Chorus aims to reshape the space shooter

Nara spent most of her life in a cult called Circle, which distorted her mind and trained her to use a mysterious alien power called “ether”. This dark, corrupt energy allows a few special people to release the god-like power that breaks all physical rules. Unfortunately, for Circle, the cult did not maintain tight enough control over Nara’s chains. Now, the skilled warrior got rid of the influence of the circle and wanted to bring them down. Equipped with the most advanced star fighter in the universe, Nara’s journey takes her to some of the darkest places in the universe and challenges her sanity.

Developer Fishlabs is known for its work on the Galaxy on Fire mobile series, but publisher Deep Silver has given studios the freedom to use Chorus to reinvent the space shooter genre. The open world space fighting game is full of upgrades and some unique spins of traditional zero-gravity fighting. A few months ago, we saw the game in action early on. In order to better feel it in a more refined state, we personally experienced the latest version in the first few hours.

The chorus began in Nara running from the ring. In order to gain the upper hand, Nara stole one of the most deadly weapons in the galaxy: a sentient starship named Forsaken. Nara is mentally connected to the Forsaken, which allows her to perform incredible flying maneuvers, such as the ability to make sharp turns by drifting like a racing car. Chorus provides a solid sense of speed, which is often difficult to do in games set in open spaces.

Chorus is a huge open world full of side missions and other random encounters. Throughout the journey, Nara can upgrade the equipment of the Forsaken. Each weapon is particularly suitable for different tasks. For example, Gatling guns have a high rate of fire but low damage output, which makes them ideal for dealing with fast-moving targets. The laser strikes are great, and their concentrated attacks are particularly good at disabling shields. Finally, missiles are incredibly destructive to armored opponents, but are relatively slow, which makes them best for slow-moving or stationary targets. Forsaken also has three different mod slots that can be used to change weapon statistics or further customize the ship’s performance.

The flight control of Chorus feels good, and its various enemies keep the movement smooth. For example, crows are lightly armed crafts that fall apart quickly under your crosshairs, but their speed makes them difficult to hunt down, and if you don’t reduce the population, their overwhelming numbers may put you in trouble . On the other hand, the Condor is a heavy armored gunship, with impact and deploying frontal shields, making it difficult to attack from the front. Thankfully, these cumbersome behemoths are easy to defeat. Finally, the Shade-class ships are huge dreadnought ships that continuously spray smaller enemy ships, so you need to quickly destroy them before they flood you.

Even with the Forsaken by her side, Nara is not ready to accept Circle. She believed that she needed to reawaken her etheric abilities, so she began to search for a series of ancient temples related to the ominous alien race named “faceless”. After completing these temple challenges, Nara gained a new etheric power, which can help her both in battle and in battle. An ability called a hunting ritual allows Nara (and the Forsaken) to travel briefly across the ether, which means she flashes out of reality temporarily and reappears elsewhere. I use it to slide over obstacles or reposition behind enemy ships. Another kind of etheric power transforms the forgotten into a beam of light that penetrates the enemy ship. The other allowed Nara to control enemy ships, turning them into deadly projectiles. Fishlabs said that Forsaken could eventually become so powerful that Nara didn’t even need weapons to shoot down enemy fleets.

Space shooters have a long history in this industry, dating back to computer space in 1971. However, we have not yet seen many of the latest versions of this type gain widespread traction. We don’t know if Chorus will change this, but it brings some new ideas. Chorus’ open space design, compact flight mechanism and creative upgrades give us hope for the game to be released on December 3rd.