![]() ![]() Even leaving the atmosphere during the earliest hours with a simple engine/command pod/parachute design causes some hiccups. Unfortunately, Kerbal Space Program suffers from occasional framerate stutters, which become more frequent and severe the more complicated your builds and missions become. When I took it to the launch pad and set it off and it didn't immediately explode, there was a brief second just before the whole thing failed violently where I thought, "Hey, maybe I'm onto something here." It was a glorious second. I didn't design it for science, or for speed, or to see how far I could make it fly I built the thing just because I could. Leaving the symmetry option turned up to its highest setting, I quickly built an excessively powerful pinwheeling rocket. Sandbox allows for truly ridiculous designs - the sort of insane, utterly impractical rockets I built just to see how far I could push Kerbal’s physics. When I'd get to a point in Career where I was having trouble progressing and started to get frustrated, I'd switch to Sandbox and build to my heart's content. ![]() Without the goals of Career mode, though, I'd rather be playing Sandbox, where everything is unlocked and my imagination is the only limit. It retains the tech tree progression of Career mode, but removes other restrictions so the stakes aren't as high. Striking the perfect balance between thrust, weight, and fuel with only the parts and funds unlocked in Career mode made me feel like a brilliant rocket scientist. ![]() A heavier ship needs more thrust to go higher, which requires more engines. Bigger engines require more fuel, which make the ship heavier. Going higher requires more thrust, which requires bigger engines. Balancing funding, scientific progression, and reputation forced me to put thought into each launch, and the limited selection of spaceship parts made me think hard about how I could get the most from each rocket engine, fuel supply, or science module. Striking the perfect balance between thrust, weight, and fuel made me feel brilliant.I spent the majority of my time in Career mode, where all the challenges that come with actually blasting an object into space come into play. It's a lovely feedback loop that I can't get enough of. Every success (such as reaching a new record altitude) is really just a place to start over, only with better stuff. KERBAL SPACE PROGRAM CONTROLS CHEAT SHEET TRIALThrough hours of trial and error, I finally came to a design and flight technique that did what I wanted it to, and it was fantastically satisfying because each accomplishment is just a step toward bigger and better things. In its Career and Science modes, Kerbal Space Program creates an incredible sense of accomplishment with each successful feat of rocketry. although I often accidentally hit X during EVAs, causing my Kerbal to let go of its module and float helplessly into space. The button assignments have a really intuitive feel. It sounds like a hot mess, but I was amazed at how quickly I was able to figure the controls out without a cheat-sheet in front of me. To accommodate Kerbal’s made-for-mouse-and-keyboard complexity, Certain buttons on the controller behave as modifiers that, when held down, give each of the other buttons different functions. I found it daunting at first glance: there's a lot going on in every single screen, and accessing the in-game help files did nothing to put me at ease. KERBAL SPACE PROGRAM CONTROLS CHEAT SHEET PCKerbal on PlayStation 4 is for the most part exactly the same as its PC counterpart (read our Kerbal Space Program PC review), with the big exception of the control scheme. ![]() But that's where the genius of Kerbal really is: hard work pays off, and once I was able to determine the cause of my failures, be it staging woes or my nose pitching violently at 1000 meters, every successful launch was a thing of beauty. By the time I finally built a rocket that achieved successful orbit I had failed so many times that in almost any other game I would have given up completely. It's part of Kerbal's experimental nature. And man oh man, did I fail – over and over again. Kerbal Space Program is the most fun I've ever had failing. ![]()
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