Sine Mora EX

Everyone reading this has played a bullet hell shooter! Don’t lie, from After Burner, Galaga, Raptor to Space Invaders we have all played these games. They were all parts of our childhood since they were the second most made games on the early Nintendo, Sega and Atari game systems after platformers.

So, when a modern day take on the bullet hell shooter appears should we applaud or cover our heads in shame? Let’s go find out.

Story:

As far as I can tell, the story is about an Empire trying to eradicate a species called the Enkies. Don’t ask me to tell you more because I think there are 2 timelines but I will need to play from the start again to tell you.

Graphics:

I love the world; it is 3D modeled but only displayed in 2D so you can see every little detail on everything from the world to your enemies.

The lush colours in the game make the world feel alive, and also do an exceptional job of helping the player by letting them see important things. The colours help you keep track of your ship, identify power-ups and enemy fire. How do they do all this? Simple, by not clashing. They just do a fucking impressive job of keeping everything clear. Unless you are drunk like a skunk you can always keep track of everything around you.

Finally, the animation system and the particle effects are superb too. Animation in these games is usually simple, since it’s usually just the player’s craft banking up and down. But Sine Mora shows off the dev team’s animation skills by having bosses with wavy arms. Sine Mora takes one more step by combining the animations and particle systems to show off heavy weapons and the special weapons by making them bend and move, these are just amazing to take a close up look at.

Gameplay:

Before we kick off here, I would like to say that the game has a few pre-defined control layouts. You cannot customize keys so that is a major low point.

To a large extent, the game is a standard Bullet hell with a few twists.

The original bullet hell games made you play against time and health; Sine Mora EX takes a little bit of a different stance by merging both of them so your time is your health. You get time by defeating opponents and lose it by taking damage. You can take damage by getting hit from enemy fire, colliding with them or colliding with the environment. It is a system made to keep you desperate and I love it. When the time runs low you panic and try to take out everyone and anyone but when there is time to spare you start playing old school by playing safe. It is a concept that demands applause just for the pure fact that it is minimal and more at the same time.

You get upgrades by destroying enemies and then picking up the containers they might drop. There are 3 types of containers that contain:

1.       Base weapon upgrades

2.       Slow time additions

3.       Additional shots for the special weapon

The second and third upgrades are maintained for each chapter and only reduce on use, but the first one is dropped when you take a hit and maintains across chapters, so get your upgrades early. Think of the base weapon upgrades as Sonic the Hedgehog’s rings, you drop all of them when you take damage but if you can pick them up before they disappear then you are back in action.

The bullet time effect is really useful when you need to dodge a ton of bullets coming at you, it’s especially useful when going against bosses that spam you with so many bullets you might as well just drop dead. They also help in tight spaces where you need to navigate a really close quarter environment.

The special weapons vary between chapters but all of them do great damage and are tailored for the level. It’s obvious that the levels were designed first, and then the special weapon was picked. One of the early levels has lasers being fired by drones, here the standard weapons are useless but the special weapon does a close-range sweep and takes out everything which gives you a chance to breathe.

The main point of confusion is the ability of the special weapon. Thankfully, this is only at the start of each chapter so try it out and then load the last save.

The boss fights are a class above, they are tough, highly unfair but you feel proud of yourself when you beat them. Each of the boss fights are unique and some are multi-stage.

Conclusion:

The game has a full price of $10 or ₹369 on Steam, which is a great price and make it a must get. Sadly, the Android version is no longer available, otherwise I would have talked about that version too.

Pros	Cons
Superb Graphics	Graphics aren’t shown off
Each characters vehicle is unique	Confusing story delivery
Awesome upgrades, adds value to the combat	Easy to lose upgrades
Makes panicking a game style	Permits chilled gameplay