Do you have aspirations to be a rocket scientist but aren’t
totally sure yet and don’t want to make the extensive investment of time and
money required to go to school only to realize it isn’t really for you? Good news!
For just $40 you can take a crash course in rocket science by playing
Kerbal Space Program instead! Spend
hours building space ships, flying space ships, crashing space ships, blowing
up space ships, building new space ships, and crashing those space ships all from
the comfort of your couch on Xbox One!
Did I mention crashing space ships?
Cause you’re gonna be crashing the hell out of some space ships! See our full Xbox One review of Kerbal Space
Program for all of the details. Game Details
- Publisher: Squad
- Developer: Squad, Flying Tiger
- ESRB Rating: “E” for Everyone
- Genre: Flight Sim
- Pros: Incredibly satisfying; surprising variety; only limit is your imagination
- Cons: Extremely convoluted controls; steep learning curve; requires lots of patience
- MSRP: $40
Kerbal Space Program has you taking control of the space
program of the planet Kerbin as you build rockets and space ships to help the
Kerbal people conquer outer space, on mission at a time. The game offers three modes – Career,
Science, and Sandbox. Science requires
you to research new technology to open up new parts that allow for more
complicated missions but you are not limited by budget constraints. Career mode has you running all aspects of
the Kerbal Space Program including funding, R&D, astronaut recruitment, and
much more as you really do have to control everything. Career and Science modes task you with
specific missions like going to the Mun, landing on other planets, and more.
Sandbox mode, on the other hand, just gives you all of the parts from the start
with no budget, no mission, and no limit on what you can do. The interesting thing about Kerbal Space
Program is that it isn’t limited to just building traditional rockets and other
space stuff. With some imagination and
a little real world engineering know-how, you can build jet fighters, Star Wars
ships, space stations, and even land-based vehicles and more with an almost
unlimited number of possible designs.
To see the full potential of what you can do with Kerbal Space Program,
I highly suggest you check out Robbaz on YouTube. His channel has a ton of awesome (and funny) KSP builds.
Whether you’re building something crazy and ambitious or
just trying to do the simple missions KSP offers, having real world knowledge
of science and engineering is a big help.
Doing the tutorials and really studying how everything works is also
essential. The game might feature cute
little Kerbals as astronauts, but KSP is a surprisingly realistic physics
simulator and if your designs are just a little bit off, your whole ship or
rocket can rip itself apart and explode.
Learning how to create a ship with the proper aerodynamics to cut
through the atmosphere while having enough fuel to actually reach orbit, and a
dozen other factors, is incredibly challenging when you first start
playing. When you move on to
multi-stage rockets and other complicated builds, the difficulty ramps up even
more. I dare say it is more difficult
and has a steeper learning curve than Elite: Dangerous simply because you not only
have to properly fly through outer space in a realistic simulation, but also
successfully build the ship you’re flying in the first place!
When you wrap your head around how everything works, Kerbal Space Program can be pretty amazing. Building your first successful rocket and reaching orbit for the first time is incredibly satisfying. From there, the entire solar system and beyond is your playground, and that’s pretty awesome. It takes a lot of effort to get there, though, and builds are usually a matter of hours of planning and careful construction, not just slapping something together in a few minutes. Kerbal Space Program takes work on your part to really get maximum enjoyment out of it.
Aside from the steep learning curve, Kerbal Space Program on
Xbox One has a major issue that can hinder your enjoyment a bit. Since it is a complicated game to begin
with, and was ported from the PC, the control scheme on a controller is
incredibly convoluted. You have a ton
of systems and metrics to keep track of, especially while you’re in flight, and
having to press multiple combinations of buttons to activate different things
or change camera angles or look at data is a huge pain in the butt until you
get used to it. Real talk, the control
scheme is kind of terrible, but it is hard to see any way around it on consoles
with a game this complicated. You do
get used to it, but man does it take some work.
With that in mind, I have a couple of suggestions for new
players to make things slightly easier by changing a couple of things in the
options. First, you can adjust cursor
sensitivity – you build everything with what is basically a mouse cursor
controlled by your left analog stick – and turning the sensitivity way down
makes things a lot easier. It is much
easier to select parts and precisely place them on a build if the cursor moves
slower. My second suggestion is to
increase the size of the UI. The
interface (and thus all of the text and everything) is very tiny by default, so
by increasing the size in the options menu you’ll actually be able to read
important info and see what you’re doing.
Adjusting these two settings has a huge impact and make KSP a lot more
playable.
All in all, Kerbal Space Program is a fascinating gaming
experiment. I won’t lie, it is
incredibly difficult and daunting and overwhelming when you first start trying
to play it, but the satisfaction of really building a realistic rocket and
exploring space is indescribably amazing.
If you don’t have a ton of patience, a ton of interest in space flight
and engineering, or have a lot of time on your hands, however, it probably
won’t be for you. Unfortunately, I also
think the price is a bit steep for a game that not only isn’t for everybody (as
dumb as that saying is) but likely actually has a fairly narrow band of
potential players who will really “get” it, which makes the risk of buying it
and then ending up hating it and regretting spending $40 quite high.
All I can really recommend is that you watch tutorials and
watch other people building stuff and decide from there if it’s for you. As I said in the opening paragraph, though,
spending $40 on KSP is a heck of a lot cheaper than becoming a rocket scientist
in real life, even if you do struggle to get into it. If you are one of the folks with the right stuff, Kerbal Space
Program is absolutely worth a look.
Disclosure: A review code was provided by the publisher.
