Just when it seems like companies outside of Nintendo (and maybe Sega as an extension) are too knee-deep in making the usual AAA story-driven games, one new-ish IP shows that the industry still has room for Nintendo-esc first party platformers. While I still enjoy the usual AAA story-driven games like Uncharted and Spider-Man, modern gaming should welcome more variety in the industry, and Team Asobi’s newest title helps in providing just that.
Astro Bot follows the modern revival era of platformers from the likes of Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, and obscure platformers like Kao The Kangaroo. Even Yooka-Laylee is also part of this era for platformers in bringing interest to the style of gaming based more on fun as opposed to just cinematic stories and multiplayer live services.
As this review gets underway, I’d like to point out that this is my first official game review, and with a relatively packed platformer like Astro Bot, there’s been a whole lot to think about as I played the entire game through (besides trophies). I’ll still be covering this game to the best of my abilities.
Introducing An Intergalactic Collectathon
While I did order (but not pre-order) Astro Bot on Friday, September 6 release, I only waited until the following Monday to finally get my physical copy. Oh boy was I greatly delighted to discover Team Asobi packed physical copies of Astro Bot with a foldable comic book doubling as an entire poster on the opposite side! To my knowledge, gamers hardly ever see this nowadays outside of Special/Limited and Collectors Edition copies.
As already mentioned, Astro Bot is a new-ish IP released nearly four years after the PS5 and pre-installed tech demo game Astro’s Playroom and about 11 years after The Playroom for PS4. As far as the story goes, it’s a rather simple one. The titular bot and his expansive crew are cruising through space onboard their PS5 mothership (yes, the PS5 itself is an entire spaceship) when they are suddenly attacked by an alien bully named Nebulax. The alien abducts the “CPU kid” from inside the PS5, causing Astro, his crew, and the ship’s parts to scatter across the galaxy. After crashing on a mysterious desert planet, it’s up to Astro to journey across the universe, rescue his crew, and recover the parts of the PS5 ship, including the CPU kid.
Just as predecessor Astro’s Playroom involved a lot of collecting, Astro Bot does the same, sans the relics based on Sony’s consoles/accessories. Aside from retrieving puzzle pieces, you’ll be rescuing 304 bots and the PS5 ship’s parts scattered across six galaxies that includes a hidden lost galaxy. More of these areas open up as more bots and collectibles are recovered, which will additionally help with retrieving more collectibles and unlocking extra facilities on the desert planet crash site.
A Universe Of Powerups And VIP Bot Nostalgia
Astro Bot carries over the collectathon gameplay from it’s predecessor and expands on it by introducing various new powerups ranging from size shrinking, time manipulation, and speed boosting, to name a few. Despite some powerups being repeated more than others, they’re all welcomed game mechanics that help provide more gameplay variety absent from Astro’s Playroom.
At times, specific powerups are needed in order to get past tricky obstacles and rescue/unlock the lost bots and puzzle pieces. With or without the powerups, a crucial tip to share is to take extra time looking around each area for collectibles (especially for getting all collectibles/bots in one go). Miss some collectibles and need to replay any levels, you’ll still have the chance to spend 200 coins to unlock a radar bird to help locate the missing items/bots. Speaking of said bots, some look regular while others are Special/VIP bots resembling various video game characters.
Now these VIP bots are an exciting and defining feature of the game. As planet after planet are cleared, each galaxy has one level dedicated to a boss returning from earlier games in the franchise. Defeat each and you’ll rescue a VIP bot from a specific era of PlayStation history and transition to a themed level dedicated to that VIP Bot’s game. Two of my favorites recreated Uncharted and God of War 2018/Ragnarok, and the experience Astro handed their weapons and dawn their outfits is a wave of nostalgic joy.
Each VIP bot level mimics a world and overall gameplay of each PlayStation IP, as demonstrated by shooting enemy bots through the jungles of Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune and freezing enemies with Kratos’s Leviathan Axe in a recreation level featuring GOW’s dead frost giant Thamur. Growing up with some of these PS games recreated in Astro Bot contributed to the nostalgia wave and is so satisfying to spot certain gameplay mechanics from these titles. Naturally, there are regular bots and VIP bots of characters from these franchises, but hearing how composer Kenneth C M Young (or Kenny Young) remixed these game themes just tops the nostalgia factor (more on music later).
Environmental Variety And Haptic Immersion
Considering that there are 80 levels spread across six galaxies, you bet that the environments are diverse and further complimented by the game’s crisp, sharp graphics. Players are treated to lush jungles and beaches, seemingly vast deserts, volcanoes, and seasonal settings for holidays like Halloween. Specific levels known as the Retro Rampage stages may remind players of 3D games like Minecraft due to their blocky voxel graphics.
Not only can you see so far way into the background in many of these locations (with little to no details lost) but also that Team Asobi adds detail in the ways Astro reacts to these environments. He cowers in spooky surroundings, fans himself from the heat, and so on. On a related topic, there have been players that reported mostly minor bugs in terms of game performance, including game crashes often resulting in deleted saves. Luckily, I’ve personally encountered little to none of these small imperfections. In my personal gaming sessions, the game’s framerate stays at a smooth 60 FPS even in areas with hundreds of shattered glass and other objects that may normally cause the framerate to drop.
The PlayStation 5’s DualSense controller haptics are constantly in use, not just limited to the controller’s vibrations and adaptive triggers for hovering and flying across the maps. As you rescue more bots and save your progress to load up in each session, the start menu randomly loads a few rescued bots to fly on the DualSense controller speeder with Astro, which can be manipulated on screen via motion controls. Rescuing bots to store in the speeder gives players a bonus fun time to zoom in on the bots and toss them in the air.
There are occasions where Astro will use the DualSense motion controls in cases such as shooting water and other projectiles to reach more areas and find collectibles. In fact, when it comes to the ultimate fight against the alien bully Nebulax after all PS5 parts are restored, moving the controller while flying through space and blasting the enemies made me imagine how this could be easily translated to an arcade game machine. Imagine “Astro Bot: The Arcade Game” where you point your controller blaster at the screen while shooting Nebulax and other enemies in your way. In other words, something like arcade Time Crisis but with Astro Bot.
Soundtrack Goes Above and Beyond
Easily one of my personal favorite aspects of playing Astro Bot is enjoying the accompanying music. Indeed, there are a number of returning tracks from previous Astro games, but there are also many remixes of these existing songs as well as plenty of newcomers. A couple standout examples include the song “Astro”, with a bit of a jazzy vibe that’s perfect to invoke the feeling of welcoming back a character not seen in nearly four years. And while fan-favorite “I’m Your GPU” is absent, “Papa Tree” may be this game’s equivalent, considering the funky tone (fitting for a level called Trunk of Funk) and unexpectedly amusing vocals describing the level’s goals as you progress. And how about the Western vibe of the Crash Site music?
Composer Kenny Young manages to not make major boss themes repetitive and stale despite being variations of the CRT-Rex theme from Astro’s Playroom. Each respective boss theme take on different instrumentals, such as Lady Venomara’s theme featuring string instruments. Compare this to the boss theme of Mecha Leon that features faster-paced rock instrumentals that shreds even harder than the aforementioned CRT-Rex theme. In a game featuring an adorable tiny robot and a robo chameleon, this boss track has no right to sound as intense as it does.
There’s too many standout tracks in the game to highlight… but the cherry-on-top in my opinion is the music of the VIP bot levels. Like I mentioned, the way that Kenny Young remixes each VIP bot’s game theme is nostalgia-driven perfection. The level “Bot of War” recreating the GOW theme not only makes playing the level more fun, but went above and beyond by incorporating the popular “BOY” meme from GOW 2018 right before the base drop. Talk about fan service that’s more than satisfying… and that’s not all!
For years I’ve considered Uncharted as my favorite game series of all time. Just like Bot of War, hearing the Uncharted main melody remixed as Nate is rescued and Astro goes for the assist brought frequent chills and goosebumps. No joke! It reminded me how much I miss the Dude Raider and wished Naughty Dog continued the franchise after The Lost Legacy. At least we have Team Asobi’s take on the thief’s Indiana Jones-esc adventures.
Not Too Difficult, But Not Completely Easy
Overall, Astro Bot isn’t a particularly difficult game. As far as fighting regular enemy bots and bosses are concerned, it’s fairly quick to learn how to fight them and spot their patterns. However, after the first galaxy the difficulty level does gradually increase as more enemies/obstacles are introduced.
Among the more challenging and frustrating levels are hidden lost voids based on each shape of the PlayStation controller buttons (Square, Circle, Cross, and Triangle). For challenge levels like these, precise timing is extremely important, as one early/late jump will return you to the very start of the level. The Great Master Challenge in particular is the most difficult level in the entire game, taking me dozens upon dozens of attempts to finally clear the stage and discover a secret surprise. The lost shapes void levels felt like playing a completely different game, making it easy to forget how relatively easy most of Astro Bot really is… and not to forget mentioning, a truly heart-pounding experience.
In both easier and harder levels, pay attention to the type of platforms you run and jump to. They could be made of glass or ice that will only give a quick moment to jump off from. Such destructible platforms are heavily featured in but not limited to, levels like The Great Master Challenge. You’re forced to think on your toes, lest you fall through at the last moment and have to restart at the last checkpoint. Although, a possible saving grace over this obstacle is if you try to tiptoe across the glass/ice surfaces… but if you’re like me, you may encounter the tremendous need to keep moving and not be able to take a breather.
Minor Drawbacks and Comparisons to Mario
Beyond heart-pumping levels like The Great Master Challenge, some minor imperfections still show up that Team Asobi could improve upon for future installments. As overwhelming as it may be on the surface to have nearly 100 levels, Astro Bot is still a relatively short game that may take anywhere from 10 to 20+hours to complete. It depends on if you’re a completionist or not. Some gamers may argue that the relatively short length may not be worth spending $60. If you’re on this boat, maybe the game’s upcoming content update for speedrunning levels and 10 more bots to rescue will add more justification to the game’s asking price (oh, and the upcoming DLC is free by the way).
Even when trying to get all bots/collectibles per level in fewer attempts possible, still expect plenty of backtracking. It was a bit annoying to discover hidden portals unlocking levels in the Lost Galaxy won’t allow you to return to where you found these portals. It’s particularly annoying if this happens before uncovering other bots/puzzle pieces, and thus having to replay the level to recover the remaining collectibles. I’d like to see in future Astro titles that something like this give the option of returning back to that area where the portal was uncovered, but not having to restart that level.
The game since its launch a few weeks ago has drawn comparisons to more popular platformer games like Super Mario Galaxy. Just take to YouTube and social media for these discussions. I can’t personally make the comparison between Astro Bot and Super Mario Galaxy in particular since I don’t own any Nintendo consoles… but from what I’ve generally seen of SMG, I can see such comparisons. It is possible that Team Asobi took heavy inspiration from such popular platformers and combined them with what worked in past Astro games.
Gameplay and presentation may look very similar to what you’d find in a Nintendo game. But in my opinion, using PlayStation character cameos and the DualSense’s haptics is what keeps Astro from being a mere Mario clone or yet another Sony game like PS All-Stars failing to replicate Super Smash Bros’s gameplay and achieve equal or greater acclaim. Even if the VIP bots were entirely absent, Astro Bot still boasts engaging gameplay that if anything, is enhanced by the Sony nostalgia, not overly reliant on it.
Final Thoughts
All things considered, I’m proud to say that Astro Bot is a 3D platformer every gamer should play, not just for PlayStation fans. This lovable, adorable white and blue bot offers a mixture of fun and engaging platforming gameplay with the PS5 spin and PlayStation nostalgia to please both new and longtime fans in multiple ways. Astro Bot may not have the extensive history nor brand recognition comparable to platformers like Mario… yet. Make no mistake, Astro Bot is still no Super Smash Bros-type knockoff. Rather, Sony may finally have their own Mario-caliber mascot, and could perhaps be the spark for more variety in modern gaming outside of Nintendo.