Sine Mora(Suda 51 shmup)

[wariomona]

I've only played the first stage in both arcade and story modes but my impressions on what everyone's talking about are:
- Analogue controls work really well. Don't try to play this with a d-pad or arcade stick though.
- Aesthetics/sound are great
- Cutscenes may not be skippable but the rate at which you fastforward through them in arcade mode is fine - better than Gradius V.
- Why does the tutorial say "Primary weapon upgrades are permanent"? I think they should look up the word 'permanent'!
- They already advertised that there were gonna be "random bullshit attacks" (assuming you mean lasers and ramming bosses?) in the trailers and by citing R-Type as an influence. What I find worse is how there are already brutal bullet hell patterns by the first stage. (Again, talking about Arcade here - story mode stage 1 was a breeze) Because of the timelimit you have to focus more on offence making dodging large bullet storms awkward most of the time. Speaking of the time limit...
- The TIME LIMIT IS SO ANNOYING! It seems like they've made it so there is literally like one path through a level and that's it. Also, it seems that your time never "accumulates". I may be wrong, but doesn't this mean that no matter how good you do in the earlier levels you still have the same survival chance (aka. one screw-up and you need to continue) throughout the whole game? I haven't really tried using the rollback yet though. I'll have to do that next time.

I can see why mainstream reviewers would give such high ratings but none of those people have probably played through it more than once or twice. I'd say it's good for a euroshmup but not necessarily good overall. I still have to play more though, obviously.

[Zaarock]

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.

I guess they preferred the former over the latter (killing you before cutscene). I think you should be able to destroy a part or two with seeker missiles with just a second on just about every boss though. Some of the subweapons are just bad though.

[Vally]

Something really, really weird just happened!

A weird coloured powerup appeared right at the beginning of the first stage, and when I picked it up, I got ??? appear above my ship, and a piano fell from the sky, killed me and gave me game over.

O_o

Trying to reproduce this now.

[Klatrymadon]

That's one of the criteria for getting one of the achievements. Let us know if you figure out how you triggered it!

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Something really, really weird just happened!

A weird coloured powerup appeared right at the beginning of the first stage, and when I picked it up, I got ??? appear above my ship, and a piano fell from the sky, killed me and gave me game over.

And I thought Parodius's !? 'powerup' was annoying.

Some of the nonsense in this shmup sounds outrageously silly, as if they were trying to incorporate too many experimental features in the hopes that they'd produce a great game.

[Udderdude]

#shmups Sine Mora chat dump

Code: Select all

[02:35 PM] <Udderdude> so now that "<Megalixir> sinemora is basically a japanese euroshmup" is basically proven to be true, i wonder if i should keep it in my sig
[02:35 PM] <DJIncompe> yes
[02:35 PM] <Udderdude> lol ok
[02:36 PM] <system11> euroshmups dont usually give you a single life and no lifebar though
[02:38 PM] <Udderdude> hence .. japanese euroshmup
[02:39 PM] <system11> i dont think i like it much
[02:52 PM] <KOAPLAN> is there a trial for sinemora already?
[02:54 PM] <system11> yeah but the trial is garbage
[02:54 PM] <system11> youre forced to super hard mode or a tedious story mode
[02:57 PM] <system11> superhard = cheap suicide bullets everywhere that spin
[02:57 PM] <Udderdude> i complained about those before the game was even out /hipster
[02:58 PM] <system11> they suck
[02:58 PM] <Udderdude> did any YGW game even have revenge bullets (i call them that instead of suicide bullets because it's more accurate)
[03:04 PM] <savq> analog controls?
[03:04 PM] <savq> so I can't use a stick? :/
[03:04 PM] <DJIncompe> yeah that's weiiiird
[03:04 PM] <deexor> muchi muchi pork manpuku had suicide bullets? does that count
[03:05 PM] <Udderdude> i guess .. lol
[03:06 PM] <DJIncompe> I can't believe the Reiker dude says the game was originally planned for arcade cabs, then they don't even design the controls for it
[03:12 PM] <system11> theres some really tight bullet threading to do if the rank rises, and in slowdown mode digital is too twitchy
[03:12 PM] <Udderdude> dj: maybe they re-designed them agaiiiiiin
[03:23 PM] <system11> wtf - im dying in sime mora arcade mode for running out of time
[03:23 PM] <system11> what
[03:25 PM] <DJIncompe> Time Crisis: Sine Mora
[03:25 PM] <Zaarock> system11: that's supposed to happen, heh
[03:25 PM] <Zaarock> if you get hit you lose time so you have to compensate by killing more enemies or die
[03:26 PM] <system11> god, this game sucks
[03:26 PM] <Zaarock> what would be the point of being time based otherwise
[03:26 PM] <system11> you can reach the boss without enough time to kill it
[03:26 PM] <system11> it may aswell just kill you immediately at the boss
[03:26 PM] <system11> "sorry dude, you cant beat it - waste of time"
[03:27 PM] <Zaarock> idk
[03:27 PM] <Zaarock> you can always use up all your bombs
[03:27 PM] <Zaarock> and use rollback
[03:27 PM] <Zaarock> though I don't like the latter
[03:28 PM] <Zaarock> bosses usually have a lot of parts so bombing should give you a fair bit of time back
[03:29 PM] <Zaarock> but yeah system11: what do you think it should do instead
[03:30 PM] <Zaarock> it should blow you up before boss cutscene if you have like 4 seconds left?
[03:30 PM] <Zaarock> guess they were too lazy to think of that
[03:31 PM] <Udderdude> you should blow up during the cutscene
[03:31 PM] <Zaarock> lol
[03:31 PM] <system11> ARGH
[03:32 PM] <system11> AND WHEN IM NOT MOVING THE STICK STOP FUCKING MOVING MY SHIP FOR ME
[03:32 PM] <Zaarock> system11: but the winds
[03:32 PM] <Zaarock> lol
[03:32 PM] <system11> i dont even mean that bit
[03:32 PM] <system11> you move out of place quite a lot vs the boss first form
[03:32 PM] <system11> just by tiny amounts
[03:33 PM] <system11> wretched piece of shit, god i saw the graphics and wanted to love this game, but i hate it
[03:34 PM] <Shifty|> wat system11
[03:34 PM] <Shifty|> hate it why
[03:35 PM] <Shifty|> he wanted to like the game
[03:36 PM] <system11> because the controls are wrong, some of the bullets are too hard to see, the audio is rubbish, the mode with fun bosses and levels forces you to sit through story sections, the time mechanic is irritating, the weapons are too weak,  power ups fall off the screen sometimes before you have any chance of getting to them (and i dont mean medals), the hitboxes are weird, and probably other things
[03:37 PM] <Zaarock> system11: story mode has more filler sections, it doesn't have any more bosses
[03:37 PM] <system11> theres no 'normal' difficulty for arcade
[03:37 PM] <Zaarock> hard is basically normal when they developed it I think
[03:38 PM] <Zaarock> just look at the patterns, the easier difficulties are basically the same but with missing pattern parts
[03:39 PM] <Zaarock> system11: try arcade with GE-22, seeker missile and reflector
[03:39 PM] <Zaarock> all the other planes are underpowered and have like no spread

[Vally]

Seeker missiles, pffft.

Koss is the way to go.

[rtw]

a few impressions

. the game is gorgeous to look at
. music is too low
. fantastic boss animations
. story is good
. hungarian voice over works
. beautiful backgrounds
. bug, sometimes you get a repeat of some of the dialogue in the story mode
. instakills
. why is the format not pure 16:9 ?
. popcorn enemies are irritating, until you level your weapon
. sometimes powerups goto inaccessible areas
. arcade stick feels weird
. unable to remap buttons

none of this should be hard to fix with a patch

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Is there anyone who actually prefers analog movement controls on a shmup instead of simply using a slowdown/speed change button? I mean, I like Gradius V and all but even there I wish I could play using the D-Pad or an arcade stick with a slowdown button to navigate tight sections instead of having to get used to the range where tilting the analog stick will slow your movement. With arcade sticks being so popular as a control method for shmups, I fail to see why you'd use analog control without at least giving people a control option suited for stick players.

[Kiken]

Seeker missiles, pffft.

Koss is the way to go.

And his horrid bomb that requires you to be right on top of a target to damage it? I'll stick with Argus and his seeker missiles or Lynthe and his giga-beam.

[Vally]

Bullet sponge / recovery!

Get hit, rollback, pop punk spirit, free invunerability period. \o/

That and it takes all the sentinel's legs out in one shot (almost. some firepower required!)

[kid aphex]

This game is such a bizarre mish-mash of so many shmups its kind of crazy... I wonder if they did it to pay homage, or to to cover their asses?
It FEELS like the latter...

Maintaining a powered up ship is CRUCIAL to progression (gradius)
Slow moving levels and necessity to memorize enemy placement (r-type)
Raizing style patterns, Raiden style patterns, Cave style patterns, Suicide bullets
Einhander throwbacks, Ikaruga throwbacks,

This game is... stringent. And punishing. And I don't like the movement.
But I'm getting used to it, and I love the production values and art-style.
I'll probly be playing it for a long time... just not very well.

[Vally]

I'm regularly getting to Papa Carlo now, however I just reached it 23mil short of my top score due to missing out on a LOT of 100000 x9 medals in Stage 3.

If I can get up to that point by around 220mil, the end of level bonus should push me well up.

Once I can figure out how to get him down, I reckon I'll be sorted.

[DocHauser]

Heh, I notice the Destructoid reviewer seems to style himself as Destructoid's 'shmup expert'. On a different forum he used to post comments like:

"You shmup people are nuts. I just don't get it" (from mid 2010)

"Sorry, I'm just not a shmup fan. Whatever love I had for those games died when I stopped playing Raptor in 94'" (from early 2010)

"I'm probably going to get a lot of hate for this but just how different can a shmup be? Played one played them all, it seems. Not much variation." (from 2009)

[MrChiggins]

Did anyone else notice the blatant Battle Garegga reference at the beginning of Stage IVB?

Look for it!

[kid aphex]

Interesting... I unlocked an art-filter named 6150
Anyone else unlock others?

[Deca]

So uh, wow, sounds like this game is a horrible pile. I'll wait to finalize my opinion until I get my hands on it but it sounds like everything I'd worried about and a lot more got screwed up here.

I wonder if we'll ever see Reiker again and if so what he has to say for himself. Feels like he only came here to drum up interest and make us feel somewhat invested in the game or something with no intention whatsoever of taking any of our serious critiques or recommendations into consideration during development. Seems like the only things that came up here and actually got implemented were very superficial surface changes or simple additions of options. Also it seems like any inspiration drawn from Garegga mostly came from credit feeding it for an hour and enjoying the aesthetics.

I really wanted to believe that a western developer might be able to make a halfway decent shmup but it looks like I'll have to stick to my assertion that europeans generally (I'm sure there are a couple exceptions I'm missing) just shouldn't even try to make games that aren't driving or flight sims.

[Vally]

I unlocked an art style but I'm not sure what one it was.

I haven't been able to reproduce the piano thing. I got it through a really really early rewind on the first level. Other than that, fuck knows.

[psoslayer]

I wonder if we'll ever see Reiker again and if so what he has to say for himself.

He will come back and tell us we're wrong.

I really wanted to believe that a western developer might be able to make a halfway decent shmup but it looks like I'll have to stick to my assertion that europeans generally just shouldn't even try to make games that aren't driving or flight sims.

You didn't play the good ones.

[yosai]

Played this for 30 minutes and had to switch it off. It looks and sounds ok but it's just not any fun. The fragmented gameplay really started to grate too.

[Vally]

I feel like the only person who's really enjoying this.

[system11]

That death from timer is really jarring - even when you know it's coming it just doesn't feel right.

[bcass]

I really wanted to believe that a western developer might be able to make a halfway decent shmup but it looks like I'll have to stick to my assertion that europeans generally (I'm sure there are a couple exceptions I'm missing) just shouldn't even try to make games that aren't driving or flight sims.

Such incredible levels of ignorance in this post. You don't do yourself or the general World-view of Americans any favours with posts like that. And no, I'm not sticking up for all those crappy Euroshumps, I hate them all too (though there are still some great shooting games still being made in the UK, namely by Llamasoft).

My 2-pence of what I've played so far is that it's pretty unique. Some of it works, some of it doesn't, but it does try some new stuff with the genre in far more adventurous ways than Cave have ever done. Overall, though, I think it plays more like a Darius than anything else mentioned so far. Maybe with a hint of R-Type Final. Trying to hit tiny hitboxes from miles away with a peashooter weapon definitely reminds me of playing the original 3 screen arcade Darius.

I could definitely live with it being trimmed though. I think they wasted their time and money on all the voice work and story. Also, just to reiterate, anybody trying to play this game with a digital joystick (or digital dpad) is an idiot. It is not designed to be played that way. Doing so will put you at a massive disadvantage. Nothing to do with not being able to remap buttons either, the game has to be played with an analogue stick to be played properly.

[kid aphex]

This game isn't a"horrible pile"
It's got it's problems, but I've played (and enjoyed) way worse shmups

[kid aphex]

I really wanted to believe that a western developer might be able to make a halfway decent shmup but it looks like I'll have to stick to my assertion that europeans generally (I'm sure there are a couple exceptions I'm missing) just shouldn't even try to make games that aren't driving or flight sims.

Such incredible levels of ignorance in this post. You don't do yourself or the general World-view of Americans any favours with posts like that. And no, I'm not sticking up for all those crappy Euroshumps, I hate them all too (though there are still some great shooting games still being made in the UK, namely by Llamasoft).

My 2-pence of what I've played so far is that it's pretty unique. Some of it works, some of it doesn't, but it does try some new stuff with the genre in far more adventurous ways than Cave have ever done. Overall, though, I think it plays more like a Darius than anything else mentioned so far. Maybe with a hint of R-Type Final. Trying to hit tiny hitboxes from miles away with a peashooter weapon definitely reminds me of playing the original 3 screen arcade Darius.

I could definitely live with it being trimmed though. I think they wasted their time and money on all the voice work and story. Also, just to reiterate, anybody trying to play this game with a digital joystick (or digital dpad) is an idiot. It is not designed to be played that way. Doing so will put you at a massive disadvantage. Nothing to do with not being able to remap buttons either, the game has to be played with an analogue stick to be played properly.

Yeah, you're dead-on with saying it plays like Darius, it didn't hit me until you said it.

[Moniker]

I feel like the only person who's really enjoying this.

I really enjoy it as well. I think the claims to euroshmupness are unfounded. Killing popcorn enemies with two shots instead of one (with an unpowered weapon) doesn't make it a euroshmup. All patterns are perfectly dodgeable. The health-time mechanic gives good risk/reward when deciding on whether to use a more offensive approach. The instakills are easily learned and avoided after a single instance.

I feel for the control/display people, but really, 16:9 is the new standard - gotta get over it eventually, and the game plays great with a regular 360 controller.

The main thing that separates Sine Mora from a traditional bullet hell is that killing everything is not always the safest or optimal approach. Hate to say it, but I think people need to be a little more open-minded. YMMV.

[Udderdude]

That death from timer is really jarring - even when you know it's coming it just doesn't feel right.

It should slam the screen shut like in DDR when you fail a song. Then a smarmy announcer tells you "There's always tomorrow!" >_>

[BuckoA51]

Just played the demo, seems pretty good, I don't mind slow pace or the story at all. I dunno about the whole time mechanic though, seems a bit of a daft idea, especially how you can get to a boss and basically be in a no-win situation. 1200 points is a lot.. do I take the chance...I like good Euroshmups so my taste is kinda varied. I guess the story mode is worthwhile but as a score game its kinda flawed, is that a fair assumption?

[bcass]

I feel for the control/display people, but really, 16:9 is the new standard - gotta get over it eventually

No, that's not the problem. The problem is that it isn't 16:9. My CRT is 16:9 but this game has borders top/bottom of the screen.

[Deca]

Such incredible levels of ignorance in this post. You don't do yourself or the general World-view of Americans any favours with posts like that. And no, I'm not sticking up for all those crappy Euroshumps, I hate them all too (though there are still some great shooting games still being made in the UK, namely by Llamasoft).

I have a hard time taking any criticism seriously that jumps straight to an assumption of ignorance. I have no superiority complex about where I live and I think that all sorts of awesome stuff comes out of europe. I love what codemasters does with racing games, LFS is my personal favorite driving sim and I have a great deal of respect for the guys that continue to slave away improving it, and Rise of Flight is doing an amazing job of filling a niche near and dear to my heart that has mostly been forgotten by the modern gaming world. However, if you look at video game output from europe as a whole I don't think anyone can objectively deny that they have far and away a horrible track record for most non-sim genres. I find it hard to believe that anyone finds the term EUROshmup endearing in a less than ironic fashion.

If you would be so kind as to highlight the extent of the "levels of ignorance" in what I said I would be happy to learn from the experience. Bear in mind that my comments may be slightly more caustic than usual as I feel betrayed to some extent by Digital Reality and how this game was handled. They promised exactly what we wanted to hear and then gradually pared it back to the truth as launch approached. In the end we got exactly what we would have expected from the beginning had Reiker not been around to crank the PR machine. I managed to keep my expectations down but that doesn't keep me from being upset with the deceitful way in which this game was presented.

All your post tells me is that you're eager to jump at any opportunity to take offense to something.