ICARUS: Console Edition
RocketWerkz · RocketWerkz
“Dean Hall put a survival game on consoles four years after PC launch, and the biggest survival challenge is the UI.”
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The Review
ICARUS: Console Edition is what happens when a PC survival game gets ported to consoles by a team that clearly plays with keyboard and mouse. The core game is solid. You crash-land on a terraformed planet, gather resources, build shelters, and try not to die while completing timed missions. Dean Hall's post-DayZ vision of session-based survival is genuinely interesting, and the planet Icarus is one of the more atmospheric survival settings in the genre. With the New Frontiers expansion included, there's a massive amount of content here.
The problem, predictably, is the controls. Inventory management that's clunky on PC becomes borderline hostile on a controller. Crafting menus that are merely tedious with a mouse become genuinely painful with a thumbstick. The UI wasn't redesigned for console so much as it was grudgingly translated, and the difference shows in every interaction. Combat feels imprecise, building placement is fiddly, and the tutorial does the bare minimum to explain systems that have evolved significantly since the 2021 PC launch.
Performance is competent. 4K at 30fps or 1512p at 60fps on Series X, with minimal dips. The game looks good in motion, and the weather systems are as impressive on console as they are on PC. But 'good performance' is table stakes in 2026, not a selling point. If you've been waiting four years for a console version of ICARUS, it's here and it works. If you have any alternative way to play this game, use that instead. The console port is functional but clearly the second-class experience.
What It Nails
- +Session-based survival structure is still uniquely compelling in the genre
- +New Frontiers expansion included from day one gives console players a massive amount of content
- +Performance is solid with two graphics modes that both deliver acceptable framerates
- +Atmospheric planet design with weather systems that genuinely affect gameplay
What It Botches
- -Console UI is a straight port from PC. Inventory management is painful with a controller
- -Tutorial is inadequate for the complexity of systems that have evolved over four years
- -Combat feels imprecise without mouse aiming, and aim assist doesn't fully compensate
- -No cross-play between PC and console, splitting the already modest player base
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Who It's For
Console survival fans who've exhausted their options and want something with more structure than the average sandbox.
Who Should Skip
If you own a PC that can run it, play it there instead. If clunky menus make you want to throw your controller, definitely skip.
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