I loved Kerbal Space Program for a long time. I love watching Robbaz’s videos along with his crazy contraptions and silly storylines, so naturally I was super stoked to learn that the game would soon release to the consoles. However after playing a few hours of it, I am kinda disappointed… in myself mainly.
I never thought that the game would be easy or something like that, but also I expected it to be fun and enjoyable in a short amount of time, boy I was wrong. The first two hours were a pain. I didn’t knew what to do, what buttons to press, how to move the camera let alone how to launch or control a ship. Tutorials helped a lot, thankfully, but still the game is quite hard to get around using the controller and it is so slow. Turning the camera or moving it up and down takes ages. Also the button combinations to do just some of the basic things aren’t the most user friendly thing, at times I thought I was pulling a Super Street Fighter combo.
The UI also kinda sucks. The amount of informations is just crazy, but you won’t know or be able to see what’s all about. See when you play on a PC you are right there, right in front of the screen and you can read everything quite easily. But when you are laying down on the couch 3 meters away you might just need a telescope to read the minuscule text.
But hey, don’t get me wrong, I am not hating on Kerbal Space Program. I am just saying that if you were expecting the PC experience, you might be a tad disappointed and the main fault is of the control scheme. The other parts of the game are just as awesome as the PC counterpart.
There is a lot to do and see in the game. Three modes, Career, Science and Sanbox will keep you entertained for hours to come. Career is just what you might expect, build the Kerbal Space Program step by step, unlock by unlock, upgrade by upgrade, ship by ship and shoot for the stars. Restrains, challenges and a few other curveballs will keep you always thinking, improving and designing smarter and better ships. Science is just Career but without some of the repercussions of failing over and over again.
Sandbox, that’s where the true fun hides. Build whatever however you want it, as big as you want it and launch it, no strings attached. This is where creativity takes hold and the end results can be quite spectacular. Since the game is built upon a fantastic physics engine, what you can do is astonishing and using the most hated cliché saying ever “The possibilities are endless”. However I suck at it, like really really bad. The only cool thing I managed to launch was a straight up dildo looking rocket ship that managed to reach the orbit, somehow and I couldn’t be anymore prouder. This is what Sandbox gives back. While the accomplishments in Career were satisfying, they kinda felt telegraphed, you were expecting them. However when some monstrosity you crafted in Sandbox reaches orbit or better, it lands on the Mun, that satisfying feeling is just glorious.
But as I said, I don’t know how to play the game and to be honest, I don’t know if I would want to play the game. Kerbal Space Program is like a special genre of games, one that if you don’t immerse yourself completely into it, you’ll end up hating it, so here’s what I am going to do. I’ll stop playing the game on the PS4, mainly cause of the problems I mentioned and the terrible, at times, frame rate and I will continue to watch the shit out of it on Youtube and Twitch just to see what imaginative and creative machines people come up to. Thanks for reading!
