Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Game Review: Kerbal Space Program

Ladies and Gentlemen, today I present to you - Kerbal Space Program!

A bit about the game and developers.
Kerbal Space Program is a space travel simulation game developed and published by Squad. Kerbal Space Program is their only game for now, and even that one isn't out yet. All of the review and game footage that you will see in this review is from ALPHA! Things could change when ever Squad feels they want something new.


About Gameplay.
As I said earlier, Kerbal Space Program is a simulation game. In it your objective is to build up a space craft and fly it into the space. You have a lot of different parts to chose from, with which you can create your space craft very unique! And It's very simple as well. All you need to do is Drag and Drop the part where you want it to be, and woala, you've got yourself a small aircraft. Of course, you do need to think about the laws of physics, and It will take you a couple of tries to even manage and get into the space! You need to think about how many engines should you take, how much fuel, how big should your ship be... And if it's too big, you should put it into couple of smaller pieces and just launch them into the space one by one.

That sounds very simple, doesn't it? Well I'm sorry to brake this down for you.. This game is insanely hard! Just imagine, you need to set up the space craft just perfectly! Then you need to set up the valid commands (what engines start first, then which ones fall to the ground while the new ones start, and so on and on), then you need to think about the gravity. You need to make your space craft go straight forward into the air until it reaches about 10 000 km. After that you should turn around 45 Degrees. By that time, you're almost out of the gravity's reach. But that is not all of it! Once you get your space craft out into the orbit, you will probably lose all of your fuel. So then you need to launch more fuel from the ground. Simple, right? Nope! By the time you get into the orbit, your other part of the space craft is already orbiting around the "Earth" (i forgot the name of the in game planet, I'm sorry!) so you either have to catch up with it, or make your fuel fly the other way around. Very hard, but fun!

Once you have finally put your ship fully together, you can travel to the Moon, Mars, or where ever you want! As long as you know what you're doing, and as long as you've got enough fuel left. Don't forget that you'd like to get your crew back, right? We need them to be heroes after all! And I think that the game wouldn't be so hard if it had a better tutorial. Tutorial teaches you how to fly a ship, and how to assemble it on the ground, but it doesn't teach you how to assemble it in space, it doesn't teach you how to land on the moon, nor anything else. That's the main reason why this game is hard. And I think that once the developers finish the tutorial properly, the game will be much more loved in the public! I, sadly, never managed to get out of the "Earth's" orbit and go to the moon. I managed to get half way there once, but that's it, hehe. It's just hard.

Graphic and Audio
Graphically speaking, the game looks great. This game is made by the Unity software, and it's amazing what Squad made this game look like. It has a lot of nice details, the land looks pretty decent, and the space looks amazing. Water, though, looks pretty bad. But once again, this game is just in alpha! The songs are pretty good too, but after too many hours, they get a bit annoying. Not so big problem though!

Pros, cons and final grade.
Pros:
- Very fun building game.
- Ability to make your ship look different from all the other ones.
- Ability to travel around the space, and go on any planet in our solar system.

Cons:
- Lack of tutorial.

Overall grade: 8/10.
To explain my grade - It would be 9 if the game had better tutorial system. This game is extremely fun, but very hard to learn, so better tutorial would be very welcome. It would also be 10 if they put the Kerbal customization into the game, and if they added multiplayer into it! It could be very hard to do, but I'm sure it'd be awesome, hehe.

Extra info: I really loved Kerbal Space Program, and I will keep on watching the game progress. I will review it once again once it comes fully out, because I'm sure that this game will still have a lot to offer! I support Kerbal Space Program!

6 comments:

  1. Wow - it really looks interesting :> Might give it a try :>

    ReplyDelete
  2. Space sandbox...heh, I want to try it, but at beta maybe not earlier

    ReplyDelete
  3. I had my eyes on this game for a long time :D
    I think i'll grab it now, sounds really fun, thanks for the review!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks for this review, Was a fun read

    ReplyDelete
  5. This sounds little bit like Gmod :D I can imagine how hard it is, plus the laws of phisics...wow xD i guess thats too hard for me to master

    ReplyDelete
  6. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete