At one point in every young boys life dreams of being an astronaut are as frequent as dreams of beaming a footballer or superhero. Unfortunately for me my lack of intelligence and my Guinness/Fish and Chip built body only served to hamper my dreams of going into space. Luckily for me though Kerbal Space Programme by Squad has come to rescue my childhood dreams but can it accomplish the impossible and send my rotund arse into space?
KSP has been orbiting the PC in various states of completion for the last several years and was only released last year as a finished product. So what we should have here is a game that's been polished to perfection but unfortunately as good as KSP can be it also has its fair share of problems. If you've ever wanted to build a big old space rocket and blast yourself into space this is as close as you're going to get and as you can imagine with a game like this it gets very technical and very complex very, very quickly.
Your ultimate goal is to achieve orbit around your home planet of Kerbin and to explore the solar system. To this end there are seemingly limitless tech trees, parts and various methods you can utilise in your quest for space domination. I've known about KSP for a few years my so luckily I knew what I was letting myself in for or at least I thought I did. The layers of complexity here are mind blowing and factoring in real physics and orbital mechanics made my ears bleed profusely while playing KSP and I use the word playing in its loosest sense.
When you sit down to play a game like this you need everything to be clear and concise but this certainly isn't the case here. I game on a 47 inch 1080p TV and sit just over a metre away from it so you would imagine that I wouldn't have any trouble reading text on it. How wrong you would be. Everytime a pop up text box appeared on screen I had to move my bulky frame right in front of the TV screen to read it and when a game is this text heavy it quickly became annoying. I have looked into this and it's a common problem for us console players no matter how big a screen you use. Clearly optimised for the PC but a bit of thought for us console players wouldn't have hurt because this really did hampered my enjoyment of the game.
When you finally get passed the tutorials and I suggest you don't skip them you're into the simulation proper. This is your chance to build your spacecraft and eventually pilot it into space. The Vehicle Assembly Building and Spaceplane Hangar is where you will spend the majority of you're time. Building your Spacecraft is a bit like building a very, very frustratingly hard LEGO set. Parts can be snapped together however you want if you can get them into the correct position and then assigned a deployment stage during the rocket burn segment or the flight stage. There are a few ready made but surely the main pull is making your own and seeing if you can get it into space.
When your ready to make that all important launch and your good to go you will take direct control of your Spacecraft. You can choose when to burn, where to fly and when to jettison specific sections during launch. If that all sounds really daunting there is some computer controlled help at hand but it's only AI Lite and it will bust help to keep you on the straight and narrow. All the big decisions are up to you.
While all that sounds like fun and it really is getting there can prove to be a nightmare thanks to a sloppy HUD and poor controls. Precise movements are neigh on impossible with the controller and in a game like this when precise monuments are the difference between success and failure it's really frustrating. The cursor is ridiculously sensitive so flicking through parts on a list becomes unbelievably annoying because it always seems to skip four or five parts ahead even with the slightest touch and to make matters worse you can't adjust the sensitivity.
Graphically there is nothing to shout about here and all the grunt of the Xbox One seems to be behind the real world physics and orbital space mechanics because when you see KSP in action it's laughable. For a game that looks so basic if tearing and slowdown is unforgivable. When you launch a ship it's a gob smacking moment of ineptitude. I've seen mobile phone games that look better than this and they certainly run better than tip as well and there is no excuse for such a poor port.
For a game that has spent so much time being tweaked and then released in such a sorry state speaks volumes about this port. It's as if the console version was an afterthought and just a quick cash grab and that's a shame because underneath all the shite is a really good simulation trying to get out. If you have access to a PC I suggest you try it out on its native platform and steer well clear of the console port.
2.55 GB
15/07/2016
Squad ported by Flying Tiger
Squad
Action & Adventure, Educational, Racing & Flying, Strategy & Simulation
Kerbal Space Program Is Available Now For £31.99
Review code sipplied by XCN.