Well, someone on Deep Silver Fishlabs was absolutely in love with Wing Commander when they grew up because there are some fun similarities with this and Chris Roberts’ classic. Much like Wing Commander, Chorus is a single-player space battle game that has a compelling story helped by somewhat smooth controls and a customizable ship experience.
Let’s do a flyby of this.
Unsure of story…at the beginning
The story revolves around a cult called the Circle and their imminent dominance of the universe. Join them or die is their mantra. Led by incredible pilots called Elders, the force tears apart planets and conquer everything. When one conquering quest from the cult is led by an Elder named Nara, she causes the Circle’s destruction of a planet that ends up killing billions of people. Having her eyes opened to the terrible nature of her role, she abandons her post and goes into hiding. She spends a healthy amount of time in hiding while doing remedial work, helping a group of refugees at a place called the Enclave. All is well until she finds herself back in the presence of the Circle and is forced to help the Enclave and a rebellious crew of survivors that are doing their best to take on the brutal force.
The narrative writer on Chorus needed to pump their brakes in the first act of this game. There was so much information that meant nothing to me but was expected to have an emotional impact. Nara is narrating the opening scenes and discusses how she got to the Enclave but gives no context to what she is explaining. Thankfully, due to my movie-watching nature, where I have ingested 1000s of movies since the age of five, I kind of picked up on the parts the game was trying to put out there. I understood that Nara was running from her past. I got it that she felt regret. I did not understand all the people and things she left behind because we neither saw them nor did we understand what the hell she was talking about. It was like experiencing the first 20-minutes of Moulin Rouge, where you’re like, “What in the hell am I watching and why is the film intensely throwing this much at me?” Then everything calms down.
The story flattens out a bit, stretches its legs, and you get to see Nara slowly uncover her past for you in the game, thus providing that missing context. You get to see the enemy in action and what is at stake. You get introduced to the people affected by the Circle. Then finally you get to meet Nara’s ship, which has been in hiding for seven years. The story starts to smooth out and everything starts to come into focus. The urgency and emotion you were supposed to feel in act one, which was missing, starts to settle and find their spot in the story. The story then becomes a solid narrative that is easily understood. That first act, though, yikes.
The story has a shelf life of about 10-12 hours before concluding and I can tell you that it certainly finds its legs. That beginning was a lot, though, and it may be too much for someone not dedicating themselves to the mission of playing this game. The main character is beautifully flawed, self-conflicted, and a perfect anti-hero…eventually.
Anyway, the story has a lot of pieces to it, but it does form into a cohesive narrative that is worth your time. Is it anything particularly spectacular as a whole? No, but it’s still good.
Wing Commander-ing
It has been a long while since I enjoyed the heck out of a space simulator. If you want to count No Man’s Sky in the equation, and you shouldn’t because it’s more about visiting planets and crafting/selling than it is about space battling, then yes, I have played a fun space simulator recently. In the same vein as Wing Commander? Well, it is Chorus, and Chorus alone. The gameplay is simplistic in its style and execution as WC. You have assumed flight controls (thrusters, boosters, etc.), you can add new items to your ship to upgrade it, and you have several moves you can perform in space to help with space battles. The devs have done a superb job of making this out to be a great space battle experience. As I’m typing this, I want to go back into the game and just strafe, fire, and maneuver around the huge space environments created for the player to play within. In a sense, Deep Silver Fishlabs has created a more refined, fun way of playing in space with a well-armed ship. When simulators get it right, it’s fun.
If I must be picky about this title, though, I will say that the controls did have a learning control. The strafing, which I thoroughly appreciate after the game opened into its story, was a frustrating tutorial experience. For example, when going through the tutorial, you must open force fields in the game to progress through sections. This requires you to knock lit objects on the wall with your Gatling guns as you use your boosters and strafe the ship. The game gives you a limited amount of time and space to boost, strafe, and hit your targets, as the lit objects reset in 4-5 seconds. You must have all the objects opened to progress. I think I spent about 10-20 minutes hating this game because of this tutorial. I cursed, I promised myself I would never use strafing again, and wondered many times why they built this tutorial in the first place. It shouldn’t be this frustrating. Then I got out of the tutorial, got into a space battle where I could hit the brakes on my ship, strafe, shoot, and do a hard U-turn all in one swoop. This made the frustration very much worth it. Still, if you play this game, you may lose your mind trying to do the first part of this complaint. The controls suffered a bit because of this tutorial, which was incredibly unnecessary. You run into those objects more than once, so enjoy them. Anyway, power through and know something good is waiting on the other side of that bad.
Another minor complaint revolves around the onscreen indicators. Finding spots of interest and enemies during space battles and exploration isn’t easily noticeable. The on-screen indicators are tiny and sometimes they tend to disappear, which gives some concern to exploring or battling, or at the very least some slight panicking. The panic can turn to frustration quickly when you must re-establish the markers in midflight or fight by quickly pressing the X button to send out a Death Stranding-like signal to mark everything around you. It’s a minor complaint in the scheme of things, but nonetheless, it will affect your controls and enjoyment.
Controls and onscreen indicators aside, the game gives you everything you wanted in gameplay design. You can stay on the main story, and you should understand Nara and her quest, or you can do mini sides that allow you to explore a bit. Accompanying ships to their destinations to get extra space dough or going in to retrieve objects that pirates stole, you get some quests that are quick and help you to build your ship up a bit. The game’s world feels incredibly open because of how this structure works. Having the freedom to roam a bit and to fly your ship as you would like does make for some fun space flight. You will certainly have some choices for a game that isn’t coming in hot at a full price for a new game. I like that very much about the game and it works in my opinion.
All the above is pretty much the entire game in a nutshell. It works on almost every level, though it’s a bit shaky on controls at the beginning. For a game that is sitting at $39.99, it contains some fun gameplay and flight. Chorus is definitely worth a go.
Graphically baffling at times
The actual gameplay of Chorus is gorgeous. They get the girth and scope of the worlds out there and it feels like you’re flying in space. You’re there in this HUGE set of worlds flying around, strafing, and pulling off some fun moves. On the actual gameplay side of the universe, it’s a positively gorgeous game.
Then there are the cutscenes. A mixed bag of visuals to be certain and specific.
The cutscenes shift from this hauntingly gorgeous gameplay to “Is this on a PS5, PS4, or are we teetering on a low-end PC?” I usually don’t put value in cutscenes, but there is a variable quality rise and fall between scenes. For example, there is a scene where Nara is gaining her power back after she wakes up her Circle ship. While in the ship, she is mid-range quality, you can see those weird Madden-like mouth movements with the teeth with jaggies on them. Then the scene shifts to her confronting her old self before gaining her power back and the graphics look out of this world gorgeous. You have PlayStation 5-esque quality that really drives the narrative. The game fluctuates like this many times and I don’t know why there is such a huge rise and fall between these scenes, as they should be consistent throughout.
Regardless, the majority of what you’re going to see is going to be stunning, so expect it.
Conclusion
Chorus is a gorgeous space flight fight simulator that harkens back to the days of Wing Commander with eventually smooth controls and intense battles. It does have some visible flaws to the narrative and some onscreen issues during battle, but for the most part, it’s darn good.
