Astro Bot Review: A Big Adventure for a Little Legend

Astro Bot

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Platform reviewed on: PlayStation 5

Pros

• Joyful world that plays back
• Accessible for young platformer fans
• Catchy soundtrack that stays in your ear

Cons

• Cameos remind you of series left behind
• Some hero levels a little underwhelming

ESRB Age Rating: Everyone 10+
ESRB Content Descriptors: Crude Humor, Fantasy Violence

Review code provided by the publisher.

Astro’s Playroom, the pre-installed tech demo for the PlayStation 5, was a welcome surprise amid a sparse launch window for the next-gen console. But it was far too little of the little bot. And so, it is with great pleasure that I received much, much more of Astro Bot in his full-fledged outing in a standalone game.

Astro Bot

Release Date: September 6, 2024

• PlayStation 5Buy

The setup for Astro Bot is a fairly simple formula for anyone familiar with mascot platformers. The PS5 mothership has had its CPU stolen, promptly blown up, and scattered its precious cargo of bots across a bunch of planets. Rescue enough bots from planets in a galaxy and you can challenge the galaxy’s boss to recover a component for the PS5. Sometimes you find a portal to a special secret world, with more bots to rescue. Sometimes the bots are cameos of characters from other PlayStation games, then you point and clap.

To further extend the fan service, this time after defeating a boss, a special bot cameo will unlock a “hero level,” where Astro can take on the powers of another game’s protagonist and play out a cute little homage of some tentpole PlayStation titles. Without spoiling many of them (one early game spoiler immediately follows the end of these brackets), one of the best was God of War’s, in which Astro can throw the Leviathan axe to freeze enemies. The soundtrack for the level uses Kratos’ infamous “Boy” voice clip as a sample during the drop in an amazing club remix of Ragnarok’s theme music. A clear highlight in an already very good soundtrack that perhaps struggles a bit elsewhere with trying to top the absurdly catchy GPU Jungle from Playroom.

The hero levels are great little touches, but of wildly varying quality, which can be a bit of a disappointment when they build up so nicely to the surprise after each boss. One reminded me I didn’t really like the franchise it was riffing on, while another was so good it made me re-evaluate which was the better version of the game, the real one or the Astro Bot parody.

Parody is maybe the wrong word to use, as Astro’s homages very rarely satirize, but often celebrate. The Astro Bot-shaped caricatures have a sort of knowing humor to them that can only be afforded by the metatextual nature of Astro’s entire fourth-wall-demolishing existence.

In the desert Crash Site hub, where all of your rescued bots hang out, the vampire and horror-related cameo bots are all gathered under the shadow cast by the gigantic PS5 mothership in the middle. Bots from the same franchise group near each other like little parties to celebrate them. When you hit every bot (after unlocking their associated prop in the gacha machine) they have a special little animation which is often another layer of nudging and winking to the audience.

In possibly my favorite instance, the avatar of Rez – rhythm game godfather Tetsuya Mizuguchi’s 2001 experiment in synesthesia – comes with two other bots who are sharing a controller to feel the vibrations during gameplay. A cheeky reference to the game’s unique peripheral pack-in, the Trance Vibrator, which allowed someone watching the game to also experience the melding together of rave music, wireframe visuals, and rhythmic pulsing. Mizuguchi later admitted that this did, indeed, lend itself to unintended, alternative uses.

Astro Bot is the sort of game that vibes with people who know this deep lore of the PlayStation brand, and specifically Japan Studio – the sadly shuttered predecessor that Team Asobi was born out of. No characters are explicitly named, rather given clever aliases (like “Boy” and “Dad of Boy”) which you are rewarded for piecing together in your primate brain.

But it’s almost at direct odds with the presentation of the game as maybe the only – if not, certainly the most – child-friendly first-party offering on PlayStation right now. Perhaps this is the grand plan to surreptitiously teach the new generation of gamers about Mr Mosquito and Vib-Ribbon. Though in my opinion, and with those specific examples, they’re better off not knowing.

What Astro Bot does have going for it in the all-ages department is everything else. It is an absolute joy just to interact with things in its many, varied worlds. Punching a cactus just to see it shimmy. Running through a pile of nuts and bolts to feel them jangling around in your hands. Jumping on a hot air balloon to watch how convincingly the canopy deforms, like a half-inflated bounce house. Whenever you try to mess around with it, the whole world plays back.

In the footsteps of Mizuguchi, the synesthetic experience is completed by the DualSense’s many bells and whistles. Astro’s Playroom served as a bit of a tech demo for what devs could do with the adaptive triggers, speakers, microphone, and many haptic vibrators packed into the PS5’s controller. Unfortunately, most devs didn’t take much advantage of them this generation, but Astro Bot tries its hardest to make up for that on its own.

Every surface has a different footstep sound, issued from the controller, and a haptic profile to match. Water and paint splosh from the speaker whenever you’re standing in a shallow puddle. (Paints also mix and blend through a hue gradient when they meet on the floor.) If a windmill needs wind, you blow into the microphone. Mercifully, some of the adaptive trigger showcases from Playroom have not been bolstered up to full game experiences. The climbing monkey section is relegated to just one world, to my recollection, meaning you don’t have to pull triggers while see-sawing the controller’s gyro for endless hours.

In its total runtime, it is definitely a beefed up Playroom, though I would say my Platinum Trophy only took about 25 hours to earn. In terms of Mario games, it is much closer to a Bowser’s Fury than an Odyssey, and so the inventiveness of any of its mechanics is never at risk of wearing thin. In an interview, Super Mario 3D Land director Koichi Hayashida spoke of how the Mario team would try to re-use ideas in increasingly challenging and exciting ways after getting you used to them, before dropping them and introducing something else. A philosophy explored in this great Gamemaker's Toolkit video. In Astro Bot, Team Asobi probably gets two good shots out of every idea, making them seem even brighter in their short life, but definitely leaving you wanting.

There is quite a lot of replaying with those inventive ideas though, as you’ll be re-entering levels to find those last few bots or puzzle pieces. The process is even streamlined a bit for those struggling, thanks to a bird you can pay 200 coins to squawk out any hiding secrets when you’re nearby. There appears to be a conscious desire to avoid frustration, even in the game’s most challenging platforming levels – bonus “voids” represented by each of the controller’s face buttons.

While they resemble Mario Galaxy’s Trial Galaxies, honestly very few required more than a couple of tries. I’m not a platforming master by any means, but I brute-forced the final “Master Challenge” level in about half an hour. Definitely an approachable platformer for the aspiring completionist, or younger hands getting to grips with Sony’s history. For those in between – not Sony superfans and actually good at platforming games already – there may be diminishing returns. But Astro Bot can be carried by its whimsical joy alone. A wonderful little adventure for a wonderful little bot.

Astro Bot

Release Date: September 6, 2024

• PlayStation 5Buy