Sine Mora is not good

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Sine Mora should not be an interesting topic of discussion. But every week, like clockwork, I see somebody ask about Sine Mora on the shmups Discords I follow. Sine Mora is pretty. Is it good? Should I play it? Sine Mora can’t be as bad as they say, can it?

Sine Mora is not good.

First, in fairness, let me say what is interesting about Sine Mora:
Sine Mora has great 3D graphics, a rarity among shmups.
Sine Mora has a robust story, a rarity among shmups.
Sine Mora has a furry steampunk style, a rarity among shmups.

For these reasons, Sine Mora really does things differently. I think a lot of reviewers were impressed with how different it is, and they had warm fuzzy feelings after the few hours they spent working their way through the story mode. They were able to put it down, write a review, and not think about it any more.

My perspective is different. I love scrolling shooters, and I have a decent grasp of the arc of shmup history, and the ways in which shmups excel. Games like R-Type, Blazing Lazers, Darius, Dodonpachi, Gunbird, Eschatos, Ikaruga, and Rolling Gunner–I can appreciate these games on their own terms.

Sine Mora is not good.

If I were to define what makes a good shmup, my criteria would look something like this: 

A good shmup has energizing gameplay. It has a firm but fair difficulty resulting from a solid gameplay foundation. Repeatedly playing a good shmup is a joy, and so it attains value well over its short initial runtime. Oftentimes, the gameplay is augmented by a unique scoring system, which allows the game to be enjoyed and mastered well past beating the final level.

So. Let’s talk about how Sine Mora gets all of that wrong.

The Time Trap

Sine Mora pretty boldly ditches the typical “3 lives and yr dead” system of most shmups. Instead, you have a time-based system, where the game takes some time off the clock whenever you get hit, until you run out. It seems a lot friendlier than a small stockade of lives!

It’s not. What ends up happening is that you get caught in the time trap. You’re fighting a boss, slowly chipping away at its health, when you realize that you’ll need more time to kill it than the 30 seconds you have. So you have to wait for the clock to run down, or else plunge your ship into a salvo of bullets. In the end, it’s more punishing than your ship getting blowed up. Hardly a great fix.

Sine Mora has poor fundamental mechanics.

The Falling Piano

Sine Mora has a random powerup system, where you’re not quite sure what you’re going to get. In modern roguelikes, this is a source of the quirky fun–will this be the run where it comes together in your favor? In Sine Mora, it’s more a source of annoyance. There aren’t a slew of wacky powerups; the game just feels a bit unreliable. But the most egregious sin is that Sine Mora’s powerups will occasionally just kill you.

That’s right. Once in a great while, you’ll collect a powerup, and suddenly a piano will fall from nowhere and just kill you. The developers are trying to be funny. But it’s not funny. It’s just annoying. Imagine if you were playing Bloodborne, and suddenly an unavoidable piano fell from the sky and crushed your hunter as you were moments from killing Cleric Beast. You would not think it was funny. You would not think it was cute. Because you hold the game to a standard of fairness.

Hell, remember how vehemently people hated randomly tripping in Smash Bros. Brawl? Imagine you were watching a tournament, or god forbid playing in one, and a character randomly exploded, ending the match. Would that seem like a game worth playing?

Sine Mora does not have fair difficulty.

Snoring system

Sine Mora has a scoring system based around ranking up and facing bosses with more wicked bullet patterns. That’s actually a solid system that’s explored and perfected in many other shmups. What’s so lame about Sine Mora’s ranking system is that there’s no nuance to it–as soon as you rank up, the bullet patterns go from a drizzle to an avalanche in a snap. And then you’re back down a rank, like it never happened at all.

But what really, really sucks about Sine Mora’s scoring system, is that it actively strips the fun out of the game. 

Sine Mora grants your ship a number of abilities, the one I liked most being the ability to slow down time to dodge enemy bullets. However, in order to rank up and get a high score in Sine Mora, you have to not use your abilities.

But wait, isn’t that just risk reward? Isn’t it typical that you should have to play the game in the hardest way to get the highest score? Well, sometimes. But this is such a boneheaded way to do it. It’s the equivalent of saying “This game has vulcan shot, spread shot, laser, napalm bombs… but if you want to get a high score, you have to use the pea shooter.” Nobody wants that.

Sine Mora doesn’t have a rewarding scoring system.

Just an overall snoozer

The worst thing I can say about Sine Mora, or any shmup really, is that it’s just a snoozer. There’s no oomph to it. The shooting isn’t exciting. The explosions aren’t right. And look, I love, love, love Akira Yamaoka’s work on the Silent Hill series. But here? In a shooting game? These somber and jazzy trip-hoppy numbers just don’t get the blood pumping. Neither does the game’s languid and confused story. 

Sine Mora is boring.

There are so many novel ideas, and none of them are pulled off successfully. And there are so many great shmups that do pull them off. This is one of the oldest and most venerable genres in gaming.

Maybe you treat shmups like Marvel movies. You pay a small fee, the baddies get blasted, some plot gets resolved, and you never think about it again. If that’s you–by all means, play Sine Mora.

Otherwise, you can do better. 

Sine Mora is not good.

Rolling Gunner (Switch)

As fun as it is ugly

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I bounced off Rolling Gunner when it released in 2018, but with the physical release of Rolling Gunner + Overpowered expansion coming on in a few days, I wanted to spend some more time with it.

Rolling Gunner is something of a darling with hardcore STG players, the niche who likes ultra brutal military shooters like Ketsui and Dodonpachi Daioujou. When I first played it, I was pretty critical. First of all, Rolling Gunner is one of the ugliest scrolling shooters in memory. Secondly, I thought it played a little bit too much like Deathsmiles. So–ugly, and lacking its own voice.

Those criticisms still hold. But they’re ignoring what’s exceptional about Rolling Gunner, and why it’s become such a modern bullet hell darling. The rolling gun itself is just such a tight mechanic. Your Stork fighter ship has a pod that rotates around the ship to fire at enemies. It aims in the opposite direction as your dpad input, so you can position it to attack enemies from all sides. If you hold down the laser button, you can lock it in place, positioning the pod to barrage huge enemies approaching from the top of the screen, while your frontal machinegun peppers smaller enemies toward the bottom.

Since enemies can appear from anywhere, Rolling Gunner has a much more dynamic feel than other shooters. You’re often using all the screen space, circling round to roll the gun into position, finding the correct angle to prevent getting flanked by popcorn enemies. And unlike other games, every single enemy telegraphs its entrance! This is unbelievably helpful for putting pressure on enemies as they enter the screen. And it really cuts down on any unfairness that would result from enemies surprising you from a blind spot.

The scoring system also feels much more fluid than Deathsmiles. They both have a fever system, where you gain enough medals to power up, dealing more damage and earning more points. But where Deathsmiles took ages to power up, and only the best players could quickly recharge their fever meter, Rolling Gunner lets you quickly leech medals from enemies, and often there’s an explosion of medals right when you come out of fever. In short, the scoring has a better pace. And the scoring system actually works well with the bosses, something I felt Deathsmiles and many other could never pull off. I hate when a scoring system comes to a screeching halt as soon as you reach a boss.

And what bosses they are! Big, beautifugly mecha asshats. I love the twin tank mechas–you’re fighting one and doing fine, when all of a sudden its twin approaches from behind and catches you in a pincer attack. What a terrible surprise! And I love to hate the orbital space station boss, which slowly spins around the screen, attempting to trap you. A jerk! But oh, I love the goofy looking Pterodactylus spacecraft, and I love that the first boss is a fighter craft named Goose. What characters!

When a game’s this mechanically solid, it feels hard to truly explain why. Everything is in its right place. Yes, it is the ugliest shooting game since Metal Black. Yes, it does share a little bit too much DNA with Deathsmiles. But if you like bullet hell games and could never jive with anything except manly spaceships defending the Earth, this is one of the most major entries in the genre in the past ten years. Don’t miss it.

Personal Best: 197,063,270
Casual / RA Stork / True-ALL

Pre-order Rolling Gunner + Overpowered on Play-Asia: https://www.play-asia.com/rolling-gunner-overpower-english/13/70e3mz

Reviewplay by The Electric Underground: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZeZWvW8te8