Chorus is (for Cat) was a unique Keymailer get as its not only the first console game she has gotten, but also the first non-indie title. Having especially enjoyed Maneater as one of the more recent Deep Silver offerings, and previously playing their games Saints Row, Killing Floor 2 & Dead Island; We were both really excited to get into their newest title.
You can see Shiney_Cat’s first play here. What’s interesting is that Cat’s stream and and her subsequent experience of the game have shown this isn’t engaging to watch someone else play. That said, here is my first review Planet Shiney review from someone who managed to get the platinum (yes really) in 5 days worth of work.

2021 was a tough year for everyone and I spent a great deal of mine relying on video games to stay sane during general social distancing and isolation. Unfortunately most of the 2021 AAA games I’ve played have not simply been disappointing, they have been terrible and genuinely made me wonder if video games had hit a peak several years ago and the slow decent into lazier and lazier games was here and gaming was dying. However thank you Chorus for stepping up and being wonderful! I LOVED it!

The game play and flying combat reminded me of the joy of Rogue Squadron on my GameCube (which is high praise, I played that game repeatedly), a little of Starfox on the N64 with the boss fights and capital ship battles and an over arching epic plot that gave me the tingles of Knights of the Old Republic. Its beautiful to look at and the ship responds really well once you get used to the controls, allowing you to really feel like a fighter ace. It played great on my Playstation 4 which is refreshing given how many newer games this year have been so laggy porting to the older consoles.

You play as a combat pilot/space witch, once supreme evil overlords pride and joy, right hand, and ace pilot of The Circle, the evil fascist regime who is purging any form of resistance and anyone not completely following their religious beliefs from the galaxy. The opening cut scene shows you  leading an assault of Circle forces that  commit a huge atrocity that leaves you feeling you might be on the baddies side.

After said incident filed with guilt and remorse you defect, block off all but one of your potent magical powers and go into hiding as a smuggler, where 7 years pass. Basically this means you start the game with very minimal magic in a knocked up basic scavenger ship with very simple weapons. However as you progress through you begin to re attune to your old powers, upgrade your ship and generally return to your super bad ass self from the past only this time you’re fighting the regime rather than leading it.

Early on combat against basic enemy ships is a matter of out flying them, but as you unlock more powers and weapons you can dominate vastly outnumbering enemy forces with a combination of powers and flipping between the three weapon systems.

Perk slot wise you get a choice of a Gatling cannon, a laser and a missile launcher and there are various models with varying stats you unlock as you progress but usually the later models are always worth equipping over the older ones from earlier. Then you get three slots to add further upgrades to customise your vessel to your play style. I opted the majority of the time to magnify my magic as the powers let you easily destroy waves of enemies in space combat and engage hordes of foes at once, but equally having better boosting more laser damage and increased shields was also a pokey combo but needed you to modify your dogfighting style to suit the alternative options.

I couldn’t put it down and finished the game in one long sitting. It took me 20 hours but I was taking my time to enjoy each new system and complete ever side quest before moving on. There are fixed quests but in addition random ones will spawn near you from time to time such a Circle Raiders or a cargo ship in distress needing help getting its engines back online etc. so its fully possible to fly around enjoying the beautiful scenery and jumping into occasional missions around you should you wish rather than chasing down the story line explicitly.

Some quests were frustrating when I was trying to work out what exactly said quest was trying to get me to do, especially since your sense power gives everything the same icon of interest, but once you worked out what the game was wanting you to do everything was fairly simple to follow. On my second play-through quests were taking me a fraction of the time as I knew exactly what was required

There is a LOT of dialogue in the game, and given my ADHD there were times I wanted to be able to skip some of the talking so I could get back to blowing up more fighters and assaulting capital ships, but given most of the story helps build the world around you this is just a minor complaint and many will enjoy the story’s depth and details the extensive dialogue offers

There is currently a glitch on PlayStation that prevents you from getting the platinum on first play through if you get to a certain system and then go back to an older system, which given I was within a whisker of getting my platinum on first play through I found very annoying, but that didn’t stop me from launching a second campaign to overcome the glitch the day after! I managed to circumvent said glitch having know about it but it was very annoying at the time.

Shiney Rating
4 out of 5

Great game, superb graphics and very fun to play and no lag issues. Bit too much dialogue for me but only a minor gripe. But having gone through it twice now (I’ve got my platinum now) I’m not sure whether I’d pick it up again to play through a third time. This tends to always make me rate single player games slightly harsher than those with a multiplayer option. If you fancy a fab little space shooter that’s a bit different from a lot of the chaff currently circulating this comes highly recommended.