Was the wild success of Astro’s Playroom just a fluke, or is there some method to the madness that makes ASTRO BOT worthwhile?
ASTRO BOT started as an odd little game that was a PS5 pack-in. It featured a little robot leaping into other worlds, and at its most basic, it demonstrated the PS5’s haptic feedback in the controllers. Yet, almost instantly, the robot went viral.
The game had a certain charm to it, with its little sections that show off the features of the controller and the myriads of references to games that are available to PlayStation—it was hard to hate Astro’s Playroom because it was literally free, and it did it was fun.
Now, compared to that, ASTRO BOT is everything good about Astro’s Playroom, but it turned out to be eleven. The quirkiness, the charm, the original ideas, and the homages to PlayStation’s history you see in the tech demo, but a lot more than that. ASTRO BOT feels like the definitive PlayStation platformer, similar to how Crash Bandicoot and Spyro were back in the original PlayStation.
In the story, a PlayStation 5-shaped spaceship crewed by Astro and his crew of bots is attacked by a green alien named Space Bully Nebulax while in space. The alien destroys the mothership, steals its CPU, and scatters its parts over distant planets, leaving the crew stranded.
Astro is revived by a smaller ship called the Dual Speeder after crash-landing on a desert planet. He sets off to rescue his crew and recover the missing pieces. He revives his mothership while roaming through the galaxies, making the crash site a new oasis for him and his bots.
He sets off on further missions to take on cool and powerful bosses on their home planets. The story of ASTRO BOT is simple, and it acts more as a medium to showcase PlayStation’s heritage—and that’s totally fine because the game does so with immense style.
ASTRO BOT feels like a playable love letter to PlayStation history, not just through the first-party lens. There’s also a huge amount of respect paid to third parties as well. Everyone from Resident Evil and Metal Gear Solid characters to more niche ones like Toro Inoue, the Sony cat. The Bloodborne Hunter even pops up as well. And you can just tell the game is upfront about it all from just the story’s premise.
There are so many references that I’m not going to spoil. It’s not like your mileage will vary with how many of these characters you wouldn’t know going in, either—there are literally hundreds of them. There are upwards of 150 or 180 VIP bot characters that you must rescue, alongside the 300 characters or bots that you must rescue in general.
You never know which character’s going to pop out, and that’s part of the fun. I loved finding all these various characters and learning just how deep those references went. It was exciting just to recognize familiar faces like Solid Snake or Dracula from Castlevania.
This is one of the best reasons to play ASTRO BOT—it’s a true celebration of gaming history. While that’s mainly PlayStation-focused, most of our favorite franchises of all time have appeared on a PlayStation at some point, so that just makes it even more special.
In regards to levels, you have bite-sized approaches in ASTRO BOT, something like 3 to 8 minutes on average per level, which I think is an excellent way to give a nod to the average age of gamers being in their 30s.
This is interesting because, in the likes of Astro’s Playroom and PlayStation history, plenty of gamers grew up with PlayStation, who now have kids or busy lifestyles, etc., and you just want to hop in, play a game, have a few minutes with something, and leave with a smile on your face. ASTRO BOT provides a platform to do just that.
Other games build worlds that feel indifferent to the player’s existence like the platforms will keep spinning whether you’re there or not, but ASTRO BOT’s worlds feel like they would not exist if you weren’t there to give them purpose.
Everything you encounter just pops and invites you in when you decide to interact with it, be it by walking over it, jumping on it, punching it, or just looking at it. This feeling comes from the fact that every object, be it a flower, a barrel, a sheet of ice, or a tree, is designed to trigger some sort of feedback when you interact with it. It’s a lot like Tearaway on the PlayStation Vita.
Flowers will bend when you walk over them and produce a subtle sound from the DualSense speaker. A sheet of ice will send ASTRO BOT into a graceful glide, complete with fitting sounds from the DualSense and unique haptic feedback that magically communicates the feel of a steel blade slicing through a sheet of ice.
I firmly believe that there’s never been a game in which so much of the world is not only visually dense but also painstakingly animated, thoroughly sound-designed, and brought to life with an interactive signature that only the PS5 DualSense controller is capable of delivering.
The DualSense controller is very central to this experience. It’s not just a gimmick. It’s just been a case of us not having enough games to use this controller. For example, in Final Fantasy XVI, you get feedback on the triggers when you open a locked gate—that is a haphazard implementation if I’ve ever seen one.
But here, when it’s raining, ASTRO BOT puts a little plastic umbrella over his head, and the DualSense speaker emits the subtle sound of tiny raindrops falling on a plastic sheet. The Astro Bot controller pulsates with the gentle pitter-patter we might feel when we hold an umbrella in real life.
My overall impression of ASTRO BOT is that it is very much designed to ensure that you’re having as much fun as possible, even in small increments. The levels themselves are so expertly designed that I’m going to get to various reasons why throughout this review, but I do love that general approach.
It is a 3D platformer-style approach, but the general pace is just electric. They want you to get in there, hoover up different characters, experiment with different ways of getting around the levels, enjoy the power set you’re being given, and have an immediately positive, good time.
Astro’s power set is the same as the 2020 game: hitting jump again gives you a downward boost attack, you can spin in the air for more distance, or you can hold the standard melee attack for a spin. And outside of that, you get powers on certain levels as well. A rocket jump, some spring-loaded fists, one where you turn into a sponge and have to weaponize, soaking up and releasing water to douse fires and clean oil slicks.
The overarching vibe is just one of inventiveness, and I love it. Suppose you look into Team ASOBI’s history and Japan Studios’ history. In that case, the individuals putting this game together have always been involved in refining things like the DualSense and how Sony’s hardware works, and you can just feel that in every single implementation here on the gameplay side.
Alongside this, if you were begging for a difficulty spike or something to get stuck into that proves it’s not just for the three-year-olds, there are additional secret levels that you can trigger by hanging out in some of the galaxy maps long enough. Sometimes collectibles will appear, sometimes meteors will appear that you can fly into, or certain star clusters will appear that you can fly through—various things.
Sometimes, it’s a collectible, and you might need to get into one of the levels to open up a warp zone somewhere else. But this is where the difficulty starts to go a bit higher. There’s an array of secret levels, and there are some other things like retro throwbacks and things like that, but overall, if you’re looking for that tight 3D platforming gauntlet energy, that’s where this difficulty is housed. You need to seek it out if you are 100% done.
It is still very cool to see Team ASOBI openly inviting everybody to come and look at all the Sony franchises for fun. Those who like tighter 3D platforming get little examples of that as well.
Visually, ASTRO BOT is phenomenal. It runs in 4K, 60FPS, and is Ray Traced, and it feels like there is some character and fidelity in every rendered frame on the PlayStation 5. The amount of interactivity the world has is astounding.
The leaves that fly around when you run through them, the snow and sand paths you carve, the objects you break during the levels, the fluid simulations, the cloth of curtains, and even—ASTRO BOT is a technical feat. As a tech nerd, I could go on and on about how impressive it is that the PS5 manages to run this game so well despite the level of complexity on the screen.
The music in ASTRO BOT stands out and is full of charm. Some tracks are whimsical, while a few go the electric hip-hop route with some vocals sprinkled in. There’s some electric guitar and drums in there, too. There is a lot of variety here, and plenty of instruments are used that I failed to mention. ASTRO BOT just makes it all blend and work in harmony.
ASTRO BOT is a real treasure that captures the heart and soul of what makes a platformer great. With expertly crafted levels, inventive mechanics, and delightful nods to PlayStation history, it’s hard not to fall in love with every moment.
Responsive DualSense haptics and the sheer creativity behind each world make this game a showcase of the PS5’s potential and an unforgettable experience for players of all ages. It appears to be a contender to Nintendo’s Mario franchise, and it reminds me of the quality PlayStations first-party titles are known for. ASTRO BOT is a must-have for all PlayStation 5 owners. Just go out and buy this game right now if you own a PlayStation 5. It’s worth it.
