment using Roll Back and I'm puzzled as to why. Rank A isn't awfully hard to dodge, and being able to reverse your silly mistakes means you can get your S+ ranking still (98% shoot down rate, 0 continues, 0 penalties, most time spent in A rank, wheeeee!)

If you're easily bothered by lack of popcorn enemies then I wouldn't recommend it, there's not a single one in sight, but it's still a very addictive and very good game in my humble opinion.

[psoslayer]

Any "better/worse than" comparisons?

Söldner-X2 was better. Still the best Euroshmup. Anyway, this game is a mess. Its incredible slow but you can press R to make it even more slow. How useless is that? Not to mention twitchy bullets and low fire power. Seems better than Trouble Witches though.

3. Not a danmaku, but definitely not a euroshooter.

FAIL

[Vally]

I wouldn't say that was fail. Sounds reasonably accurate to me.

[dan76]

I've just spent an hour with the demo - I won't be buying it.

I had hopes for this, something different from the usual Cave games I'm addicted to, but this has just sent me running back to the girls of pork.

Bullets too small / hard to see, slow gameplay, shot power or lack of, cheap attacks, cinemascope aspect ratio, cut scenes.

Come on people.

[exquisite_torture]

Better than Soldner X and Trouble Witches Neo. Worse than every Cave and G-rev game.
Not essential.

[Kollision]

Bullets too small

This was the only thing I was worried about, judging from the trailer. Will try it this weekend if time allows.

[Frenetic]

First thoughts
I just purchased the game this morning and was sad I couldn't spend more time with it. I experienced the same thing when I first got my twin New Net Cities. It was like parting with a lover the morning after. There are black bars for 640 x 480 screens but I don't really mind since I'm sitting so close to my candy cab. The game really pushes the horizontal STG genre into a landscape STG genre with so much camera movement and luscious backgrounds and ship designs (one of the modes is for STG fanatics. I love it!)

Aesthetics and controls
The game is gorgeous and I am really diggin' on the subtitles/voice-overs that weave themselves seamlessly into the game. Thankfully you can turn off the enemy lifebars and power up titles so they aren't so distracting. I also don't mind the controls so much because I've been playing Mushimesama Futari Black Label so much lately that I am used to holding either A or C shot for long periods of time. It's made me ambidextrous and comfortable with holding either button.

Gameplay and pace
The pace of the game combined with the steampunk aesthetic makes me feel like I'm turning the crank of those old school film cameras. So it feels like I'm both an actor and filming the "movie" and when you die it stops. I love the timer because it gives the game more urgency (like in the light gun shooting game series Time Crisis) plus there isn't that "pause" that interrupts the action when your ship respawns in other games. Also, rather than feeling like I am the pilot I feel like I'm the plane itself? Or the skill or heart of the pilot? I love the steampunk aesthetic to parts of the game. I'll need to spend more time with the game to better express where the player is.

Why I bought the game
What really clinched making this a must buy with me (and I love this on Battle Bakraid, I know I'm missing other STGs which do this, please tell me) is the small little cutscene before each boss which gives the boss' name and enemy type. It really makes the boss battles feel epic and cinematic.

--the F-man

[Illyrian]

First thoughts
I just purchased the game this morning and was sad I couldn't spend more time with it. I experienced the same thing when I first got my twin New Net Cities. It was like parting with a lover the morning after. There are black bars for 640 x 480 screens but I don't really mind since I'm sitting so close to my candy cab. The game really pushes the horizontal STG genre into a landscape STG genre with so much camera movement and luscious backgrounds and ship designs (one of the modes is for STG fanatics. I love it!)

Aesthetics and controls
The game is gorgeous and I am really diggin' on the subtitles/voice-overs that weave themselves seamlessly into the game. Thankfully you can turn off the enemy lifebars and power up titles so they aren't so distracting. I also don't mind the controls so much because I've been playing Mushimesama Futari Black Label so much lately that I am used to holding either A or C shot for long periods of time. It's made me ambidextrous and comfortable with holding either button.

Gameplay and pace
The pace of the game combined with the steampunk aesthetic makes me feel like I'm turning the crank of those old school film cameras. So it feels like I'm both an actor and filming the "movie" and when you die it stops. I love the timer because it gives the game more urgency (like in the light gun shooting game series Time Crisis) plus there isn't that "pause" that interrupts the action when your ship respawns in other games. Also, rather than feeling like I am the pilot I feel like I'm the plane itself? Or the skill or heart of the pilot? I love the steampunk aesthetic to parts of the game. I'll need to spend more time with the game to better express where the player is.

Why I bought the game
What really clinched making this a must buy with me (and I love this on Battle Bakraid, I know I'm missing other STGs which do this, please tell me) is the small little cutscene before each boss which gives the boss' name and enemy type. It really makes the boss battles feel epic and cinematic.

--the F-man

This is one of the worst abortions of a shmup I've ever played. I've never seen such a horrendous collection of bullshit instakill attacks, a god awful power up system where ALL YOUR FUCKING POWER vanishes off the screen within a few seconds of you getting hit once, in areas where there are massive physical obstacles, and boring lengthy cutscenes, which actually tell you how to avoid the bullshit instakill section coming up sometimes, so you have to read them!

I hope you enjoy getting hit once because of some random bullshit attack, then having to dash forward to try and stop yourself getting reduced to a peashooter shot, and getting hit again.

I can't believe I actually spend 1200 MS points on this shit.

The "speed up" bar goes down in a matter of seconds and there are almost no pick ups in the levels to restore it, even a little.

Fuck this game.

[Ed Oscuro]

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.

So it's okay if they're wrong about 3/4 of what they've touched, if they just give it the "right" score? I wonder what this buffoon is getting paid to do, then, other than be a machine that spits out a random number tied to the end of a shovelful of words. If he cut the pretentious bullshit the review would've finished in three paragraphs of five sentences each, and as a bonus would have paraded less of his ignorance.

I'm the last person to say that mainstream reviewers must know every little detail and feature valued by a niche community, but this would be like a chef deciding to review Abraham Lincoln based on how much he thinks Lincoln hated asparagus. At some point you have to have a little bell ringing in the back of your mind's bullshit detector when you write stuff like this.

Honestly, reading what I could stand of the review, I came away feeling like I knew less about the game than I did reading a handful of random comments on here. How is that helpful?

(p.s. I ought to make clear that I'm just beefing with the article author there, not this game.)

[Vally]

This is one of the worst abortions of a shmup I've ever played. I've never seen such a horrendous collection of bullshit instakill attacks, a god awful power up system where ALL YOUR FUCKING POWER vanishes off the screen within a few seconds of you getting hit once, in areas where there are massive physical obstacles, and boring lengthy cutscenes, which actually tell you how to avoid the bullshit instakill section coming up sometimes, so you have to read them!

I hope you enjoy getting hit once because of some random bullshit attack, then having to dash forward to try and stop yourself getting reduced to a peashooter shot, and getting hit again.

I can't believe I actually spend 1200 MS points on this shit.

The "speed up" bar goes down in a matter of seconds and there are almost no pick ups in the levels to restore it, even a little.

Fuck this game.

Have you tried using Rollback? Sounds like it'll solve your problem.

[Hagane]

Game journalists (well, journalists of all types really) in general and mainstream ones in particular are awful and their opinion should not be taken seriously.

But I see a lot of people not touching a game if it has bad reviews, so maybe high scores at a mainstream site are good for the genre even if the reviewer has no fucking idea of what he's talking about.

[Illyrian]

This is one of the worst abortions of a shmup I've ever played. I've never seen such a horrendous collection of bullshit instakill attacks, a god awful power up system where ALL YOUR FUCKING POWER vanishes off the screen within a few seconds of you getting hit once, in areas where there are massive physical obstacles, and boring lengthy cutscenes, which actually tell you how to avoid the bullshit instakill section coming up sometimes, so you have to read them!

I hope you enjoy getting hit once because of some random bullshit attack, then having to dash forward to try and stop yourself getting reduced to a peashooter shot, and getting hit again.

I can't believe I actually spend 1200 MS points on this shit.

The "speed up" bar goes down in a matter of seconds and there are almost no pick ups in the levels to restore it, even a little.

Fuck this game.

Have you tried using Rollback? Sounds like it'll solve your problem.

When you have to use rollback because an attack came out of nowhere with no sign and 1 shots YOUR ENTIRE FUCKING CREDIT then there's something wrong.

[system11]

Having been forced by the demo to try a very boring story mode which was extremely easy, or an impossible mode with hideous spinning suicide bullets (a very lame way to increase difficulty cheaply), I made the mistake of paying 1200 MSP for this game.

It's ... where do you even start?

It looks brilliant, although the small missiles are too hard to see when there are other bullets on screen.

The sound is muted and the music - I wasn't even aware of it being there. There is music, but it's all very subdued and instantly forgettable.

The controls are odd - they feel like a bizarre mix of being too twitchy, and too sluggish at the same time (I'm using digital), I've lost count of the number of times that level 1 boss has basically smashed straight into me and I just didn't have the speed to move. Other times I've dodged into bullets while in slowdown mode. Slowdown should have highlighted the hit spot, but it doesn't - with the strangely shaped planes this makes it harder than it needs to be when you're given hit box sized gaps to poke a hole through.

Popcorn enemies take too many hits, rank should not increase when you're firing at nothing at all, having powerups vanish off-screen is stupid. In story mode why can't you skip the looong cut scenes in stage 1?

What a shame, such a pretty thing to look at.

[Zaarock]

Have you tried using Rollback? Sounds like it'll solve your problem.

Reflect, you mean? it blocks bullets, missiles and lasers aka almost everything and you can just tap it for easy usage. Any tips for the stupid going through lasers section in stage 3 though? I'm enjoying arcade hard but that is maybe the worst part of the game.

[Vally]

This is one of the worst abortions of a shmup I've ever played. I've never seen such a horrendous collection of bullshit instakill attacks, a god awful power up system where ALL YOUR FUCKING POWER vanishes off the screen within a few seconds of you getting hit once, in areas where there are massive physical obstacles, and boring lengthy cutscenes, which actually tell you how to avoid the bullshit instakill section coming up sometimes, so you have to read them!

I hope you enjoy getting hit once because of some random bullshit attack, then having to dash forward to try and stop yourself getting reduced to a peashooter shot, and getting hit again.

I can't believe I actually spend 1200 MS points on this shit.

The "speed up" bar goes down in a matter of seconds and there are almost no pick ups in the levels to restore it, even a little.

Fuck this game.

Have you tried using Rollback? Sounds like it'll solve your problem.

When you have to use rollback because an attack came out of nowhere with no sign and 1 shots YOUR ENTIRE FUCKING CREDIT then there's something wrong.

It's weird, because I've not come across any situation where I've lost my entire credit in one shot.

The only place I come regularly close to losing a credit on is at the end of Stage 3. Which part in particular are you having problems with?

@Zaarock - Funnily enough I've not tried using Reflect. My high score (now 224mil odd) is entirely with rollback. I'll have to give it a shot.

Regarding the laser part at the start - Just shoot them down, no dodging necessary.

[Kiken]

I would love to know the reasoning behind choosing 2.35 aspect ratio over 1.78... my guess would be something engine related (the game mostly stays around the 60 fps mark but I did see it drop in a couple of areas causing some tearing). If it is actually technical, I'd have much rather preferred playing at a locked 30 fps in 1.78.

I didn't bother looking at the Leaderboards... but is there a replay save feature? Cause the game never asked me if I wanted to save a run to the harddrive.

Zaarock and I spoke earlier online and we pretty much agree on everything. Also, as a couple of you guys have already stated, the follow-the-garbage section in the foundry level is total bullshit.

Have you tried using Rollback? Sounds like it'll solve your problem.

Reflect, you mean? it blocks bullets, missiles and lasers aka almost everything and you can just tap it for easy usage. Any tips for the stupid going through lasers section in stage 3 though? I'm enjoying arcade hard but that is maybe the worst part of the game.

No. Rollback allows you to rewind the game, like in some of the recent Prince of Persia games.

[Illyrian]

I would love to know the reasoning behind choosing 2.35 aspect ratio over 1.78... my guess would be something engine related (the game mostly stays around the 60 fps mark but I did see it drop in a couple of areas causing some tearing). If it is actually technical, I'd have much rather preferred playing at a locked 30 fps in 1.78.

I didn't bother looking at the Leaderboards... but is there a replay save feature? Cause the game never asked me if I wanted to save a run to the harddrive.

Zaarock and I spoke earlier online and we pretty much agree on everything. Also, as a couple of you guys have already stated, the follow-the-garbage section in the foundry level is total bullshit.

Have you tried using Rollback? Sounds like it'll solve your problem.

Reflect, you mean? it blocks bullets, missiles and lasers aka almost everything and you can just tap it for easy usage. Any tips for the stupid going through lasers section in stage 3 though? I'm enjoying arcade hard but that is maybe the worst part of the game.

No. Rollback allows you to rewind the game, like in some of the recent Prince of Persia games.

The follow the garbage bit is exactly what I mean, you hit a wall once there, and your power ups fly off, but you can't even go and collect them because you get one-shotted if you leave the area of the garbage. Then the boss is right after, a boss who loves to body slam you with no real warning who you probably have to face with a crappy peashooter gun.

[system11]

Just noticed another fun one - you can run out of time during a boss even if you pound it with everything you have. They may aswell just kill you without making you go past the cut scene only to face a futile battle.