Before Astro’s Playroom wowed newly christened PlayStation 5 owners with its imaginative use of the PlayStation 5’s technology, Astro was a humble mascot for PlayStation’s VR game; Astro Bot Rescue Mission. The way Astro’s Playroom wowed gamers and the fact that it was a free preinstalled game for every PlayStation 5 console made it an instant classic. Pretty much everyone played it and wanted more of it.
After four years of PlayStation releasing tedious and pretentious realistic, story-driven games, Astro returns in a bigger, longer, and beefier 3D platformer. This time, Astro gets a full-priced game that will take everything people loved about Playroom and expand upon it, while doubling down on all the fun and amusing cameos that built PlayStation into what it is today.
With such a solid foundation to work off of, there is no doubt that Astro’s big game will be enjoyable for most gamers. However, under scrutiny and casting aside the superficial joy of recognizing what you liked as a kid, is Astro Bot good on its own? Is there more to this than adequate 3D platforming? Can Astro stand on his own without hundreds of cameos? Find out in our Astro Bot review!
Astro Bot
Developer: Team Asobi
Publisher: Sony Interactive Entertainment
Platforms: PlayStation 5
Release Date: September 6, 2024
Price: $59.99
Astro Bot refers to when video games didn’t need a complex premise to get gamers going on an adventure. Astro and his 300 buddies are flying in a PlayStation 5-shaped spaceship until they encounter a generic-looking green blob alien guy. The baddie roughs them up and rips out a processor from the console, sending the little robots and their spacecraft hurdling toward a planet.
This is a collect-a-thon game that sets players loose to explore the neighboring planets on a flying controller to find the missing robots and lost pieces of a PlayStation 5. Other than reaching the end of the stage, players are encouraged to seek the lost bots. They can be hidden or in plain sight, but will usually involve some gimmick or light challenge to overcome.
This tried and true formula is effective, especially for kids and Astro Bot is no different. This game excels at utilizing the PlayStation 5’s technology for rendering tons of objects, physics, and the Dual Sense’s features. Astro Bot may be a standard 3D platformer, but it is a very good-looking one that feels satisfying to play thanks to the PlayStation 5’s unique controller.
While playing Astro Bot, the PlayStation 5 controller will emit sounds and vibrate depending on what Astro is doing on screen. If he scampers across a glass surface, you won’t just hear it, you feel it. This is applied to countless actions and it goes a long way into how Astro Bot feels to play. It’s a sensory experience that is unlike anything else out there except Astro’s Playroom.
The controller haptics are applied to power-ups, special abilities, and the mini-games. Just like in Playroom, Astro Bot makes use of every aspect of the PlayStation 5.
Hearing the cartooning stretch and pull of a spring being stressed from the frog boxing gloves and the vibrations accurately emulating the sensation is enough to make any jaded gamer go, “Ooooooh!”.
Regretfully, this also means having to blow into a controller once in a while. Using the microphone in the controller is one feature that could have been axed and nobody would complain. I like to keep my controllers clean and germ-free. The last thing I want is anybody heaving their breath on my expensive PlayStation 5 controllers.
There was never any doubt that Astro Bot was going to have excellent visuals. The ranges of material variety in every stage make the alien planets feel rich and the atmospheric effects imply different temperatures.
It is hard to complain about the visuals, but it is harder to ignore that it does feel like a step backward compared to Playroom which had very distinct theming modeled after the different PlayStation generations.With
The level design is adequate. It’s safe in its scope and only surprising when Astro can shrink to mouse size, making the levels transform from standard fare to sprawlingly epic.
Stages are a linear mix of suspended platforms and open areas with branching optional paths. There will always be a gimmick along the way to mix things up, but it rarely surprises except for the stages modeled after classic PlayStation games.
One example is a stage designed to play like Ape Escape, complete with classic sound effects, roaming monkey bots to catch with a net, and a boss battle with Specter.
These varieties of levels stood out because they broke away from the generically themed locations. It also made me realize that Sony could have given us a new Ape Escape game any time they wanted and have been actively denying us what we wanted this whole time.
Astro still does not have much personality apart from acting obnoxiously cute and making baby noises all the time. After a while of collecting countless bots modeled after classic games from the last 30 years, it becomes apparent that Astro Bot is a shallow game that is held up by the nostalgia of the games it constantly references.
The sad part is that Astro Bot can’t fully commit to its game references. There are tons of questionable additions that pad out the roster, like the dozen generic Ape Escape monkey bots or the generic mudokons from Oddworld. There are a bunch of side characters from the God of War soft reboot, LocoRoco, and Horizon that all look alike and are wasted slots.
For a game that aspires to celebrate PlayStation’s legacy, there is a distractingly lack of Squaresoft/Square Enix representation. Square’s games were a huge deal for PlayStation.
Their games gave them the edge to be contenders and take away from Nintendo’s market dominance. There are two generic singers from Signstar in Astro Bot, but no Dragon Quest VII or VIII hero present, and don’t count on any Final Fantasy or Sora to show up.
The cameos are amusing and have an impressive level of detail. Some of the cameos owned by Sony can be worn as a skin which does help give Astro some personality because his default design feels like a rip-off of Eve from Wall*E. Sadly, they don’t come with any power-ups built in.
Without the cameos or the handful of PlayStation-themed levels, Astro Bot is a generic 3D platformer that happens to look incredible. The controller haptics do make it feel unlike anything else out there, but the reality is Astro is a very basic character who can’t do a whole lot to keep the gameplay varied.
When Astro picks up a power-up ability, he has no choice but to use it for the rest of the level because it was designed around it. The most challenging parts of the game are short optional linear levels like the FLUDD-less challenges from Mario Sunshine. It is too bad that you only earn one bot from completing each one. The reward should be more substantial than another cameo.
Some optional levels can be challenging for a game that is usually easy-going and aimed at children. Gamers will have to approach them carefully and precisely since there isn’t a way to play them differently than intended. It would have been nice if Astro was more flexible with his range of movement so skilled gamers could experiment with different playstyles.
Astro Bot is a crowd-pleasing kind of game, but it is also a very superficial one that you forget about after playing. The haptics and the sensory experience from playing are novel, but after a while, there is not much else to the game. It can be depressing for older gamers who wish the cameos didn’t feel like you were in a wax museum of dead celebrities; a haunting reminder of Sony squandering some of their classic games.
Astro Bot was reviewed on a PlayStation 5 using a copy purchased by Niche Gamer. You can find additional information about Niche Gamer’s review/ethics policy here. Astro Bot is now available for PlayStation 5.
