Team Asobi’s 10-year journey comes to a head in 2024’s outstanding Astro Bot. Humble beginnings began with 2013’s The Playroom on PS4—a basic tech demo introducing audiences to the loveable bot—before moving onto the immersive Astro Bot: Rescue Mission on VR and Astro’s Playroom on PS5.
Astro Bot is now well and truly cemented as one of PlayStation’s most iconic mascots. The series’ latest entry demonstrates all the desirable qualities of a platformer and is not only a Game of the Year candidate but a deserved winner.
Astro Bot is as refined as ever
The titular Astro Bot is the leader of the Bots, but peril strikes his kind when an evil alien returns to plague our hero and his pals. Astro’s ship—shaped like a PS5 console, of course—is ransacked and has its core parts stolen by the alien and other returning bosses from other Astro games.
It’s up to Astro to seek out five worlds, defeat each boss, reclaim the parts, and restore the ship. The plot is as deep as any Mario game, but it doesn’t need to be anything more. Team Asobi brings the world and characters to life through its 80 levels and main hub area—Crash Site—a large level in itself.
From the second you arrive at Sky Garden—the first level—via the interactive Dual Speeder vehicle, it’s impossible not to be blown away. If you thought Astro’s Playroom was a technical treat, Astro Bot ups the ante and then some.
Wispy grass flows as you walk through it, water ripples as realistically as I’ve ever seen, and there’s so much happening on-screen at once. The attention to detail constantly amazed me, too. Watch the background of each level—there’s always something happening. You may never meet the distant characters and creatures watching on or minding their own business from the sidelines, but their personalities still shine, and their presence is critical to each level’s design. Each world is teeming with life and personality, and Team Asobi confidently puts it all on display.
Astro himself is ever-present, ever-engaging, and endlessly adorable. He still happily smiles and waves to the camera and clasps his robotic hands to his face at the first sign of terror in the spooky levels, but our darling hero has rightfully been upgraded with a delicious surplus of gadgets and abilities.
A growing playroom
Astro’s moveset seems limited initially, but when you think about it, most iconic platformers start with rudimentary attacks and arsenals. Mario has a jump and a spin, Crash Bandicoot has a jump and a spin, and Spyro has a jump, charge attack, and the ability to breathe fire. Astro Bot is fairly consistent with its combat and never pushes the boat out too far—knowing its audience will include a younger demographic.
Astro can jump, hover, punch, and use his hover jets to attack and cut through objects, and these moves are crucial to many puzzles and overall progression. While they may seem simple, combined with level-specific abilities and environments that utilize them perfectly, Astro’s stripped-back moveset forms a foundation that stops this platformer from ever being boring.
Level-specific abilities include using a PSVR headset to manipulate time, a backpack that launches you high up into the air, a skill that shrinks Astro at will, and many others. Not all of Astro Bot’s levels have these abilities, but those that do are cleverly built around them in a way that feels natural to the overarching game design and facilitates coalescence from level to level.
I almost feel sad playing Astro Bot, as it makes me realize how few developers have truly given the PS5 DualSense the time of day it deserves. Most releases usually opt for haptic feedback and the occasional novelty of adaptive triggers.
In Astro Bot, every function and action incites a different response from the controller. Whether that be the satisfying snap of the triggers as you lock something into place or the machine-gun-like rumbles of a large object moving. The controller is as much a part of the game as anything else, and the extent of its functionality only adds to your engagement.
There are levels to the levels
Don’t worry—Team Asobi didn’t just spend three years of development time finding the best ways to utilize the controller. There’s a near-endless supply of content to sink your teeth into (if robots have teeth), too.
Between the core story levels that take anywhere between five and 20 minutes, the mini-obstacle course levels geared toward more experienced gamers, quickfire puzzle challenges, and bosses, Astro Bot easily justifies its $59.99 price tag.
Each main level typically has seven bots to rescue—including “VIP Bots” you are bound to recognize from classic titles gone by—with side missions offering an extra few. Outside of rescuing bots, primary levels also have Puzzle Pieces to find and the odd secret exit to unlock even more content.
Like in Astro Bot: Rescue Mission VR, the developer does an excellent job of hiding secrets and collectibles in its (mostly) linear levels. There are levels I replayed several times before I finally found what I was missing, leaving me to exhale a dumbfounded “duh” as I realized my ineptitude.
My favorite part of Astro Bot, though, is the special end-of-world levels awarded for defeating each boss. While I won’t spoil too much, Astro morphs into an iconic gaming legend and uses their gear and looks, with the level’s gameplay reflecting the IP it’s imitating.
Not only that, but every collectible bot in these levels is a character from the imitated game’s universe, the theme song is a thumping remix of the original, and the overall experience pushes beyond basic nostalgia and induces a serotonin overload.
The most fun you can have with a controller in your hands
Across the 10 to 15 hours of Astro Bot I gratefully lapped up, I had an immovable grin on my face. I smiled and laughed (unironically) from start to finish—Astro Bot is ridiculously engaging and fun to play.
Astro Bot is big, bold, and beautiful, and while I don’t think it massively innovates the 3D platformer, it easily stands on its own two feet as a genre-defining entry. Astro Bot is the culmination of over a decade of Team Asobi’s hard work, and this developer and franchise are getting better by the second.
- A deep, varied palette of levels
- The level of detail is mindblowing
- Try not to smile playing this, I dare you
- Action and gameplay never get stale
- None, whatsoever
Published: Sep 5, 2024 07:00 am