Our review of Astro Bot, developed by Team Asobi. Available now for PS5.
WHAT IS IT?
A (much) larger version of the PS5 pack-in game Astro’s Playroom.
IS IT GOOD?
It’s a stellar platformer, albeit one that can’t help but call to mind other, better, platformers.
WHO SHOULD PLAY IT?
PS5 owners, PS4 owners, PS3 owners, PS2 owners, PS1 owners.
ENOS LIVES
Growing up, I was convinced that the “platformer” genre got its name from the fact that each platform deployed one of these games as its tentpole, system-selling, mascot-bearing title.
Hence, Super Mario was the Nintendo platformer, Sega had Sonic the Hedgehog, and eventually Sony came along with Crash Bandicoot. I seriously entertained the possibility that each platform was only permitted one “platformer”, and that when new entrants appeared – Kirby, Donkey Kong Country, Earthworm Jim – they were all jostling to claim the platformer crown for their respective consoles. It took me far too long to realize that platformer referred not to the hardware on which the game was played, but rather the basic building block of the genre: the platforms, in other words, which characters ran and jumped across in order to progress – left to right at first, then front to back, side to side, as graphical capabilities increased.
There have been only a few truly great platformers, and fewer still which don’t star Mario. In the 3D space, I’d argue for Super Mario 64 (1996) as the pinnacle of the genre, though Super Mario Galaxy (2007) and Psychonauts (2005) are both strong contenders. For more traditional 2D platformers, Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest (1995) probably just ekes it out over Super Mario World (1990), though Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (1992) will always have a special place in my heart.
That said, I’m more of a PlayStation kid than anything else, so I also have a soft spot for Sony’s various bids at platformer glory, such as Naughty Dog’s Crash Bandicoot and Jak and Daxter series, Insomniac’s Spyro and Ratchet and Clank games, and the Sucker Punch Sly Cooper series. If Sony’s platformers have never quite reached the height of its competitors, it’s not for lack of trying.
Which brings us to Astro Bot, from Sony first-party studio Team Asobi. The third entry in the Astro series following PSVR exclusive Astro Bot Rescue Mission and PS5 pack-in game Astro’s Playroom, Bot is easily the best in this burgeoning platformer series, and the best Sony platformer since the stellar Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time. Functioning simultaneously as homage to thirty years of PlayStation history and as an unabashed riff on classic platformers in general, Astro Bot is joyous, accessible, and a reminder of what makes this genre special. It is also, however, a reminder of how others have done this sort of thing before – and better.
THE BEGINNING
PlayStation 5’s best launch title wasn’t even technically a game. Astro’s Playroom, which came pre-installed on every PS5, is a glorified tech demo, meant to show off the capabilities of the DualSense controller, with its touch control, haptic feedback, and various other bells and whistles. Playroom was much better than it had any right to be, stringing together a series of showpiece levels while throwing in a bevvy of references and call-backs to other PlayStation games. Much of the charm of Astro’s Playroom came from encountering various little robots dressed up like familiar characters from across gaming history.
In Playroom, the gaming easter eggs were just that: easter eggs in a demo intended to show off a particular bit of tech. In Playroom‘s full-fledged sequel Astro Bot, the easter eggs are the point: across its 10-12 hour runtime, your one – and only – goal is to track down hundreds of adorable little bots, the majority of whom are direct references to games associated with the PlayStation brand.
Sony’s own Crash Bandicoot and Spyro are here, of course, but so too are homages to third-party games, some of which are closely associated with PlayStation – like the Konami-developed Metal Gear Solid, perhaps the greatest PS1 game of all time – while others seem to have been thrown in just for the sake of nostalgia, like Capcom’s Street Fighter. And while most of these homages take the form of bots dressed up as PlayStation characters, Bot occasionally serves up a level which is just one big homage to a classic PS game. (No spoilers here!)
IT ONLY DOES EVERYTHING
Mechanically, Astro Bot is every 3D platformer ever. The title, personality-free character, can run, and jump, and swing from ropes, and climb ladders, and occasionally activate a special ability, like super-extended boxing gloves or a jet-pack. Levels are cribbed from platformer history, including lushly beautiful jungle environments, desert- and dessert-themed worlds, and chilly snowscapes. Astro Bot is lovely to look at – the colours pop, the character models look great – and it’s fun to listen to, with about half the game’s sound effects produced by the DualSense controller itself.
Conceptually, Astro Bot is your standard collect-a-thon, where it is not essential to track down every last one of its trinkets, but where doing so is encouraged if you want to experience everything it has to offer. In this case, what you’re primarily tracking down are bots, although each level contains secrets – puzzle pieces which unlock bonus levels; warp gates to even more hidden worlds – for those who go looking. In theory, the game can be defeated after collecting only 200 or so bots, but its best parts – the secret levels, the amusing easter eggs and cameos – tack on several more hours’ worth of challenges.
Playing Astro Bot is fun. The controls are responsive and, like its predecessor, make full use of the DualSense’s capabilities. Like many a well-designed platformer, secrets are fairly easy to spot, but much harder to actually get to: if you see something tall, there’s probably a way to climb on top of it; if you see a checkpoint on the right, it’s usually a good idea to check on the left. Astro Bot is the king of levels which hide secrets just behind the starting area.
For a game so devoted to Sony nostalgia, however, there’s a lot of Nintendo DNA in here, with enemies and gimmicks borrowed liberally from non-PlayStation classics like Super Mario 64, Donkey Kong Country, Pikmin, and even Mario Party. Some of the boss fights are quite inventive; others gave me the nagging sensation I’d already faced them, in a slightly different guise, over on Switch or GameCube.
It doesn’t help Astro Bot that you really are just doing the exact same things you did in Astro’s Playroom, but for several hours more: hunt for PlayStation bots; try out the DualSense’s varied functions; scramble across fairly easy main levels then circle back to tackle the more difficult side-challenges. If Astro Bot was originally intended as a string of DLC packs for Playroom, it would not surprise me in the least.
PLAY HAS NO LIMITS
It’s an odd thing, building your entire video game around easter eggs. It’s not something that would have been possible ten, twenty years ago, but then we live in the age of Deadpool and Wolverine, when a string of easter eggs and in-jokes can wind up as the highest-grossing R-rated film of all time. I’m not convinced this is a good thing (and I say this as someone who loved Deadpool and Wolverine), and it’s hard to escape the feeling that the more navel-gazing and circular our pop culture becomes, the less interesting our world becomes. Heck, this criticism itself isn’t original: just take a look at the last decade’s worth of Star Wars or Star Trek or Lord of the Rings discourse to find similar complaints levied at this age of remakes, reboots, “legacyquels”, and otherwise.
To the extent Astro Bot adds anything new to this discourse, it is this: if you’re at least unashamed about your navel-gazing – if your first scene features a spaceship that looks like a PlayStation 5, and the point of your game is to track down PlayStation characters and, eventually, PlayStation hardware components – then you deserve more respect than those (cough cough, J.J. Abrams, cough cough) who promise something new, only to deliver a pale imitation of the original.
Astro Bot is, in a sense, a pale imitation of dozens of originals, but it’s a damn fine imitation at that, and never professes to be anything more.
***
Final score: 8/10 power stars, wumpa fruit, and/or gold coins.
Visit the official website for Astro Bot here.
