Astro Bot has had an interesting rise into prominence, initially debuting as a character featured in the PlayStation 4 app titled “The Playroom”. From there Astro Bot got their very own virtual reality adventure in Astro Bot Rescue Mission, a PSVR title that is well regarded even today. Then Astro was there for the launch of Playstation 5 with the pack-in game Astro’s Playroom. Fast forward three years and we find ourselves in the present with the release of the simply titled Astro Bot, a full-size game that aims to evolve the concepts Team Asobi laid out in Astro’s Playroom. It’s with great enthusiasm that I can share that Astro Bot is an incredible platformer game and a must-play if you own a PS5.
There’s much I am about to praise about this game, so we’ll start simply with the narrative which is itself simple. Astro Bot and their crew of joyful bots are cruising around space in their nifty PS5 spaceship, when out of nowhere a devious alien appears and steals the ship’s processor bot, causing it to crash-land on a nearby world scattering it’s other components and the crew across several nearby galaxies. It’s Astro Bot’s job to fix the spaceship and rescue the crew.
Astro Bot is not a story-heavy game in the least, there are only a handful of cutscenes that play throughout the entire game. However, the game characterizes Astro Bot, the character, in such a careful and considered way that you do find yourself getting attached to them. Astro Bot does not speak any dialogue in the game (outside of providing his name as backup lyrics in the game’s theme song), so all of this character-building comes from little sound effects and interactions in the game. Whether it’s a worried call out to any endangered bots, or a cute wave to the player while sitting idle, it’s incredibly impressive how the developers were able to pack so much character and emotion into a little white and blue robot. And while there’s not many twists and turns to uncover, the game concludes with a sequence that is surprisingly emotional and full of heart. The story, while small, perfectly compliments the platforming gameplay and gives you just enough to feel satisfied by the end.
The gameplay is the true star of the show in Astro Bot. There are so many factors that play into why Astro Bot’s gameplay is so fun, from the level design and animations, the mechanics, the way the controls feel down to the music. So let’s tackle them in that order!
Visually speaking, Astro Bot is a fantastic looking game. Like other classic 3D platformers, the game is spread across six hubs (galaxies) that are composed of several different levels. These levels have a wide range of themes from jungle temples to sandy beaches, to spooky graveyards and space stations. These levels are filled with coins to collect, missing bots and puzzle pieces to find, and tons of lovingly placed little details to discover. Take a second and pause at any given location in a level and you will see tons of movement and activity from creatures hopping around playing with each other, enemies running amuck and more. Several levels are covered in physics objects that you can interact with as well like acorns or steel bolts. These don’t really serve any real purpose for the most part, other than it’s just simply fun to do a spin attack with Astro Bot and send these objects flying all over the place. While the game does have a more cartoonish and exaggerated art style, it doesn’t skimp out on the visuals in the slightest.
I loved swimming around underwater in a level filled with coral reefs and jumping between falling poker chips in a space casino, no matter which type of environment I was in, it was oftentimes breathtaking. The color palette is vibrant and the levels themselves are just large enough to give you that sense of meaningful exploration, but not so big that you never know where to go next. By and large, the levels aren’t overly difficult to someone who is familiar with platformer games, but there are optional hidden levels that offer up a challenge for those seeking them out.
From an animation standpoint, Astro Bot receives high marks. Everything feels so alive and dynamic as you play, from the way enemies and creatures move around, to the way sand particles swirl around in the wind. Astro themself has a wide variety of animations from combat to movement that transition between one another with extreme fluidity, which lends itself well to the game’s controls feeling tight and smooth. They even have a ton of cute idle animations that can change based on contextual areas in specific levels. Not to mention the game’s near flawless 60 fps performance, the animators and engineers at Team Asobi absolutely went to town with their work in Astro Bot.
So the game looks nice, but how about those platforming mechanics? Astro Bot will feel familiar to those who have played Astro’s Playroom, but Incase you haven’t, as Astro you can move, jump, and punch. If you hit the jump button a second time while in the air, Astro will hover with this little laser beam that comes out of their feet which aids in not only platforming but also damaging enemies that can’t normally be punched. Speaking of punching, holding the punch button will charge up a spin attack that, like the hover jump, can be used to attack enemies or interact with items in the environment. Those are the basics.
Where Astro Bot gets interesting is in its power-ups. During most levels you will come across a treasure chest that gives Astro a little robot companion, and these robot companions bestow new abilities. One that looks like an elephant allows you to suck up material and create platforms in the air while one that looks like a mouse lets you shrink down and gives a level a whole new sense of depth. There are several of these power-ups and every level is designed around them, constantly teaching the player what can be done with them by folding in interesting platformer obstacles and combat scenarios. There was a mini-boss encounter against these three chicks in eggs on top of a massive tree. You have to dodge incoming attacks while building up platforms with the elephant’s ability in order to climb up to a weak point on the top of each of the eggs. You are constantly overcoming fun obstacles that really pull the most out of these power-ups, and even though they do repeat on a handful of occasions, the game is always serving up something fresh to make them feel new.
I don’t normally talk about how a game feels to play on the controller itself in these reviews, but in Astro Bot’s case, an exception is needed. This game goes out of its way to squeeze every drop of functionality out of the dual sense controller it possibly can. Not only do things like the smooth performance and tight design of the movement feel right while using the controller, but features like the haptic feedback and adaptive triggers add so much to the entire experience. With how over the top some of the animations are, the intense haptics make the actions on screen feel even more impactful, like stretching out a cord all the way until it snaps or feeling the individual spikes bump around on your hands as you roll over them on a metal ball. The haptics and adaptive triggers combine to create an absorbing tactile experience while you play that very few other games have even attempted to achieve.
The controller also plays with the microphone and gyro functionality as well to varying levels of success. Blowing into the controller to activate a wind turbine is fun on occasion but that specific mechanic doesn’t really evolve much throughout the game. You are able to use the gyro sensors to aim projectiles during various sequences throughout the game as well as tossing rescued bots that are chilling in the controller up in the air for a bit of fun. But when the game requires the gyro controls for platforming objectives, some cracks start to surface. The gyro controls just aren’t precise enough to feel perfect, particularly with a certain monkey powerup that requires you to twist the controller to move hands into position to climb up a cliff, or hammering a series of nails with giant robotic hands. The gyro controls are certainly functional and it doesn’t detract a great deal from the overall fun of the game, it just stands out as an area that isn’t quite as strong surrounded by all of the other top notch areas of the game.
Now I have to spend some time gushing about the music and sound design in Astro Bot. Adding on top of all the praise I’ve heaped on the haptics and controls, the sound design plays another crucial part in the overall satisfaction the game gives its players. Everything from the ring of a collected coin to the shattering of broken glass as you smash through is crisp and energetic. The sounds of Astro’s metallic feet stepping across different materials along with the various ambient background noises really immerse you into the environment which is sort of funny to say as you are playing as a happy go lucky PlayStation robot, but it’s true. The metal clangs, the electricity snaps, the wood splinters almost scientifically in how satisfying it all is to hear.
The same praise can be sent to the music. The soundtrack composed by Kenneth Young is full of energy and has a vibrancy that matches the game’s presentation. The music is suitably varied inorder to blend in with the different theming of the levels, but there are influences from hip hop to big band jazz to electronic music all throughout the game. It goes all over the place but never loses its groovy moving energy which really plays well off of the platforming gameplay designed around jumping and movement. There are some returning tracks from previous Astro games here including the ever-catchy main theme, but it’s hard to see this as a negative when the music slaps this hard.
All of the things I just mentioned above culminate into the game’s boss fights. These are all-out high-energy action-packed bouts against a massive animal bot that serves as the ruler of each of the galaxies in the game. There’s usually a small platforming section before the fight kicks off, and you’ll know it when it kicks off. The massive animal bots burst into the scene with a massive roar as their name slams onto the screen, big and bold. These fights are made up of a few phases that progress after you score some hits on their weak point. These phases usually have a couple different attacks and they involve a power up, such as in Mighty Chewy’s fight where you need to use the rocket-dashing dog power-up to smash through glass walls sliding towards you. You will be running, jumping, dodging, punching, and swinging all over these boss arenas before walloping the boss with everything you can muster. The sense of impact in dishing out damage to these bosses is incredible, exemplified by the final punch that usually sends the boss flying off into an explosion of fireworks. The main platforming levels are fantastic, but the boss fight levels are just as fun if not more so.
I’d like to sidestep and talk about an important part of any platformer: Collectibles. In Astro Bot, collectibles come in a few different forms. In most levels, you will be seeking out puzzle pieces and the missing bots of Astro’s crew. The missing bots come in two varieties, regular bots and VIP bots. Regular bots are just generic little bots while VIP bots are themed after various PlayStation and adjacent third party franchise characters. There are over 100 VIP bots in the game, and these bots range from popular series like Horizon and God of War to obscure with hidden gems like Incredible Crisis and Motor Toon Grand Prix. Every level has at least one VIP bot, and it’s always exciting seeing which game character might pop up in a given level, even if some levels do reuse certain characters (such as three different Helghast from the Killzone series appearing in one level). This system weaponizes nostalgia in such a powerful way that it makes you want to seek out all the bots to not only see if a character from your favorite franchise appears, but also how deep the cuts truly get.
Puzzle pieces are used to unlock stations at the landing site, a sort of hub area where all the bots return to after being rescued. These stations include a gacha machine that returns from Astro’s Playroom, which allows you to spend coins you collect on accessory items for the VIP bots which enhance their little interactions in the hub area. Other stations include a wardrobe that allows you to switch outfits for Astro, a garage that lets you change the paint job on your dual sense speeder, and a safari that lets you interact, observe, and photograph the various wildlife bots that populate each of the levels. While it may seem like a lot to take in initially, the amount of collectibles in practice is a comfortable amount. There’s enough in each level to inspire you to fully explore, but not enough to where you will be spending an extreme amount of time in any given level before finding everything and moving on.
There’s another form of pseudo collectible that is a bit more well hidden, and those are secret exits. They are what you might expect from the name, they are alternate exits out of a level that are hidden behind some secret or puzzle. These can be a little tricky to sniff out initially, but once you crack the code, you are rewarded with an entirely new level in a secret sixth galaxy of levels. Not every level has a secret exit, but there’s a good amount of levels that do throughout the game, and all of the secret levels are just as fun as the regular levels, so you will definitely want to seek these out.
There’s one more thing I want to briefly touch on when it comes to the idea of rewards in this game. After you beat each of the game’s bosses, a final level appears for you to complete, but these levels aren’t like the rest, these are known as “hero worlds”. These hero worlds are themed around a specific PlayStation franchise, every aspect from the music and the visuals, down to even implementing specific game mechanics from these respective franchises. These levels are the ultimate fan service reward for beating a boss and finishing a galaxy. I don’t want to spoil too much as the sense of discovery you get from unlocking these levels is best experienced yourself, but to give an example, one of the levels is themed after God of War Ragnarok and sees Astro Bot getting to wield the Leviathan ax as they skate across the ice. It’s one thing to pay some fan service by including a VIP bot, but Team Asobi really went above and beyond in translating these game franchises into their unique gameplay style, paying respects to various aspects of those franchises, and even in some cases putting forth a “what-if” style scenario by including certain franchises that haven’t seen new entries in over a decade. It’s great fun and a joy to experience.
Throughout my time with Astro Bot, two themes really bubbled to the top for me, those were satisfaction and simply having fun. I’ve mentioned it numerous times above, but to round it up and tie it together, the animations, controls, feedback, music, sound design, everything in this game is tuned to such a high degree of quality that the game is just extremely satisfying to experience from the moment you hit start game to the moment the credits start to roll. And more than anything else the game is extremely fun to play, it honestly took me aback while playing. Everything from a little detail tucked in a corner, to fun references to internet culture and perceptions of these games, is handled with such care and love while not taking itself too seriously. You can just tell the developers had an absolute blast making this game and while I love many new games that are released, it honestly felt like Team Asobi came on the scene with Astro Bot and reminded everyone how to make a truly fun game.
To close it out, Astro Bot is an incredible platformer that’s great for new players and veterans alike. It’s designed almost scientifically to put a smile on your face, it’s full of interesting gameplay ideas, and it’s all polished to an insane degree. A few minor nitpicks can’t even hold the game back in any significant way. Four years in and the PlayStation 5 just saw one of its best games released in the form of Astro Bot and it’s an absolute must play. Astro Bot is available on PlayStation 5.
