Looking back over our collective shoulders towards November 12, 2020, two fairly monumental things happened on that day from a games industry perspective. The first, naturally, is that the PlayStation 5 launched and became the current-gen console powerhouse that we’ve all grown to love over the past four years or so. The second, was that packaged with every PlayStation 5 console sold was Astro’s Playroom, an almost cruelly sized morsel of what looked to be a tremendous platforming successor to Astro Bot: Rescue Mission on PSVR that not only showcased every aspect of Sony’s shiny new console hardware with aplomb, but genuinely provided an insight into what could have been one of the best platforming games in years.
Astro Bot PS5 Review
Precisely Engineered Platforming Excellence That Soars With An Abundance Of Charm, Polish And Peerless Visual Presentation
Well, nearly four years later, the main course has arrived and it’s every bit as delectable, scrumptious and tantalising as one might expect – and like all the most perfect meals it’s only real flaw is that it eventually ends. Let’s be clear about this, Astro Bot isn’t just the best platformer on PS5 by a significant margin, it’s also one of best PS5 games period. Also, in an era when the word ‘exclusive’ is beginning to lose its lustre, what Team Asobi has wrought here is proof-positive that in a year that feels a tad bare in terms of must-have first-party titles, Astro Bot feels like a truly essential effort the likes of which hasn’t been seen for PlayStation 5 since Marvel’s Spider-Man 2.
With ample twee and whimsy gushing out of every pixelated pore, the setup for Astro Bot is as straightforward and relatively wholesome as you might expect. The story, such as it is, is that after a maliciously goofy alien attacks and destroys their PlayStation 5 spaceship (what else would their spaceship be?) scattering hundreds of Astro Bots across space, our hero must venture to a great many different worlds to rescue his wayward friends and rebuild their wrecked intergalactic console spacecraft before heading onto freedom.
For anyone who has played Astro’s Playroom – and let’s be honest, that should be *all* of you – Astro Bot fundamentally plays almost exactly the same is its console pack-in predecessor. This is to say that Astro Bot is a three-dimensional platforming effort which unfolds across a number of differently themed worlds and tasks the player with collecting PlayStation coins, rescuing Astro Bots and scooping up jigsaw pieces to unlock additional content later in the game. That’s the nuts and bolts, the bread and butter if you like of the Astro Bot experience and yet, what Team Asobi has created here is something that is far in excess of the sum of its parts.
The first thing that strikes you is that Astro Bot is a true love letter to all things PlayStation and is absolutely embedded in the legacy of Sony’s nearly three decade long presence in the games industry. Chiefly, this manifests in the initial new game/continue screen which has you picking out individual save slots represented by PSOne memory cards, resulting in an appreciably keen pang of nostalgia in the process, setting the stage for a veritable avalanche of PlayStation worship to come.
After getting into Astro Bot proper, fond memories and a warm familiarity of the cheerful little android’s 2020 offering sprung anew in my mind, as I immediately started jumping, jump-boosting and happily dashing about the place as if no time had passed since I had rolled the credits on Astro’s Playroom nearly four years ago. Of course Astro Bot expands massively – as one would hope – over the modest remit of Astro’s Playroom, with around 80 very different levels for players to leap and smash their way through. Though it isn’t the longest game ever (it took me just over 20 hours to do everything I wanted), every level is crafted with the utmost care by an immensely talented team that clearly have a deep love for the platforming genre.
There’s a cheerful thematic quality to each of Astro Bot’s levels that echo the various eras of the PlayStation back catalogue. From worlds that evoke the sun-dappled, simian madness of Ape Escape, to the frosty wastelands of God of War Ragnarok, every one of Astro Bot’s levels has a strong sense of character and uniqueness that feels threaded through every aspect of its DNA. Further deepening that thematic quality is that not only will you come across a number of PlayStation heroes that exist as Astro Bots to be rescued, but so too can you also embrace a series of powers and abilities that are often unique to each stage, such as being able to inflate like a balloon or gain a pair of punch out style boxing gloves which can be used to both smash through the world and pull sticky surfaces free.
In every case, the heady calibre of Astro Bot’s level design meets the demands at hand. Each level isn’t just jam-packed with secrets and things to do, but it never ever feels repetitive – there’s always some unique moment of joy just around the corner – whether that’s being thrown into a boxing ring to square off against a massive matryoshka doll robot or tangling with a towering android pirate, Astro Bot never fails to surprise and delight in equal measure and frequently left me grinning like a loon. Almost every level is a kaleidoscopic playground of giddy exuberance and of such rosy cheeked delight that you just never want to stop playing. Certainly, I don’t mind saying each has more imagination and free-wheeling creativity than anything to come out of the genre in the past decade.
Astro Bot simply feels like a pleasure to play on a fundamental level too, with the titular robot immediately acting on any command passed to it through the DualSense controller. Three-dimensional platforming has never felt this satisfyingly responsive. Even though each of Astro Bot’s levels can be bested the first time through in roughly between ten and twenty minutes, there is ample reason to book a return ticket. For a start not only are the various Astro Bots that you must rescue dotted around the place in some fairly ingenious nooks and crannies, but so too are there a trio of jigsaw pieces that are carefully – and fiendishly – hidden around every level to boot, as well as a constant stream of PlayStation coins that can be scooped up as well.
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There’s a point to rescuing all 300 Astro Bots beyond just what the narrative prescribes too, since the more bots you rescue, the bigger the community becomes at the crash site, allowing you to unlock additional jigsaw pieces and previously inaccessible areas as a result. Once the gacha dispenser has been unlocked by completing enough jigsaws, the coins that you collect can be used to buy collectible gacha figures that are each tied in with a different part of PlayStation history. Much more than just a quick glance collectible, each gacha you collect not only appears at the crash site hub, but buying enough of them also unlocks extra puzzle pieces and other collectibles as well – adding a real incentive to, well, catch em’ all.
Even Astro Bot’s crash site hub is a sprawling level within itself, with all manner of hidden Astro Bots, jigsaws, coins and more, not to mention additional connective islands and realms which become available as you begin to piece together the Bots’ wrecked PlayStation 5 mothership. Speaking of which, the task of rebuilding the PlayStation 5 mothership is all done using the motion controller and is surprisingly tactile. Repairing the PS5’s memory for instance, has you not just slotting in the various silicon boards, but hammering in the screws to make sure they remain fastened (and accidentally hammering your own hand in the process) before you end up forcing it into the chassis of Sony’s current gen console and all of it is conveyed precisely through the DualSense controller’s highly tuned haptics. And like everything else in Astro Bot, it’s all done with such an effervescent charm and love for the subject matter that you can’t help but smile like a goof all the way through it. This is feel-good gaming at its absolute best.
One of the most highlighted aspects of 2020’s Astro’s Playroom was the comprehensive manner in which Team Asobi took advantage of the myriad features embedded in the PlayStation 5’s DualSense controller and with Astro Bot, the team has thankfully continued this streak, deftly reminding other developers how it should be done in the process. Every little step, every jump and every interaction – no matter how small – is felt through the haptic feedback of the DualSense controller and is uniquely graduated based on the texture of the surface you’re on. As our heroic android romps through a sandy beach, a granular, almost spitting feeling will be felt through the DualSense as Astro Bot grinds up grains of sand with every stride, while skating around an icy surfaces creates a pin-sharp sensation as the ice is beautifully scored with each step.
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The adaptive triggers on the DualSense controller also get a workout too in much the same way they did with Astro’s Playroom, with any kind of pulling or stretching motion being painstakingly replicated by a real physical feeling of tensility that becomes more and more exaggerated the further you pull. It’s fitting that since Astro’s Playroom released alongside the PlayStation 5 nearly four years ago, no other developer has come close to Team Asobi’s peerless mastery of everything the DualSense controller has to offer. Through Team Asobi’s work with the DualSense controller in Astro Bot, the physical bond between game and gamer has never felt quite so keen and I am absolutely here for it.
From a technical perspective, Astro Bot predictably soars and honours Team Asobi’s long established pedigree of delivering games that worship your eyeballs. Not only does the game boast a razor sharp, near 4K resolution but the buttery 60 frames per second makes everything just look so smooth, clean and immaculate. Astro Bot is a superlative treat for the eyes, as imaginative enemy and level designs give way to a range of particle effects, detailed reflections work, great lighting and more, all of which comes together to make Astro Bot come alive.
As it turns out, Astro Bot is also quite an unexpected physics showcase, too. For instance, early on in the Creamy Canyon level there are just hundreds of candied sweets scattered everywhere and each one has its own physics properties as Astro Bot kicks them about the scene while going about its business. Elsewhere fluid simulation is of an extremely high quality, with great volumes of water filling and leaving spaces in almost an instant as the world around it reacts accordingly. There’s just a mind boggling attention to detail on show here and it’s a level of quality that you just don’t see anywhere else in the genre.
An obscenely polished and soul-affirming triumph from every angle, Astro Bot isn’t just an unabashed celebration of all things PlayStation, it’s a deeply passionate celebration of everything you could and should love about a video game. There are no microtransactions, no season passes and no busywork padding – just precisely engineered 3D platforming with an overabundance of joy on offer. Astro Bot is a big, warm hug of a videogame that also happens to be not just one of the best platform games ever made, but one of the best PS5 games ever made, too. Team Asobi, please never stop making these games.
Astro Bot releases for PS5 on September 6, 2024.
Review code kindly provided by PR.