Long-time readers of the site may remember that I loved the shmup Sine Mora when it came out earlier this year. If you want the details, you can check my original review here but the gist of it is that Sine Mora is a well designed shmup with great graphics & music and an interesting & unusual story involving time travel. The game started out as an XBox 360 exclusive but in November, versions for the PC, PS3, and Playstation Vita were released. I was curious to see how the Vita version compared to the original version and so I procured a copy of the Vita game, sat down in front of my TV with an Xbox controller and a Vita at hand and alternated between playing parts of the game on each system.
I am pleased to report that there is little negative to report as far as the Vita version of Sine Mora goes. The visuals, music, and gameplay all appear to be identical between the two versions. The only major difference I noticed between the two versions was in the load times – the Vita version takes noticeably longer to load, averaging around 2-3 times as long as the Xbox 360 load times. This isn’t as bad as it sounds since the Xbox version’s loads are only a few seconds long but it is a minor annoyance.
There isn’t much in the way of new content. There’s a new character in the form of Wilhelmine Muller (making a cameo appearance from the game, Under Defeat). There’s a new touch-screen control option for the crazy people who felt like the game wasn’t hard enough using traditional controls and there’s a GPS-based art gallery. I was disappointed that there wasn’t more new content (if nothing else, more difficulty options would have been more nice) but the fact that it’s portable is a big bonus in and of itself.
Sine Mora on the Vita is a fantastic port of one of the best games of 2012. I highly recommended to everyone who enjoys a good horizontal shmup.
