Sony’s PlayStation Plus is a subscription-based service that allows members to get weekly and monthly access to discounted games on the PlayStation Network, as well as the occasional free game. Sony has calculated that the $50/year service has granted thousands of dollars in savings.

Everyone loves free games, but nobody likes a free game that’s a piece of HDD-hogging garbage. “In PlayStation Plus We Trust” is a weekly feature outlining the new free addition(s) to the Instant Game Collection to help you decide whether that newest freebie in the Store is worth your time.

 This week, download Sine Mora for a beautiful challenge. 

Sine Mora (Vita)

At its core, Sine Mora is a fairly rudimentary side-scrolling shooter. You collect powerups, shoot down enemy ships, and get to the end before time runs out. This is a bullet hell shooter; that term refers to scrolling shooters featuring hundreds, if not thousands of projectiles on the screen at once, with pinpoint precision required to avoid them. The term “hell” should not be taken lightly here either, as the game can be ludicrously hard on the higher difficulty level. It’s no less fun for it, however; the game is highly entertaining and stays engaging and tense through its entirety.

Grasshoper Manufacture’s shooter is gorgeous to look at, with robust and colorful levels highlighted by an impressive engine and a compelling 2.5D perspective that has things hover in both the foreground and background before coming to meet the player, and a camera that twists around the locales and ships during cutscenes: it is very good to look at. In between blowing apart enemies, the story twists through some bonkers time travel story (in other words, exactly what you would expect from Grasshopper Manufacture). Those that don’t love the genre will not have their minds changed, but the game is a great throwback for gamers that miss the shooters of yesteryear.

Verdict: Worth Downloading

Deals

Some of the highlights for this week include Bioshock, DmC: Devil May Cry, Infamous: Festival of Blood, and definitely The Darkness II. The rest aren’t amazing (certainly not as stellar as last week), but there should be something for everyone here.