The Kerbal Space Program is a game that masks it's enormous depth under a cute-looking veneer. Kerbal-kind shares more in appearance with the lemmings of the eponymous 1991 game, than they do with the men and women who strap themselves to rockets in the real world. Don't let this mislead you though, for although the cutesy characters don't look hard, the science behind their space program is. (It is rocket science, after all.)
I covered the last major update on GoL here. That update brought budgets and reputations to the career mode. Veteran players wouldn't have found this gamemode challenging enough and new players would probably have been completely stumped. This new update brings the ability to tweak the difficult just to your liking. The sandbox mode in Kerbal Space Program has always been about setting your own challenges, and this helps bring this to career mode too.
The update also brings new strategies to use to better suit your game style. You build budget rockets, but struggle getting your science points? You can put some of that unneeded money towards faster research. Or maybe you want to build massive rockets with basic parts and collect all your science the hard way. You can sacrifice a bit of science and get more money instead.
Amongst the other changes, the new update brings in a whole lot more space-plane and aircraft parts from a popular fan-built mod. Some of these are useful (cargo bays), but the new attachment systems makes building space-plane a real joy. (You can now put wings where you bloody well want them to be, without KSP wanting to fight you about it!)
The destructible buildings are the most gimmicky part of this update (although probably the most visible). They sure do look pretty when they come down though. Oh my. (Battlefield 4, eat your heart out.) It's begging for a mod for creating a Kerbal ballistic missile program, something with multiplayer perhaps. Scorched Kerbin for a name, perhaps? Get to it modders!
Kerbal Space Program is in Early Access on Steam here or you can get it direct from the developer website here. For the DRM-freegans amongst us, it's DRM-less from both places (although it does phone home anonymous usage stats to help improve the game). It's also currently on sale, just $18 USD (40% off).
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
I covered the last major update on GoL here. That update brought budgets and reputations to the career mode. Veteran players wouldn't have found this gamemode challenging enough and new players would probably have been completely stumped. This new update brings the ability to tweak the difficult just to your liking. The sandbox mode in Kerbal Space Program has always been about setting your own challenges, and this helps bring this to career mode too.
The update also brings new strategies to use to better suit your game style. You build budget rockets, but struggle getting your science points? You can put some of that unneeded money towards faster research. Or maybe you want to build massive rockets with basic parts and collect all your science the hard way. You can sacrifice a bit of science and get more money instead.
Amongst the other changes, the new update brings in a whole lot more space-plane and aircraft parts from a popular fan-built mod. Some of these are useful (cargo bays), but the new attachment systems makes building space-plane a real joy. (You can now put wings where you bloody well want them to be, without KSP wanting to fight you about it!)
The destructible buildings are the most gimmicky part of this update (although probably the most visible). They sure do look pretty when they come down though. Oh my. (Battlefield 4, eat your heart out.) It's begging for a mod for creating a Kerbal ballistic missile program, something with multiplayer perhaps. Scorched Kerbin for a name, perhaps? Get to it modders!
Kerbal Space Program is in Early Access on Steam here or you can get it direct from the developer website here. For the DRM-freegans amongst us, it's DRM-less from both places (although it does phone home anonymous usage stats to help improve the game). It's also currently on sale, just $18 USD (40% off).
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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I agree, it phoning home stats is not DRM.. It is an "in development" game after all so they kind of need that info. The first time you run the game it asks you if you want to send them info. You CAN turn it off if you like. As for steam purchased copies you can run the game without steam even running at all so it's about as DRM free as it gets I think. I log out of everything so that I am sitting at tty1 and launch it in it's own X instance.
EDIT* Oh yea, the thumbnail for this article on the main page... good job ;)
Cheers! It was a bit cheeky, but the GoL editors were ok with it. :)
I totally agree with you on why this game being an example of Early Access working right. I can't imagine a publisher supporting during development (and then marketing) a game like this. But, it's got such a strong modding community, not to mention the subreddits and all the Youtube videos. I wonder if its popularity has played a part in the recent rebirth of the space sim (Elite Dangerous and that other one).
I would definitely say it's played a role, that and the "dominant" genre (FPS) has really gone down hill in recent years. Sure the games coming out have awesome visuals and are pushing boundaries but the stories are an after though to the visuals it seems, and it's getting on peoples nerves. Doesn't matter how good a game looks if I can't stay interested more than a couple of hours. I'm looking forward to Star Citizen, especially if it really comes to Linux as they say it will.
There is a problem with the FPS genre, as a whole, but more specifically with the Call of Duty style bro-em-ups is how each they are essentially rolling set-pieces of shooting and explosions. The story might be more depth than, for example, Quake, but that isn't important as a game. In a modern action-movie-style FPS the player's importance to the story is effectively zero except to trigger scripts.
The player only needs to follow directions, avoid taking X bullets within a Y second time period (regenerating health) and hit a button to action something as prompted. It's as interactive an experience as an 80s laserdisc game. (I wish I was exaggerating
It's not a game, it's machinima.
The beauty of sandbox games (especially those in space) is the extremely high level of variability in game paths. Sure there isn't an overarching narrative, but seriously is the narrative of a Call of Medalfield game at all valuable? Or is it simply set piece after set piece?