Last week we received five Xbox LIVE Arcade games from Microsoft to review. Being the slow moving zombies we are around here we knew we’d never get to all that gaming goodness in good time. We decided that we’d ask some of our guest writers and members of the zombie community to help out and they were only happy to do so.
Over the next five days – and starting today – we will post an XBLA review a day and also offer the rest of the community to partake further. It’s pretty simple. Comment on any (or all) of the five ‘Community XBLA Review’ (Sine Mora, Anomaly, Diabolical Pitch, The Splatters and Fez) posts in the next five days and one randomly drawn participant will win a code for Sine Mora sponsored by Microsoft SA. But that’s enough from me.
This review of Sine Mora is done by sometime Zombiegamer contributor Chris ‘SpirosZA’ Hartley.
Developer: Digital Reality / Grasshopper Manufacture
Publisher: Microsoft
Platform: Xbox Live Arcade
Price: 1200MSP
If we had to give it a numerical score: 7.0 out of 10
…Sine Mora… (Latin for “without delay”) is a very fresh and “different” styled horizontal shooter. It’s not what you would recall in you arcade days where 20c got you 3 or 4 lives. In Sine Mora time is your friend. No health bar, no life counter, just a timer. For every kill you get, time is added to your counter and when you take a hit, time is deducted. When the timer hits zero your life hits zero and it is game over (you at least have 9 continues to restart from a checkpoint and not the beginning of a level).
There are some familiarities that you will recall from the old arcade games such as power ups, weapon upgrades as you play, score bonuses etc. There is also something slightly different added to the mix. You can slow down time for a limited period. Should you find yourself in a tight spot you can use this ability to help you get out of it. It’s limited though and the replenish bonuses for it is few and far between, use it wisely.
There is also a complex story behind Sine Mora. I found it quite hard to follow. It jumps from one character to another and by the third level I did not really care for the story anymore. In a nutshell, you take control of a bunch of animal pilots on a distant planet that evil Imperial Forces are trying to overrun and control, thrown into that mix is an underlying story too. A father is trying to avenge his son’s death by ANY means necessary, even if it means taking on a whole Empire…towards the end of the game the 2 stories came together and it made more sense. Quite a dark story for such a bright and vibrant looking game…
The game is beautiful – no doubt. Full HD glory, smooth lines, flows perfectly and looks fantastic. The attention to detail is impeccable. There is always something going on in the background, dog fights between aircraft with small explosions and smoke trials, buildings collapsing, troops moving on the ground etc. While the game plays in 2D fashion, the developers added a bit of depth to the game by making your airplane do fly by’s and will occasionally “turn” to take you down another route (all cut scene though, you have no control of it).
Playing the game was fun yet boring at times to be honest. You see, what makes the game fun to play is also its primary let down in my opinion. Moving from left to right across the screen shooting at enemies and different Boss’s can be a bit repetitive and loses its charm after a while. Story mode is dead easy (I managed to finish the game in just under 2 hours) to play and makes you think that it was a waste of time and money, arcade mode is the complete opposite! You thought you where all that and more in story mode but once you hit arcade mode to get your name on the world leader boards, you quickly realize how bad you are and how difficult it is. Everything just seems to move faster and bullets come from all over the place! You need to react much faster than you did in story mode in order to stay alive and it is addictive getting your ass handed to you over and over again for some reason…money well spent.
The good:
- Beautiful to look at
- Good gameplay
- Arcade mode (because it is soooo addictive)
The bad
- Story mode is too short
- Can get slightly repetitive at times
- Arcade mode (because it is soooo addictive to get your ass handed to you)
Remember, comment below – stroke the man’s ego, tell he’s awesome, tell us if you agree with him, or simply tell him you love him – and you could win a code for Sine Mora. Competition will close at noon on Monday 30 April.
