Sine Mora EX Review – A Philosophical Schmup with Time Travel!

<p><em>Sine Mora EX<&sol;em> is an extended edition of the original 2012 game <em>Sine Mora<&sol;em>&period; In it you play as a variety of characters&comma; chasing a variety of goals&period; These vary from revenge to survival and while putting forward quite good but dark&comma; philosophical points&comma; are also quite confusing&period; This was one of the first barriers to my enjoyment of the game – I couldn’t invest in characters when I suddenly switched perspectives to play as the opposing side&period; Or at least I think I did&period; All the characters are introduced mid-way through their own missions so it’s quite difficult to tell&period; I do have to give a quick thumbs up to the voice acting though&period; The EX edition comes with some credible English voice acting as well as the Hungarian option&comma; allowing the characters to come alive a bit more&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Gameplay wise&comma; the game is a slight variation on the 2D shoot &&num;8217&semi;em up&comma; made famous by games such as <em>Galaga<&sol;em>&period; I say it’s a slight variation&comma; as unlike most of these schmups&comma; <em>Sine Mora EX<&sol;em> allows you to be hit as many times as you want&period; Each time your hit&comma; you lose time and when that runs out you lose&period; You gain time via defeating enemies&comma; getting to checkpoints or picking up capsules&period; Overall this is a cool concept&comma; taking out some of the precision needed for games like this&comma; reducing the difficulty&period; However&comma; in practice&comma; I wasn’t too sure&period; It makes you want to be overly aggressive&comma; trying to get to the next checkpoint as soon as possible&comma; however&comma; the fixed speed stops this&comma; making the entire thing slightly frustrating&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<figure id&equals;"attachment&lowbar;130990" aria-describedby&equals;"caption-attachment-130990" style&equals;"width&colon; 1000px" class&equals;"wp-caption aligncenter"><img class&equals;"wp-image-130990 size-full" src&equals;"https&colon;&sol;&sol;cdn&period;bagogames&period;com&sol;wp-content&sol;uploads&sol;2017&sol;10&sol;28082117&sol;Sine-Mora-EX-3&period;jpg" alt&equals;"Sine Mora EX 1" width&equals;"1000" height&equals;"563" &sol;><figcaption id&equals;"caption-attachment-130990" class&equals;"wp-caption-text">&lpar;<em>Sine Mora EX<&sol;em>&comma; THQ Nordic&rpar;<&sol;figcaption><&sol;figure>&NewLine;<p>The battle system is simple to understand – hold down A to shoot&comma; B to fire a special weapon&period; These special weapons are varied and creative in design and being able to power-up your main weapon is a nice touch&period; By collecting red power-up tokens&comma; your main weapon gets more powerful&comma; however&comma; if your hit you lose some of these&period; If they run off the screen you’ve lost them forever and have to collect again&period; Now&comma; this would be fine&comma; if suddenly getting hit by three separate things isn’t such a normal occurrence&period; I found myself constantly with no weapon power-ups&comma; making it very difficult to progress without restarting&period; I’d rather either keep weapon power-ups once I get so many &lpar;every fiveish probably&rpar; or for there to be more of them&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>It’s not that it’s not impossible to avoid all enemies or run to grab each power-up&comma; but it is difficult&period; The small hitbox compared to your actual ship size &lpar;you can look up the actual hitbox which is nice&rpar; makes it quite difficult to tell what would actually be hit&period; Then when you have finally figured out what could be hit&comma; the rather sluggish controls make it difficult to actually move out the way&period; Time slowing helps&comma; but don’t rely on it as you might run out at a rather inopportune moment&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Let’s go back to a positive now&period; The graphics are stunning&period; 2&period;5D backgrounds&comma; with lots happening all the time and enough detail for you to see every bullet being fired&period; I found no lag on the Switch even with everything happening at once in handheld mode&comma; which is good&period; Besides the voice acting&comma; the music is pretty decent&comma; setting the mood nicely&period; The sound effects are also great – you’d think the relentless gun sounds would be annoying but they’re really quite useful as sometimes you’ll hear something before you can see it&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Sometimes&comma; however&comma; the game can only really be won by getting hit by a trap and then dodging it the second time&period; Trial and error make up a large portion of the game&comma; slowing it down&period; Now&comma; it takes some incredibly great level designers to allow for reactionary based gameplay to work and seem fair&comma; so I can see why they’ve done it this way&comma; but in my opinion&comma; it doesn’t work as well as it should&period; The levels just aren’t interesting enough for me to want to keep replaying them<&sol;p>&NewLine;<figure id&equals;"attachment&lowbar;130989" aria-describedby&equals;"caption-attachment-130989" style&equals;"width&colon; 1000px" class&equals;"wp-caption aligncenter"><img class&equals;"wp-image-130989 size-full" src&equals;"https&colon;&sol;&sol;cdn&period;bagogames&period;com&sol;wp-content&sol;uploads&sol;2017&sol;10&sol;28082032&sol;Sine-Mora-EX-2&period;jpg" alt&equals;"Sine Mora EX 2" width&equals;"1000" height&equals;"563" &sol;><figcaption id&equals;"caption-attachment-130989" class&equals;"wp-caption-text">&lpar;Sine Mora EX&comma; THQ Nordic&rpar;<&sol;figcaption><&sol;figure>&NewLine;<p>Besides story&comma; we also have Arcade mode&comma; Score Attack&comma; Challenge&comma; Boss Training and Versus&period; Arcade mode consists of you choosing your own plane &lpar;out of the ones you’ve unlocked&rpar;&comma; pilot&comma; stage and a special item &lpar;time rewind&comma; reflector etc&period;&rpar;&period; This allows you a bit more freedom than story mode&period; Score Attack is pretty self-explanatory and boss training allows you to&comma; you guessed it&comma; battle the bosses again to learn their attack patterns&period; Challenge gives you special conditions like only hitting yellow mines&comma; while Versus pits you against another player in either static battles or races&period; Overall&comma; there’s plenty to do&comma; especially with extra difficulty levels and coop to play in Story and a global leaderboard&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Overall&comma; Sine Mora EX is a decent schmup with impressive graphics and ideas and themes which the genre can’t quite realize to the extent I expect they wanted&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p style&equals;"text-align&colon; center&semi;"><strong>A Switch review code of <&sol;strong><em><strong>Sine Mora EX<&sol;strong><&sol;em><strong> was provided by THQ Nordic for the purpose of this review<&sol;strong><&sol;p>&NewLine;