PREVIEW: Chorus — Hands-on First Impression

Recently, we got a chance to check out Chorus, an upcoming open-world space-combat action game, and a brand new IP from Deep Silver. We got to spend a little over an hour with the game and managed to finish a few quests, random encounters, and a bit of exploration. Here’s what we thought so far.

STAR WARS?

You play as Nara, an ace pilot flying a sentient ship, Forsaken, bent on stopping the oppressive space cult called The Circle, led by the Great Prophet, The Circle seeks dominion over the entire universe. The long-short is that you are a former member of the Circle who defected and commandeered a sentient vessel which you’ll use as your ace the fight against the galactic tyrant. The story doesn’t seem too inspiring and feels a tad too similar at times to other interstellar conflicts that we’re familiar with, but I am pretty intrigued by the buildup and am quite curious how the story will unfold.

It seems you’ll be spending the entirety of the game on Foresaken, and outside of cinematic cutscenes, you’ll spend most interactions with NPCs through comms. Thankfully, the voice acting in Chorus seems good and the banter between Nara and Forsaken is pretty entertaining. Hopefully, the writing manages to stay intriguing throughout the full game. Hope to see some improvements in the cinematics, too, as some scenes you could easily tell did not utilize motion capture.

GALACTIC DRIFT

We got to spend a good amount of time zipping around space and we can say with certainty that flying Forsaken is fun and shooting bad dudes even more so. The area we played in seems to be somewhere in a planet’s ring. Meaning lots of rocks and debris to navigate and maneuver through. Most interesting about the controls is the drift mechanic, which allows you quickly change the direction, drifting your ship towards your new trajectory. Triggering a boost in between drifts lets you zigzag through space like a space-fighting madman. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were several maneuvering activities in the full game.

In terms of actual combat, Forsaken has three main weapons/damage types that correspond with certain color-coded resistances. You’ve got a minigun that shreds low armored ships (red), missiles that teardown heavily-armored units (yellow), and beams to take out energy shields (blue). You can switch weapon types on the fly which comes in handy when going against a variety of ships or when dealing with units with more than one layer or various armor types. These weapons can be upgraded and from what we’ve tried it seems you could modify them with various different properties, ie. modifying the missiles to split into several smaller clusters to hit more targets.

Beyond weapons are Rites. These are special skills that you unlock by completing a challenge or ‘Rite’. From the demo, we had one that allowed us to instantaneously teleport behind the enemy unit you’re locked on to. It’s a great way to dodge incoming fire whilst getting a clear shot at an enemy for a quick takedown. It also allows your ship to phase through certain barriers.

SOLAR FLAIR

The demo we tried was supposedly an early build, but even then, the game looks fantastic. Nothing too spectacular but it manages to maintain high fidelity without dropping frames or straining our measly 2070 S rig. Up close, certain textures and elements do seem a bit dated. But as a whole, especially at ultrawide, the game looks like an absolute blast to explore. What we had seen so far looks good enough as it is, but considering that it was meant to be an early build, I have high hopes for more improvements at launch.

VERDICT – KEEP ON YOUR RADAR

Considering the current lack of space-fighting sim games, Chorus is a welcome and well-anticipated entry. Flying Forsaken and blasting ships were loads of fun. But hopefully, the full game has more enemy types and some exciting boss encounters, as the game is barely out of feeling repetitive. The game seemed well optimized too and runs great in ultrawide, but hopefully, we get more visual updates in time for launch. The game is set to release towards the end of the year and is definitely a title to look out for.