C H O R V S

[anvi]

Anyone play this for a long time? How much story shit is there? And the babbling lady? Would like to play a flying shooting thing but not sure how much of that stuff I can put up with.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Anyone play this for a long time? How much story shit is there? And the babbling lady? Would like to play a flying shooting thing but not sure how much of that stuff I can put up with.

I played it a bit. The shooting bits are fun, the muttering to herself is annoying. I got sidetracked before I got very far into it though, I've been meaning to get back to it at some point. There used to be a demo of it that should give you a pretty good idea of what you're in for if it's still available.

 

[Mary Sue Leigh]

Demo is still available but I made the mistake of playing it back to back with the everspace 2 demo, against which Korvus cannot possibly win imho.

Among things that annoyed me are:
- less of a "free space" feel because ship reorients itself back to the "correct" rotation after a while, even if you did not press the button that does this. So there's a clear "up and down", for some reason.
- enemies are fought in some rock paper scissors way. Lazer kills shielded threats, missile vs heavy armor, miniguns for light and maneuverable targets. That would be fine but without a lock on, it's too hard to tell which is what at longer distances.
- sketchy controls. Barrel roll exists but does not work if forward velocity is too low. Ship's really fragile, too.
- as mentioned, space magic is not a satisfying way to balance the fights in your favor. I feel I mostly just win via the magic teleport button and struggle more than I should if I never use it.
- unengaging video tutorial that teaches basically nothing, as opposed to ES2 intro mission where you can test your mettle right from the beginning

Plus I absolutely didn't like the presentation and the art direction but that's more subjective I guess.

And granted, the full game could still be better than the ES2 demo but I opted to just wait for the release of the latter.

 

[Mary Sue Leigh]

"The muttering to herself is annoying"

That reminds me, I didn't mention, she also moans and yelps and whines whenever the spaceship gets hit, which I also found annoying.
Perhaps there's a lore reason for this since the ship is kinda KITT from Knight Rider and maybe they're cybernetically linked and she feels every impact on the hull, but from a design standpoint I can't really appreciate this decision.
Maybe the VA was paid by the hour and they wanted to make the most of it.

 

[mediocrepoet]

There's little question that the game would be improved by having a stfu! mod.

That being said, I'm sure they did it to try and communicate that she's all traumatized by her past and is basically borderline crazy and consumed by guilt, blah blah. It was more annoying than immersive though, for sure.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

That's the one thing that scares me off from playing Chorvs - the constant verbal angst and emoting from the player character. Noisy PCs in space games are a big no no, like the "Wasssssssssuuuuuuuuup! OHHHHH YEEEEEEEEEEEAH!" dude in Starpoint Gemini 3 that some say absolutely ruins the game.

 

[Norfleet]

Damn straight, what happened to "In space, no one can hear you whine"?

 

[Corbin Dallas Multipass]

Interesting thoughts, but what if the PC talking to himself and acting crazy was voiced by Bruce Campbell?

I found Tachyon: The Fringe to be a fun game where I enjoyed the blathering of my player character, but it was kind of a special case.
If that game had been maybe 10x longer it would have been a great game. As is, it had promise but as I recall didn't do much with it.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

so you're asking "what if this had been a quality product".