Posted on: September 15, 2016

Brikoleur

Games: 86 Reviews: 2

Rockets, whee!

Is KSP a perfect game? No, of course not. Is it the near-unplayable buggy mess it's sometimes made out to be? Not at all. KSP is a really sweet balance of hardcore simulation and tongue-in-cheek silliness. The game models dynamics, kinematics, materials stresses, aerodynamics, and orbital mechanics, all in a way that feels realistics yet remains fun to play. On the other hand, your Kerbonauts have two stats, "Courage" and "Stupidity," and their science experiments include the Mystery Goo Experiment and taking barometric readings in space ("The gauge reads zero," the game helpfully informs you, while rewarding you with sweet Science you can use to buy acces to more rocket parts.) It is just about the diametrical opposite of a casual game, however. After the first two tiny steps towards space -- launching your first vessel and launching one that can get out of the atmosphere -- you will enter a nearly never-ending cycle of trial and error. Getting into orbit is hard. Re-entry is hard. Getting to Mun orbit is hard. Landing on the Mun is hard. Landing on the Mun, taking off, and returning to Kerbin is really hard. And let's not get started on space planes at this point, those things require some serious work. If you enjoy this kind of thing, you will love, love, love KSP. There will be spikes of rage as your beloved creations flip out of control, get torn up by aerodynamic forces, run out of fuel somewhere far out in the solar system, or fail in many other exciting ways. You'll go back to the drawing board, figure out what went wrong, fix it, try again, and be rewarded with a massive wash of euphoria when your design WORKED: you made it to the Mun and back, sent a rover to Duna, or a probe splashing down in Eve's explodium seas. Bugs? Yes there are bugs. They are quite minor in the grand scheme of things: orbital rendez-vous calculation tools flickering wonkily, wheels failing when they really shouldn't, landing gear being unreasonably finicky about angles, parts refusing to snap together properly when constructing a vessel, requiring random punching of buttons to get them to do so, that sort of thing. At this writing (1.1.3) the biggest issue with KSP has to do with spaceplanes: the atmospheric flight controls are just plain bad, which makes the already hard process of designing spaceplanes even harder. Fortunately modders have stepped to the rescue, and Atmospheric Autopilot completely fixes that problem. If you like space, and building things, and watching things you built blow up, give KSP a whirl. You will almost certainly love it.

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Posted on: August 29, 2017

Vahal

Games: 84 Reviews: 3

A Smart AND Fun game about Space, rockets, and physic

KSP is a game that will teach you a lot of things, a game that will invite you to learn about space, about physic and orbital mechanics, about how rockets work. It's not the real world physic, but the way it does the job is close enough to teach you A LOT and after hundred hours of playing, when you read some NASA/ESA reports, it's finally mundane. You played a game had a lot of fun (and kaboom) and now you UNDERSTAND what those guys are saying. What games can boast of that? Not a lot since most of educationnal games are usually boring with an atrocious software... It's a game who will teach you that mistakeS are the key of success and that failure is fun. It's a game that allows you to reach stars and planets the way you want, to fly and experiment your own design solutions. You BUILD your own Space Program. Want an Apollo like mission? Yeepikai! Do you prefer some Space X Falcon landing? Enjoy the reentry! Want to launch spaceplanes? Fly safe! No mention to its dedicated community (the best I saw) with so great modders making the game even better. There are TONS of mods. Tools to provide more datas on your rocket and flight recorders, parts mods to build better/bigger/crazyier rockets/planes/boats... Graphic enhancement mods to turn the game into a magnificent visual experience. Man, nothing is better than a sunrise while in orbit with a nice graohical mod, you stop playing, you just watch, breathless, a little bit less jealous of real astronauts who can enjoy this moments for real cause you have your own now. The game is HARD. Learning curve is steep and you'll beat the dust A LOT! But, when you reach the Mun for the first time, when you performe your first rendez vous and dock, when you land on another planet for the first time. You feel like the king of the hill. You DID it! It was hard but finally you did it and no other game gave me this satisfaction. Those milestone are sweeter than any other game experiences. This game worth every cent it costs.

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Posted on: September 19, 2017

Lemorack

Verified owner

Games: Reviews: 7

An amazing learning experience

As a person hoping to soon begin my life in the field of educational research, and someone who loves video games with a passion, I love the fact that this game exists. It is almostalone responsible for turning me into a hobby space-nut. Makes me cry when I think of the path I would have been set on, if this game had existed when I was still a child. If you are coming into this expecting a quick-to-learn space program management experience, I recommend you curb your expectations. The management aspect of the game (career mode) feels bare bones, almost non-existent. I had some use for it at the start, but soon forgot it was even there, as I made more than enough money from contracts to support my future missions. The contract system, however, does help to give you some guidelines as t what missions you should pursue next. That being said though, the weakest part of the game is how it fails to teach players to play well enough. A tutorial system exists, with pre-created scenarios for you to tackle, but overall it does little to prepare you for the myriad of different challenges you are likely to face. If you want to be good at this game, be ready to look up video's on youtube (shameless plugging: You can check out my videos on the game if you want :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYqAp7M-vAQ&list=PLotBVT2gf2kHWvBp4iiU50KOFaTEtQzuJ ), and other tutorials online. Expect to fail many times. But trust me, that is a good thing. One of the key elements of a good game is a quick feedback loop, and this game lets you retry right away if you fail. You can learn easily from your mistakes, and with the right amount of patience and perseverance, it will reward you with a sense of accomplishment I don't think any other game can give you. Consequences of failure can be as severe or as light as you are comfortable with (remember to check these options), so experiment, and just have fun with it! I whole-heartedly recommend this game to all space exploration enthusiasts!

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Posted on: April 16, 2022

redglyph

Verified owner

Games: 41 Reviews: 11

Too many bugs, no will to solve them

I started the game, and after the long loading phase, I started configuring it. Nice, I see that they thought about keyboard layouts. Then I start the training. - the key mapping don't seem to work correctly, there is a support for different layouts and the possibility to remap keys, but apparently not all of them - sent an email to the support, which didn't read it properly and told me to configure the keys, well, that's a good start - first training mission is fine - 2nd training mission doesn't work, a parachute is supposed to deploy but it doesn't. It's apparently a bug that has been around since 2015 or even longer, and that they never bothered to fix - 3rd training mission doesn't work either, the player is supposed to load a "Hopper" module, which isn't there, and to replace the engine but there are no replacement parts. It's a known problem too, that was never fixed. I asked for a refund, the game must have been great back then, but now it's not maintained anymore and doesn't seem very stable.

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Posted on: November 25, 2017

Brandon_DeVries

Verified owner

Games: 467 Reviews: 10

SOOOOoooooo.......OOooo....... Boring

After reading some reviews, I was really excited to play this. I was disappointed. Far too many options and variables and controls with almost no support or instruction. The tutorials are manditory to have any idea whats going on, but they don't properly explain the dozens of buttons and tabs and settings. I am NOT and idiot, but learning to play this is like learning SolidWorks, all of it. It's doable, but represents a large investment of time. Be prepaired to watch hours of Youtube before your ready for the big time. Worse, once you figure it all out, there really isn't much left to do. You either build a thriving but pointless space program, or you build some goofy ships in creative mode and watch them blow up. Both get boring fast. I'm actually floored at the high ratings this game got with so little actual GAME involved. It IS well executed. I can believe that the physics engine mirrors real space physics, and you get a real feel for what astronauts do. That's a problem though. Real minute by minute space flight is boring. Adjust yaw 3 degrees... coast for 10 min... pitch down 7 degrees... burn starboard thruster at 10% for 3.2 min... take readings from on board equipment... coast some more... I was so ready to love this game, but after two days I was down to letting my kids build whacky ships to blow up, and after three days I was done. Don't make the same mistake I did. If you can pick it up for $10 you might be happy with it, but the $30 is spent on it was the worst I've ever spent on GOG.

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