Kerbal Space Program Enhanced Edition Review

Kerbal Space Program Enhanced Edition was developed by Squad and published by Take Two. It's available on PS4 and Xbox One.

Kerbal Space Program has had a rocky past. Originally released for consoles in July 2016, the game was very buggy and not optimised for consoles at all. The Enhanced Edition plans to change this and has made multiple changes.

In this title you have three main modes to choose from: career mode is your more traditional mode, where you only start with a few parts to add to your ship. You are then tasked with completing contracts which earn you money, letting you build more rockets, all while earning science parts by performing experiments in space. These experiments grant you science points which allow you to unlock more parts on the giant skill tree. The tree also lets you unlock things like space parts, aeroplane parts and even more science experiments.

The science mode is basically the same as career mode, except you don't complete contracts as your money is unlimited. This mode is purely about building rockets, purely for scientific experiments.
Personally this was my favourite mode as I still felt the progression of career mode, but I could build rockets without having to worry about my money.

In sandbox mode every part is unlocked and your objective is to get to the Mun, by building the greatest rocket ever. Sandbox mode throws every kind of progression out of the window. I found myself playing this mode when I just wanted to be imaginative and strap a load of rockets underneath the cockpit to see if I could get to the Mun.

There are also a few extra modes. There is a tutorial which I would recommend playing before you do anything. This game has a very steep learning curve; the tutorials do well in teaching you the basics, however I still found myself not being able to change orbit without the help of some YouTube videos. I then found out that there were some tutorials I could have done.

There are also some scenarios you can play through. These range from docking your ship, to landing a space plane that is coming down way too fast. The scenarios were very fun when I didn't have a lot of time to play and I just wanted to get straight into the action. The scenarios were a very fun time-killer, and some of my favourite moments of this game came out of scenarios.

The art style of this title is a mix of cartoon and realistic. The pilots that you control are called Kerbals - these pilots reminded me of Minions, both are yellow and very stupid so it made sense for me to link the two together. The world is beautiful with a galaxy to explore and travelling around the world is breathtaking. Whether it's being on a planet walking around and seeing Kerblin in the distance, or when you are zooming around the Mun on your rover, the world feels real and there’s a feeling of being an astronaut that I never thought I'd experience.

There isn't much audio in this game except for the menu music, which makes sense as in space no one can hear you. However, there are sound effects in this game; mostly rocket engines that sound great. Small details like bigger rockets sounding like they are actually bigger, to the huge sounds like the spaceship blowing up make this game sound fantastic.

Since this game is a re-release there are some new features that the previous version didn't have, such as a brand new control scheme made for consoles. This mostly consists of radial menus, but you have the option to switch to a cursor anytime you want to. This is a great option as when I was building a craft I wanted to use a mouse-like option, however when I was controlling my ship in space I wanted to control it normally using an analogue stick.