PC Gamer - UK (2022-02)

Rather than constantly tilting your

ship to follow the enemy, here you

have a touch of physics-defying

magic that lets you ‘drift’ like you’re

in a sports car. Pretty soon you’re

using your Jedi-esque powers to

disrupt shields and batter the enemy

with Void-powered

attacks. With its

physics and suite of

useful abilities, Chorus

is the most pumped

I’ve felt playing a

dogfighting game.

To set the scene a

little: it’s the grim,

humourless future and

a cult named The Circle has taken

over the galaxy, using ruthless tactics

and powers drawn from an alien

source. You play as Nara, formerly a

high-ranking Circle pilot who

swapped sides to the Resistance, and

who is now on a mission to take the

whole dang empire down. You do

this by zipping around in Forsa, your

sentient spaceship, taking on quests

in a clutch of sizeable open spaces.

Structurally, Chorus resembles an

open-world RPG – let’s say The

Witcher 3, as it’s also broken up into

separate zones. These

zones aren’t simply

blobs of empty space;

you’ll explore asteroid

fields, planet rims, and

distant alien temples,

each lit up by colourful

space phenomena and

littered with sidequests.

Quests, as you might

expect, generally involve shooting

enemy ships, though other objectives

are always thrown into the mix.

While not Witcher level, Chorus’

quests are still a step above the dry

bounty hunts you’ll find in most

spaceship sims. That’s thanks to

Nara, whose breathlessly whispered

inner monologue adds context to

proceedings. Far from a silent

protagonist, you spend the game

inside her head, as she processes her

guilt over her former life.

I wouldn’t say the story,

characters, or setting are particularly

standout, but I enjoyed Chorus’

mixture of mysticism and hard sci-fi.

This peaks in the alien temples,

which feature a monolithic brutalism

that will make the team behind

Control jealous. Here you fly

frustrating gauntlets to acquire new

abilities, which steadily make the

exciting combat even better.

CIRCLE JERKS

At least on the normal difficulty,

combat makes great demands of you,

requiring mastery of your abilities

and the most up-to-date ship

modules. Even then, I found myself

reloading far too many times. Even

the most thrilling battles can become

gruelling through repetition.

Chorus is the sort of game where

checkpoints and autosaves are two

different things. The former occur

frequently, but these checkpoints

count for nothing if you quit the

H

aving six degrees of freedom is not as freeing as it might

appear. Take spaceship combat, the exciting process of

spewing lasers at enemies. For every successfully landed

shot, there’s a whole lot of endlessly swerving to keep those

fighter ships in view. It can be exhausting; sometimes I

dread the arrival of a fleet, rather than being excited for the dogfight.

Enter Chorus, a game that makes spaceship combat fast and thrilling.

SHIPSHAPE

Watch this space, I’m pulling off sweet moves in spaceship RPG CHORUS

By Tom Sykes

The most

pumped I’ve

felt playing a

dogfighting

game

TOP: (^) There are three weapon types.
RIGHT: One power lets you teleport behind
enemy ships.
NEED TO KNOW
WHAT IS IT?
An open world space
game where you pilot a
sentient ship
EXPECT TO PAY
£35
DEVELOPER
Deep Silver Fishlabs
PUBLISHER
Deep Silver
REVIEWED ON
Intel Core i7-10750H,
16GB RAM, GeForce
RTX 2060
MULTIPLAYER
No
LINK
chorusthegame.com
Chorus
REVIEW