2024-09-06 19:45:03
I think I was as shocked as anyone that ASTRO BOT came into existence in any form—the PlayStation 5 game, not the character. When I wrote my piece Nintendo and Microsoft Need an Astro’s Playroom, I think I settled on the idea that ASTRO was an excellent representative of Sony’s hardware but I never foresaw him hosting his own little game.
I thought that ASTRO’S Playroom being a “genuinely fun platformer with a lot of love and care put into it” was just a bonus feature to it being a technical showcase of the PlayStation 5, but it seems Team ASOBI had enough ideas to pack an entire game and then some. ASTRO BOT is incredibly fun, incredibly creative and an incredible love letter to the history of PlayStation games.
The story is fairly simple: ASTRO and his cohort of BOTS are blasting through space in the PlayStation 5 Mothership when a nasty green alien cracks the console open and steals the CPU. Unable to hold itself together, the PS5 Mothership breaks apart, scattering the Bots and its four component parts throughout the galaxy. ASTRO wakes up on a barren planet but, with the help of his trusty Dual Speeder, is able to find the base of the PS5 Mothership. The plucky BOT sets off to rescue all of his stranded friends and restore the Mothership to its former glory.
It’s a silly, lighthearted little story that does a good job of establishing the basis of the game’s main selling feature, the gameplay, in a fun way. But ASTRO BOT didn’t really need a proper “three-act” narrative—although it definitely wouldn’t have suffered from having one. The expanded sense of narrative makes ASTRO BOT a much more exciting game and allows it more room to experiment with different ideas.
In some ways, ASTRO BOT feels like an extension of ASTRO’s Playroom, kind of in the same way The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom was an extension of Breath of the Wild. Team ASOBI essentially took all of the best ideas from ASTRO’s Playroom and built an entire game around them.
It’s incredible because the fundamentals are essentially the same, but the creativity on display is astronomical. Much like ASTRO’s Playroom, at its core, ASTRO BOT is an incredibly tight and absurdly polished action platformer. Players will guide ASTRO through a plethora of insanely creative levels, rescuing lost BOTS—which effectively replace the PlayStation trinkets from Playroom—and searching for puzzle pieces along the way.
However, both the BOTS and the puzzle pieces have been given a bit more depth in ASTRO BOT since finding BOTS is essential to exploring new areas of the Crash Site Home Base in order to unlock the five different galaxies that make up the game’s levels. The puzzle pieces unlock various bases that allow for various customizations—from giving ASTRO a new costume to giving the Dual Speeder a fresh coat of paint or unlocking special items for the PlayStation-themed BOTS.
“Much like ASTRO’s Playroom, at its core, ASTRO BOT is an incredibly tight and absurdly polished action platformer.”
But aside from being an incredible platformer on a technical level, ASTRO BOT consistently shakes up the gameplay with unique mechanics that are continuously implemented in inventive ways. On one level, you’ll have a little octopus that’ll blow ASTRO up like a balloon, allowing him to float for a little while; on another, you’ll get a mouse that allows you to shrink at will, to a chicken that acts as a rocket booster. Furthermore, mechanics from ASTRO’s Playroom, like the Monkey Suit and the rolling ball, have also been included but made a bit more streamlined and player-friendly.
I’ve often lamented games like Super Mario Bros. that will sometimes introduce a gimmick or two and design levels around it rather than integrate them naturally into well-crafted levels. But the rate at which mechanics are introduced is so rapid that it always feels creative—as soon as you think you know what the game has to offer, they give you a PSVR that lets you stop time.
In fact, Super Mario feels like an apt comparison for ASTRO BOT because every level and every design decision feels so intentional and so directed towards having fun. I don’t think there was a single point during my extensive time devoted to this game that I didn’t have a big, goofy grin.
But the ultimate culmination of this—and arguably the crown jewel of ASTRO BOT—are the levels inspired by iconic PlayStation games. Of course, when I saw the debut trailer for the game, I was initially enthralled by the idea that these icon BOTS would factor into the game’s story somehow. However, since the game doesn’t really have a story per se, these moments become the finale of each galaxy, where completion gets you one of the four essential PS5 components.
It’s not just that these levels are lovingly crafted representations of the games they’re based on, or how they blend the iconic imagery and design of each game with ASTRO BOT’s incredibly tight platforming, but how they find a way to incorporate a key mechanic from those games into the level to make it so ridiculously fun.
In the first world based on Ape Escape, you’re running around with Spike’s net and scanner to find BOTS dressed as the iconic simians. In the God of War Ragnarök world, you’re using the Leviathan Axe to freeze gears to stop moving mechanisms or turning pillars of water into makeshift platforms. I know I keep saying it, but each level is just bursting with creativity and a loving appreciation of the source material and I was genuinely excited after every boss fight to see what PlayStation game I’d be participating in next.
When I started playing ASTRO BOT, there was a part of me that felt it was almost an extension of ASTRO’s Playroom—insofar that if you hadn’t played the latter, this would feel a bit like a tech demo. But honestly, I don’t think that’s the case. ASTRO BOT is one of the few games that actually takes advantage of the PlayStation 5’s hardware in a meaningful way that derivatively calling it a tech demo completely undermines how creative it is being with the tools it has.
If ASTRO’s Playroom was the proof-of-concept, ASTRO BOT is the concept made manifest. The way it utilizes every unique aspect of the DualSense controller—from the unique changes of vibration when moving over different surfaces to how it maps sounds to the controller’s speaker for an added level of immersion to its constant creative use of the adaptive trigger. ASTRO BOT flies in the face of every “AAA” game that can’t seem to find one interesting way to utilize this incredible device—and wouldn’t you know it, it remembered the game has gyro controls.
“ASTRO BOT consistently shakes up the gameplay with unique mechanics that are continuously implemented in inventive ways.”
Visually, ASTRO BOT is beyond stunning. There was a certain point where I couldn’t help but laugh to myself that this game somehow out-Nintendo’d Nintendo. Every level is EXPLODING with colour, life, wonder and an obscene attention to detail. No two levels feel the same—you’ll go from a giant singing tree to a Japanese Bath House, to a haunted castle, and so much more. Almost everything from fauna to flora has little BOT faces, which is just adorable. Everything is rendered in incredible detail, from bricks to blades of grass; mushrooms light up and make little chimes when you walk over them
And the soundtrack, Sweet Baby Ray THE SOUNDTRACK. Kenneth C M Young, Kemmei Adachi, Tadashi Yatabe, Sachiko Miyano, Takuro Iga, Hirofumi Sasaki, and Masso Kimua absolutely crushed every track they worked on in ASTRO BOT to such a degree that when I was playing in the same room my wife was working in, without even looking at the game she said to me, “I really like the music in this game.”
“If ASTRO’s Playroom was the proof-of-concept, ASTRO BOT is the concept made manifest.”
Like the varied levels and gameplay, the music runs the gamut of genres from funk to pop, jazz to rock, and so many more. Every track is high-tempo and energetic, adding to the fun on an audible level. Not to mention the ways they remixed the music for the PlayStation-themed levels so they include ASTRO’s theme but still feel thematically accurate is nothing short of incredible—I was a really big fan of the BOT of War theme. You know you did something special with the music when even in the aforementioned haunted castle level, the music was so good my wife was actually dancing along to it.
But it’s not just the soundtrack that makes the game stand out. The audio design as a whole is so incredibly detailed and encompasses such a wide range that a game so visually cartoonish feels so incredibly believable and real. From the way ASTRO’s little feet clang on metal surfaces to the pitter-patter or rain on his little head umbrella, the soundscape is so incredibly rich and brought to life in unique ways by the DualSense controller’s accompanying speaker and rumble.
I could keep going, but I think by now you get the point. ASTRO BOT is one of the standout games on the PlayStation 5 and, maybe next to Ratched and Clank: A Rift Apart, the only game I’ve played that’s done anything interesting with the system’s unique hardware.
I think some gamers might be put off by the game’s asking price of $59.99 (or $79.99 CAD), but honestly, I would say it’s well worth it. It’s got something to offer everyone from gamers, young and old, new and experienced, and even newcomer or veteran PlayStation fans. ASTRO BOT is a game that never stops being fun.
