Year: 2024
Platform: PlayStation 5
Genre: Action/adventure
Review Date: 11/12/24
Rating: ****
Astro and his friends are cruising around in their fancy PS5 spaceship when a nasty green alien tears the ship apart and steals its CPU. The various parts and bots are scattered across multiple planets in multiple star systems, and it's up to Astro to retrieve the pieces and rescue his friends.
While it looks and feels like a gratuitous PS5 tech demo, there's also a very solid and very fun game underneath the high gloss graphics and physics engine. There are over 40 planets to explore, which offer an amazing amount of variety and imagination. Each planet has a unique theme, and while the core gameplay mechanic of run-jump-hit remains constant, many planets give Astro extra abilities for dealing with certain environmental challenges. These include a rocket boost, extended punching gloves, a stopwatch that slows down time, the ability to roll around as a ball, and others. Special bonus levels allow Astro to take on the abilities of other PlayStation properties like "Ape Escape", "God Of War", "Uncharted", and "Horizon."
Astro is a charming little robot and his animations are adorable and full of personality, but the game's real selling point lies in all of the special VIP bots that you can rescue. There are a total of 300 bots in the game and 169 of them represent various games across the PlayStation's 30-year history. They all have super cute animations and it's utterly delightful to see the likes of Pyramid Head, Crash Bandicoot, Ico and Yorda, Jill Valentine, Nathan Drake, Lara Croft, Ken and Ryu, Kat and Raven, Ulala, Solid Snake, Kratos, Fetch, Aloy, Dante, Amaterasu, and numerous deep cuts from Sony's library. (although Square/Enix are noticeably absent) Each of these bots also have accessories that can be purchased with in-game currency in the Gatcha Lab, which dispenses pseudo-random capsule toys based on which bots have been rescued. The bots always kept me coming back for more, even when I got frustrated.
Presentation-wise, the game looks spectacular, with fun, colorful, and playfully cartoony environments to navigate and explore. The music is catchy and upbeat, and reminiscent of the "Sonic The Hedgehog" games. The controls are tight and responsive for the most part, with the exception of the DualSense tilt feature, which is used in several places. Fortunately, a game patch offers the option to turn off the tilt feature and use the left stick instead, which makes things MUCH easier. In fact, the first boss battle is literally impossible unless you do this. It's the first time I've ever used an accessibility option before, which might say something about my age and coordination. Unfortunately, the game doesn't offer the ability to turn off or dial down the controller's haptic feedback, which goes WAY overboard. In many ways, the game feels like it's primarily a showcase for the DualSense controller's abilities, much like "Astro's Playroom."
The game is clearly aimed at younger players and casual gamers, and the difficulty ramps up at a constant slow and steady pace. However, boss battles can be very challenging, and I nearly gave up on the game due to a mid-game boss that I was stuck on. But I stayed with it for the bots. After a couple of frustrating hours and multiple video tutorials, I finally managed to defeat it. You can also unlock optional bonus planets that are nearly impossible to beat, which forced me to abandon 20 bots. However, I still had enough bots to face the final challenge, which was a battle with the big bad nasty who started the whole mess. This protracted finale seemed to go on forever, and culminated in a fleet of all previous PlayStation hardware (the PlaySquadron) attacking the green bully to rescue the PS5 CPU from its clutches. This was also followed by one of the most heart wrenching sucker punch endings I've ever seen, which had me sobbing by the time the credits rolled.
While I'm sad that I wasn't able to rescue all of the bots, I thoroughly enjoyed my time with "Astro Bot." It's overflowing with charm and visual delight, and offers one of the purest and most joyful gaming experiences I've had in a very long time. I spent about 22 hours with the game, which feels just about right, and I wouldn't mind going back to track down some of its extra goodies and trophies.