Kerbal Space Program , which was first published and developed for PC by Squad in 2011, has had a massive following in the PC gaming community ever since. This week, Squad released the game for consoles; Playstation 4 on July 12, Xbox One on July 15, witha version on Wii U set to release this winter. The game lets you build spaceships ranging from scientifically accurate ones to the down right ridiculous and lets you launch them into space. Your astronauts are called Kerbals – who resemble tiny green space men. The far reaching goal for the game is to land on the moon, or “mun,” in Kerbal speak, but most players are doing well to get off of the ground.
When you launch the game for the first time, it can be very intimidating. The tutorials are a rather long read and show you what an extreme amount of customizing goes in to a successful launch of your vessel into space. It can be a lot to take in and it may seem like the game wouldn’t be fun unless you have a degree in aerodynamics, but that’s where you would be wrong. There are gamers out there who play this game for hours on end and make correct rockets that accomplish the missions they set out to do. Then there are gamers who spend the same amount of time building basic spaceships that crash and burn on every mission. Both types of gamers enjoy this game just as much. Never has there been a game where most of the fun comes from failing miserably.
The console version of this game is pretty much an exact port from the PC version which is only played with mouse and keyboard. On the console version, the left stick controls the mouse pointer. This makes lining up the parts of your spaceships difficult and setting numerical parameters difficult as well. With a mouse and keyboard, you get much more control over lining up the parts exactly where they need to go. Another downside to the console version is the amount of reading for the tutorial section. The font size is very small and I had to sit right up against the TV in order to see it. I would have recommended to split up the instructions into more steps to click through so the font size could be larger on the screen and the game can be played from further away. Kerbal Space Program is not really the type of game where you want to skip the tutorial, so I think the tutorial section could have been configured better for consoles.
Even though the console version of the game does have some control scheme issues, Kerbal Space Program is not a game to miss out on. I put off playing it for a long time because I thought it looked too difficult for someone like myself who has no background in space travel outside of Star Wars. However, when I saw how happy my Kerbal astronaut looked as I was launching him to his death, I knew this game would break me of my perfectionist thinking that I had to understand all the ins and outs of space travel in order to enjoy this game.
Kerbal Space Program is $40 on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC.