Dodging wave after wave of lasers, I thought I had finally survived the darkest depths of bullet hell when I made it through the likes of R-Type and Geometry Wars without spiking my controller in frustration. Then I heard that Suda 51’s development company Grasshopper Manufacture, the team behind my favorite tongue-in-cheek action hack-n-slash series No More Heroes, was taking to the skies. Being the insane masochistic gamer that I am I thought it would be fun to give their new side scrolling shooter SINE MORA a go… and it was.

Sine Mora’s big hook is its manipulation of time as a gameplay element. Not only is the countdown clock at top center a representation of the time you have left to complete a segment of a level, but it is also your ship’s shield. Destroy a ship and you receive a little time bonus, get hit and a few seconds get shaved off. An interesting concept indeed, which only makes playing more frantic when the skies light up during firefights and chunks of time get knocked off after each enemy salvo. If everything coming at you is too much to maneuver through, you can also slow down time after a meter has been filled to give you just a little more edge in the fight. To help keep your clock up there are also increasing levels of weaponry to be collected and a myriad of sub-weapons with devastating effects, but use of these sub-weapons resets your score multiplier. It’s a calculated gamble you’re going to have to make if you want to reach truly high scores and this adds an extra layer of depth to the experience.

Speaking of depth, Sine Mora is quite possibly one of the most complete shooters I have ever played. Aside from a story mode with near infinite replay value at any difficulty, the game also has an Arcade Mode and Score Attack Mode for more experienced players and a Boss Training section to practice on the bigger baddies. The increasing levels of difficulty in Sine Mora are nothing to scoff at, and unlocking all of the dazzling weapons, planes, and pilots to be used is even more incentive to jump back into the firefight. The only gripe I have, which seems a bit rudimentary on my part when it comes to a handful of modern games, is that Sine Mora lacks any multiplayer aspects. This is the type of game I would have loved to tackle with a few friends, but unfortunately I’ll just have to fly solo as a wheelchair-bound anthropomorphic bison.

If you’re a fan of the shoot ‘em up genre (or shmups) then you should check out Sine Mora. There are insane levels of difficulty to conquer, multiple weapon and plane combinations to master, and an absolutely stunning 3D rendered world ready to shoot your little animal pilots out of the sky. Make it out alive, and even Falco will be impressed.

Sine Mora is available now on Xbox LIVE Arcade for 1200 Microsoft Points.