Yes, it is CHORUS and not CHORVS. I know we all love to get lost in the memes but.. lets just move on.

Chorus is a game that I felt like got a pretty decent spotlight in one of those Xbox showcases and then subsequently was never heard from again. It curiously did not have a day 1 release on Game Pass considering it was part of the Xbox showcase and only made it to the service quite recently. WHAT is Chorus you might ask? Well no one asked this because I don't think many people have actually played it but in a nutshell (and not one of those shells they put on the nut in a factory) Chorus is an arcade space shooter sort of like Freelancer from way back when. You take on the role of Nara, a pilot bestowed with special abilities called "rites" that used to belong to a cult of religious zealots following The Prophet and trying to bring the universe "into Chorus" so it can become "one." This was unification was done through various means of violence that culminated in mass genocide as Nara is ordered to destroy an entire planet for the greater good. This event takes a heavy toll on Nara and leads her to question the doctrine she so dogmatically followed all her life, and ultimately leads her to abandons the cult, abandon her sentient ship and lead a solitary life as a scrapper in the outer systems.

For what its worth Chorus has A LOT of story and lore that it is constantly dumping on the player, and not a lot of it is very engaging. There is a lot of sci-fi terminology and space religion with various aspects and ideas constantly being thrown at you through rather boring memory visions. Curiously there doesn't appear to be any sort of codex where you can look up any of this stuff at your own leisure so unless you're really paying attention a lot of it can go over your head. Not that this is especially heady stuff. Nara is undergoing a very classic redemption arc from cold hearted killer to a super natural messiah trying to right her wrongs by helping every single straggler along the way and coming to terms with her own guilt and place in the universe. Chances are.. you have already played a Nara in some other game.

The meat and potatoes of the game lie in the somewhat unique space combat at the heart of Chorus. This is not a hardcore space sim so don't expect to be managing several different axis of rotation while juggling different power levels of your internal systems. Chorus is very much a point and shoot type of space shooter that honestly feels somewhat awkward to control at first. There is no strafing and side to side movement is governed by a roll that seems to have just enough of a cooldown on it to feel inconsistent at most times. Not that you will be using this roll for anything other than dodging telegraphed sniper laser strikes. No, the basic movement in Chorus feels rather limited for a space sim but it's main selling point lies in it's unique two-fold answer to the age old conundrum of flying sims: how to make dogfighting interesting when all you do is fly in circles behind each other? Well the answer is special abilities and drifting. Yes, Tokyo Drift style drifting. One of the first basic "rites" or abilities you unlock shifts your ship into a drift trance which is a fancy way of saying it disengages all propulsion and makes you drift in a straight line in the direction of your initial momentum. So while boosting away from an enemy you can engage the drift mode, flip your ship around 180 to aim back at your pursuers while still travelling forwards. This means you're never stuck flying endless circles behind your attackers because you can always just flip around at will to counter attack. This ability also plays heavily into certain environmental puzzles as well as capital sized ships that require you to fly inside tight corridors while taking out weak points to the sides. The second ability that defies this classic merry go round tactic allows Nara to simply teleport behind any enemy ship. This might seem like almost cheating but Chorus manages to lay on the pressure thick enough to where it's never that simple and along with the need to manager your power juice combat is always fairly interesting. As time goes on your unlock more supernatural abilities that help in the eradication of increasingly tough enemy types and honestly thats where the game shines the most.

The biggest problem with Chorus is that it makes a rather lousy first impression. The game opens up with Nara piloting a scrappy junker of a ship and it takes a few missions before you get back up to speed and start gaining the abilities that make the game unique in the first place. Both the opening tutorial and several first story quests are not very good and I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people put the game down before you even start getting your special abilities. The idea of starting the player underpowered before they get back to their "normal" super powered state is nothing new but it's a delicate balancing act that I feel Chorus gets completely wrong. The proper way of doing this is having a heavily scripted and incredibly short introduction section where a few enemies bat you around before you return having regained your "lost abilities" and wipe the floor with them. Chorus doesn't even hint at the fact that you will get anything special down the road, and in fact lets you go on and do side missions all in this underpowered state that you shouldn't waste a single second of your game time on. I flew around the semi open world doing odd jobs not knowing I didn't even fully get out of the tutorial zone yet.

Once you do start unlocking more abilities the combat really opens up and the game becomes a much more fluid and enjoyable experience. Unfortunately that does take a while and I wouldn't fault anyone for giving up along the way. Through the power of guilt free gaming on Game Pass I was able to get there although I was ready to drop the game several times in the early goings and in fact did take a break from it before giving it a second and third try that finally made me stick with it. The narrative never really gets any more interesting and nearly all of it unfortunately plays out as audio logs that force you to float around in space and stare at static holograms. As an arcady space shooter it does come into it's own and with a surprisingly robust equipment system that has set-bonuses you can even customize your "build" to a limited degree. This is one of those games where it's kind of hard to recommend because.. it's not great, but it's not bad. Just kind of a middlie of the road game with some neat ideas that is decent fun if you want to fill up some time between bigger releases, but one I wouldn't recommend you pay full price. It's very pretty on consoles and I imagine even more so on PC if you have the system to run it. Funny enough on Series X the game crashed several times for me because it "ran out of video memory" which is something I never thought I'd see on a console. If you have Game Pass then check it out but also be aware that YES it is awkward to control at first, and yes you will get used to it and you DO need to wait a while before it starts getting better. If you can get through all that.. there is.. a fairly decent game waiting for you on the other side.