You want a bit of eye candy and a sense of scale. Well, okay, that’s not the only thing we ask for. All we want from these games if for them to be exciting and Chorus delivers.
From high octane dogfights to taking on larger foes that are covered in turrets, the action doesn’t let you down and the controls, as we said, give you the freedom to really show off some skills. Mainly though, the game is about those battles.
Initially we were a bit worried that the story aspects of the game would drag out, sci-fi after all does love to bang on about boring nonsense, and while the characters were a little flat and generic, we found ourselves relatively engaged with them, especially Foresaken, your somewhat grumpy ship that you end up reuniting with half way through the game’s first act. The upgrades are a little limited in scope but it’s always nice to get a bit stronger along the way and if anything we just liked scanning the local area and finding hidden caches of credits.
You’ll also earn cash along the way and this can spent on upgrades to your armour, shields, weapons and other gadgets. The trick, as ever, is giving you the power of a deadly, feared protagonist but still making the game a challenge and the game does well to manage that. Thankfully though the game has a good mix of difficulty settings from Easy all the way to Permadeath, so you’re sure to find one that suits you. These fights are still tough though, especially when multiple enemies back up a stronger one and you’re suddenly eating laser fire from all directions. Sure, you’ll mainly be doing the Ace Combat thing of chasing down the enemy by spinning and swooping until your reticule is over their ship but the teleport rite and the drifting ability really take the pain out of it. However, Chorus‘ smart mix of abilities makes dogfighting a joy. But a joypad really isn’t the right tool usually. Well, unless you want to invest in a whole stick set up.
On a PC a mouse is the perfect thing for controlling a ship in a dogfight (just play the sensational Freelancer for an example of that). What all the rites do though are make the combat work. While not exactly being easy to start with, you’ll soon start facing tougher enemies and so gaining the ability to teleport behind them or drift (which lets you turn your ship around without changing direction) are very useful in helping you even up the odds. The Circle are on the lookout for ‘Chorus,’ the titular magical force that powers your ability to scan and, later, do other things to make you a more fearsome pilot.
You’ll learn the basics of combat pretty quickly and then you’re free to have a wander around.Īfter a while though, things ramp up. The game has a degree of openness to it, so you can either plough head on into story missions or take on side missions which are identified by scanning the local area for points of interest. That’s where we pick up the game, with Nara flying around in space in her cheap and cheerful ship, taking on pirates and Circle members alike. Her and her ship, Foresaken, had terrorised space and had even destroyed a whole planet before she saw the error of her ways, abandoned her ship and started fighting for the Resistance. You play as Nara, a talented and deadly fighter pilot who was previously something of an enforcer for The Circle, an evil cult bent on taking over the whole universe. The game is a proper seen-from-behind space epic, the kind of thing that we used to call a Space Opera back in the 16-bit days (if you’ve played Wing Commander, you’ll be familiar with this type of game).
Decemin PS5 / Reviews tagged Chorus / chorvs / combat / dogfighting / space / star wars by RichieĬhorus is a space combat shooter from Fishlabs, the German developer best known for the popular Galaxy on Fire series (a similar set of space shooters that made their name on Android and iOS) and is their first original console title, following on from a couple of Saints Row remasters.