Shipshape

Watch this space, I’m pulling offsweet moves in spaceship RPG Chorus

- By Tom Sykes

Having six degrees of freedom is not as freeing as it might appear. Take spaceship combat, the exciting process of spewing lasers at enemies. For every successfully landed shot, there’s a whole lot of endlessly swerving to keep those fighter ships in view. It can be exhausting; sometimes I dread the arrival of a fleet, rather than being excited for the dogfight. Enter Chorus, a game that makes spaceship combat fast and thrilling.

Rather than constantly tilting your ship to follow the enemy, here you have a touch of physics-defying magic that lets you ‘drift’ like you’re in a sports car. Pretty soon you’re using your Jedi-esque powers to disrupt shields and batter the enemy with Void-powered attacks. With its physics and suite of useful abilities, Chorus is the most pumped I’ve felt playing a dogfighting game.

To set the scene a little: It’s the grim, humorless future, and a cult named The Circle has taken over the galaxy, using ruthless tactics and powers drawn from an alien source. You play as Nara, formerly a high-ranking Circle pilot who swapped sides to the Resistance, and who is now on a mission to take the whole dang empire down. You do this by zipping around in Forsa, your sentient spaceship, taking on quests in a clutch of sizeable open spaces.