Chorus

It's quite a unique game, which combines arcade space combat with lots of dialogues and small stories. So somehow to me it felt more like an open world action game. It's just so rare (at least from what I've seen) to have a space combat game with that kind of quests and stories. Interestingly enough, the strong sides of this game are also its weaknesses. The combat is fun, but VERY repetitive, even if you use all the arsenal at your disposal. There's A LOT of talking, but it's mostly forgettable. The story is actually good enough, but it's just so long that only 16% of people who bought the game finished it (according to Steam achievements). Weirdly enough, the story reminds me Hellblade a lot and it's not because the main character is often whispering to herself. It's a story about psychological struggle, the existential crisis, the questions about what defines consciousness and how much of all of that is real is quite questionable at some points too. But the delivery is a bit bland, some voice acting could be done much better, and the writing could also be more creative. Unlike the mechanics, which due to the lack of detailed explanation often requires a bit of time to figure out. Especially if you take breaks between the sessions. But if you're patient enough it all becomes a second nature fast. What really made me get into it though is that this game is a hidden VR gem. It doesn't have native VR support, unfortunately, but it works very well with UEVR mod. Not only it gives the advantage of being able to look around, especially during those chaotic fights, where you are surrounded by enemies from all directions, but it's simply stunning in some places. Don't expect too much diversity in the surroundings, but there were quite a few memorable places. And when you actually get the real sense of scale it's just so much more fun to explore. It took me 26 hours to finish, but I completed every single quest I could find and I rarely skipped the open world random encounters. So don't take it as a measurement, can be definitely done much faster.

Finished one quest and the other two that were in-progress completely vanished from my mission list. I can no longer do anything but the infinitely repeatable random encounters now. ( -_-")

An actually pretty fun space flight game, but with crippling design choices in the mid-boss that's turning it from fun space fighter to an annoyance with boss mechanics that make no sense, requiring constant movements tight corridors and super-tight time limit. All in all it's an annoying progress blocker that's better off skipped or removed from the game.

I know for every game out there, even great ones, there are always a bunch of reviews saying how bad the writing is. But it really is atrocious here. It's all just pure vibes, there is no logic or thinking behind any of it besides just going for a certain vibe. If you think of classic spaceship games like Freespace or Tachyon The Fringe, those games would have you working across multiple missions preparing the needed elements for a big assault mission or some such. In this game, you just kind of stumble across a station and by chance all the main characters happen to be there and it's just like, "Hey, let's attack the station!" Like there is absolutely no sense of cause and effect, or building up to anything, or anything like that. ♥♥♥♥ just happens. The game looks nice and runs well, unlike a lot of stuff these days.

Das Spiel Chorus hat mich absolut positiv überrascht. Wer auf rasante Weltraum-Action steht, kommt hier voll auf seine Kosten. Grafik: Die visuelle Darstellung ist fantastisch. Die Lichteffekte im All, die riesigen Raumstationen und die flüssigen Animationen sehen einfach klasse aus. Sound: Der Sound ist absolut irre! Die Soundeffekte der Antriebe und Waffen knallen richtig gut und die atmosphärische Musik zieht einen sofort mitten in die Action. Gameplay: Das Fluggefühl und die Steuerung fühlen sich frisch und extrem dynamisch an. Für mich ein echter Geheimtipp für alle Sci-Fi-Fans. Macht unglaublich viel Spaß!

Superb dogfighting powertrip, but lackluster story that thankfully doesn't overstay it's welcome.

I don't know, man. Technically speaking, there's a good idea behind a sort of open world in which you explore and stumble upon hidden treasures and accidental missions. But as far as the actual gameplay features... eh. I get it, it's a hybrid of a game, somewhere between an arcade sim and a sim sim. But even if it borrows more features from the former, you should have some basic stuff, such as getting leading fire done right. Here? You're supposed to shoot directly at the enemy while he's moving hundreds or even thousands of meters away in various directions. Not cool. The ever-present "inner voice" narrative whispering would otherwise be semi-okay (even if it's the number one overused feature in today's gaming world), but here it feels disconnected and outlandish. Probably because it's also overdone in the spirit of thinking being allegedly mysterious every time any thinking is done. As do the many "facial cinematics," unfortunately. Those really hit the nail in the coffin, man. A diffused and stilted face that you look at for like 10–20 seconds before, during, and after each mission, as if to say yet again, "It's so eneegmateec, there's stuff going through her heeeaaad, just listen, ommmggg." Not really. Not like this, and certainly not while abusing the same sentiment over and over again. I mean, if your game focuses on something, you should do that one thing correctly. Otherwise, the controls feel quite responsive, and the combat around many environmental elements can get nicely tense, but you see, therein lies another missed opportunity. For whatever reason, banking and steering are absent. So, your options for aerial acrobatics such as flying vertically, performing maneuvers, carpeting a surface, etc. are severely limited. And why do we play space sims? Certainly not for fewer options to steer your craft than a Fokker Eindecker, even at steroid speed. A note on killing enemies. They can swarm you easily enough, but deleting them is just as easy if you move properly. At least here there's some fair gaming beauty to be found: both the player and the NPCs are deadly. Lastly, the fricking hand holding. "Find a way inside" means: follow a bright-blue leading light. Not thiso sh1to againo. It's not an entirely bad game, and maybe it'll unfold more. But I don't feel like neither recommending nor playing it more for the reasons above. I'm glad I bought it only during a heavy sale. Too many questionable or outright missing features. And the modern trend pandering... the brainrot of explaining every important event on the screen with a mind voice, or through bright, artificial visual stimuli, insulting the player's intelligence as if they're not supposed to figure things out as part of the gaming challenge... No, thanks.

While I'm annoyed the developers apparently don't understand how space flight works, overall Chorus is a solid action game. The story is... weird. The weapons aren't as varied as I'd like. The progression sometimes feels off. But somehow the whole is more than the sum of its parts and it turns out to be a fun action game. Everspace is better, but Chorus captures a lot of the same beauty and fun moments.

Fantastic voice acting, fine graphics, fun combat that progressively gets more intense with new abilities/mechanics, interesting story, and good questing! However, the pacing and tracking of quests is awful! I have to constantly stop my ship to let dialouge play out because there will somehow be main quest, side quest, banter, and spontaneous quest dialouge qued up that needs to play out, and getting to a location will cut it off. Quests can sometimes be hard to track and VERY finiky! Needing to be within an unspecified distance in a following mission and failing constantly because the game refuses to tell you the parameters. They want you to follow close, but not too close, and NOT behind asteroids despite it specificlly telling you to stay out of line of sight. They also mapped the "sense" button to the same button as "refuse quest", leading to many accidental side quest refusals, forcing me to leave the area and come back later to actually finish it. Very annoying! If you think you won't mind that, there's plenty of fun to be had and it's definitly worth the sale price of $2.50 USD. If you think that would annoy the eff out of you, maybe skip this one.

[h1][i]“IN A UNIVERSE SO FULL OF WONDERS, THEY HAVE MANAGED TO INVENT BOREDOM.”[/i] ~Death (Sir Terry Pratchett's Hogfather)[/h1] As usual, when talking 'bout a game, the first thing we should do is look at its dev. Now, who's Deep Silver Fishlabs? Why, of course, those are the makers of such big hits as Star Wars: Imperial Ace, and Deep: Submarine Odyssey. What? Never heard of those? I really wonder why... JK, of course, I know exactly why. [i]Because those were bloody J2ME games![/i] You know. Java? For those bulky, huge phones your parents used to have back when dinosaurs used to roam our planet? That was Deep Silver Fishlabs, known simply as Fishlabs back in the day. And now, that the Ice Age is finally over (I really hope that the dang squirrel got its acorn, BTW), they're back to deliver their dream project: an expensive new take on their first game—Galaxy on Fire. No, seriously. No matter how you look at Chorus, it's Galaxy on Fire all over. Chorus is so close to what we had on mobiles back in 2005 that it feels more like a remake than a new game. The formula is exactly the same (it's mainly a space shooter, but you can also dock at stations and buy better weapons and upgrades there). That certain design aesthetic that feels like a shameless rip-off of the ships from popular Sci-Fi like Star Trek, Star Wars, and Battlestar Galactica is still there too. You played Galaxy on Fire? Or maybe some other Fishlabs games I mentioned? You'll instantly recognize the stuff. Which... isn't necessarily a bad thing. I mean, I joked a lot 'bout the old phones being bulky and stuff, but those [i]were[/i] a thing, [i]and[/i] Fishlabs' games were highly regarded by both players and the press. Galaxy on Fire, for example, is currently rated 8.2 on MobyGames, while lots of the journalists gave it 90+%. Which [i]does[/i] mean something, thanks to how, back in the day, the video game press wasn't just one glorified AD—not yet. In other words, those [i]were[/i] good games. So, bringing those back? With a bigger budget and modern tech? It kinda made sense. Is Chorus good, though? Well. 'Bout dat. Don't get me wrong, though, it's not terrible. Far from it. With Fishlabs making such games for OMGWTF how long (after Java mobiles finally died out, they continued their Galaxy on Fire series on Apple devices), they... kinda knew their sh*t. Giving us a ship and making us do pew-pew is just the thing they do. Like, you know. Bakers make bread. Baristas pour you the sweet juice of life. Fishlabs makes basic space shooters. That's just how things work. There was just no way in hell for them to fail so hard that the game would be unplayable and/or make you rage quit. Especially with a much bigger budget than usual. [i]But[/i]. As funny as it is, in Chorus's case? A big budget is actually a bad thing. Why? Well, it's quite simple, really. The thing is, despite utilizing the latest GPU tech (yes, this game supports everybody's favorite slowdown tool, AKA ray tracing) and providing surround audio (which always feels good in this kind of game), at its core? Chorus is still that ancient mobile game. And no, I am not exaggerating. Despite the world being technically bigger and there being quite some optional objectives you'll be able to pick up while simply flying around in an open-world style, Chorus is a [i]ridiculously[/i] basic game. With only a few places to dock and only a few weapons/upgrades to buy. What's even worse? The missions are like that too. There's, like, no variety. Like, [i]at all[/i]. Usually, you either pick up stuff or kill things. I know, I know, [i]technically[/i], you can describe the majority of video games that way, but you know what I mean. Goals feel ancient and fail to satisfy from the very beginning. And the more you play? The worse those will feel. Especially since it looks like the devs were desperate to make their game feel longer. I mean, I have, like, zero inside info on that, but it looks like a demand from a publisher to me. To make this game at least 10 hours long (there's another possibility, but we'll return to it in a bit). And Chorus? With its 22 basic main missions? It just isn't that. What did they do? Why, the worst thing possible, of course. They've added talks. See, in my opinion, there's always room for some basic space shooting. ROCKFISH Games' EVERSPACE (like Death from Sir Terry's books, dudes just love their Caps Lock) is a nice proof of dat. But those games were fun exactly because of that. You know. Because of all the shooting. In a way, you can compare the effect to so-called “boomer shooters”. Less talk, more fun. Now, Fishlabs added lots and lots of talking (technically, talking NPCs were there since the very beginning, but again, you know what I mean) and... it instantly made things, like, a million times less fun. Think 'bout it. There's a very good reason why you care about your favorite characters. They have traits about them. Strong personalities, backstories... You know, things that make 'em... [i]Them[/i], not just a bunch of polygons on your monitor's screen. In Chorus? We've got a nobody who, like Zeta from Batman Beyond, used to be “a weapon to destroy, but will not destroy anymore”. She has a talking ship, which is supposed to act a bit like Arokh from the Drakan duology, but that's it. That's the whole thing about them. They fly around and they talk about the past. Which isn't even properly described. Yet they keep talking about it. [i]A lot.[/i] You know how “fun” it is when you're at the wrong party? Sitting there, listening to people you don't know doing the “remember when...” thing? 'Bout things you can't possibly remember? That's Chorus. Moreover, every single NPC is a function, not a proper character. Yet guess what? Those just lo-o-ove talking too. And in its second half? The game just goes crazy with all that. “OMG! It's that dude from that old event I was in!” What dude? What event? [i]WHY SHOULD I CARE?!![/i] *SIGH* Moral of the story, guys. Writers. Hire 'em. But you know what? In all of that “let's talk about the past” nonsense, there's actually something that hints at non-linear gameplay. Remember that second possibility I mentioned? Again, I'm only guessing here, but it [i]feels[/i] like Chorus was supposed to have choices. I mean the real ones, not just the ones about picking up or ignoring a certain optional objective. [i]It looks[/i] like at the end of the game we were supposed to end up fighting for good [i]or[/i] getting back to our evil roots. I know, I know, it's an ancient Jedi/Sith trope, but still, it sounds like something that could add quite some fun, while also making us care. But even if it was planned? It was ultimately canceled, and all that we're left with are endless and meaningless talks I just can't force myself to care about, no matter how hard I try. Like I said, at the end of the day, as counterintuitive as it is, Chorus is a game that only suffers from all of its budget. Gameplay is way too basic for it to really be needed, while bigger money only meant more trouble. Remove all the boring talks and meaningless flying in a world that doesn't feel alive at all? Make the game more... [i]condensed[/i]? I won't mind it. I mean, I won't [i]love[/i] it (just because there's nothing special to remember here), but I won't mind it. But doing tons of recycled optional objectives? In order to make our Senua-like character (yeah, aside from other things, they copied the most boring character out there—Ninja Theory's Senua with her voices in the head) talk even more about how she feels about events that aren't even in the game? Screw dat. Is there absolutely nothing good here? Well, no. Blowing up the big ships in a Battle of Yavin style is quite fun, and so are the boss battles. Those are poorly designed and more confusing than needed, sure, but they're still fun. All in all, though, going bigger only killed the original, basic fun of good ol' Galaxy on Fire. Dixi.