Chorus
Finished Chorus the other night.
I'm pretty sure I heard about this from a video talking about its "innovative" drift mechanic. Which, honestly, is just a button that lets Newtonian physics work properly when you hold a button. I rolled my eyes a little. But it's actually pretty fun once you get used to it.
I really like space shooters, but getting the difficulty curve and flying mechanics right for a fun experience and not just incredibly frustrating. Or boring. It seems to be a rare thing.
To its credit, I managed to play though Chorus and have a fun time with it. It's a little buggy, and feels a bit unfinished, like scope was aggressively cut to actually ship the thing. Like I think they meant to have a pretty exhaustive ship customization and upgrade system, but what ended up in the game is, yeah, you can buy a few guns and marginal stat upgrades, but I didn't actually engage with that much. If I got a better gun from a mission, I installed it. Most of what I got just sat in inventory. The money I got from missions went to maxing out my armour and shields and once that was done, I had no use for it.
The story is... I dunno, Star Wars but make it grimdark and vaguely Lovecraftian. But you get to go around helping people by being the awesomest space pilot. I can't complain.
Oh, but I can complain that absolutely none of the environments you're flying around in feel anything like space. I guess navigating an empty void isn't terribly stimulating, but it's all rocks hovering completely stationary with no forces acting on them whatsoever. If it was just this game, I'd maybe give it a pass, but it seems like nobody is willing to let space be space anymore. It has to be all clouds and rocks and lightning and nebulae. It bugs me most in, say, modern Star Trek, which should know better. Space is cool. Let space be space. Does it fundamentally change how space combat works when I'm not constantly trying to avoid bumping into rocks? Yes. Could you still make it fun? I... think so...
Anyway, this was a fun game and I enjoyed it. If you want a single player space shooter, I think it's worth your time, even with all the caveats above.