AstroBot: The Tiny Robot That's Stolen My Heart
AstroBot isn’t a Playstation ad, It’s a love letter to its properties.
When AstroBot’s first trailer dropped, I debated whether or not to purchase the game. I rarely play Playstation games, so buying a game that seemed to be a glorified ad for the franchise just didn’t seem worth the sixty dollars. I bought it because the game’s reception on the internet was phenomenal with consistently high player reviews. After playing the game, I can confidently agree with these reviews and say to anyone who might have the same doubts that the game is 100% worth the price. The game pays homage to the Playstation franchise with a stunning level design, complementary controller haptics, and graphics that truly test the limits of the PS5.
AstroBot tasks the player with saving 300 of Astro’s fellow robots across five galaxies. The game takes you on a roller-coaster of an adventure, with levels jammed full of fun and charm. There isn’t even one boring moment in the game, and Team Asobi takes it to new heights with experimental mechanics that bring unique twists to the platformer to make each level something new to explore. Astro Bot is an inventive twist on the world of platformers that makes the game unbelievably fun and exciting.
Each level is packed full of quirks that make the game unique. In one level, Astro ventures into a classic, retro video-game world made entirely of pixels. When you defeat the enemies, or even just hit trees, they explode into individual pixels that you can fling about by spinning your characters. In another, Astro takes the form of a mouse and can grow or shrink, giving players new ways to interact with the environment. Tiny Astro-Mouse can go under logs, into the flower plants, or hop on bubbles to climb the environment. One level takes place in a hot spring filled with tiny, robot monkeys, Astro transforming into a sponge to take advantage of the pools of water to advance in the game, and you can even see the steam waving off the water. The graphics are polished and crisp, elevating the fun you’ll experience at each level.
Each level is full of life, with details like little robot animals that litter each level that you can interact with while playing as Astro. The levels feature virtually every environment you can think of, and every environment you wouldn’t. There are jungles, beaches, lava, sky, and space levels, but there are also unique locations like a casino, a bathhouse, or even a shipwreck in lava. Each galaxy also features levels that look like they were taken directly from the franchises they were inspired by, like a God of War-inspired ice level, the Ape Escape levels where you chase down a group of monkeys, or the temple from Uncharted. What adds to the uniqueness is the fun power-ups that Astro gets: frog punching gloves to hit back at your enemies, a VR headset that allows Astro to slow down time, or an elephant backpack that lets you suck up honey to create bouncy platforms.
The stages are pretty easy, but the difficulty of the game isn’t a downside, because it can be challenging and fun at certain levels. As you move throughout each galaxy within the game, the levels do get slightly more challenging as you get more experience with the controllers and mechanics that Astro Bot offers. There are hidden mini-games within each galaxy, with four of the five offering levels inspired by the Playstation controller’s buttons: triangle, circle, square, and X. Each of these levels has no checkpoints, making them rather challenging; for example, having to roll an armadillo on spiked platforms or jumping on trampolines surrounded by electrocuted enemies. Tracking down all the secrets in each level can also be relatively difficult: there are hidden bots to find, sometimes swinging around, trapped by enemies, buried, or hidden behind secret doors, puzzle pieces to create new things on your home planet, and hidden exits to find new levels in the lost galaxy.
All the little robots you find and save in the levels are sent to the crash site, where you can find Astro’s broken-down PS5 ship. There are so many unique robots you can collect from iconic game franchises: Joker from the Persona franchise, Ellie and Joel from The Last of Us, Aloy from Horizon, and so many more. Each unique bot has its decoration, which players can get by spending coins at the Gacha machine.
The Astro Bot experience also utilizes all the bells and whistles of a Playstation controller. In one mini-game in some of the levels, the player has to run along a wall of squares, and the controller will rumble on the one that Astro has to push out. Different surfaces in the game will send a rumble through the controller, such as when Astro Bot is swimming through water. You can even hear the pitter-patter of the rain in levels with stormy weather. When Astro jumps on his Playstation to lift off the ground, you can feel the jets of the ship like you’re the one blasting off. In the pirate-inspired level, you can find a room full of diamonds, and when Astro walks through them, you can hear and feel the clinking of the gems through the remote.
With details like these, it’s clear that Team Asobi put so much love and attention into Astro Bot. There’s no detail spared, as Team Asobi thought of everything when it comes to Astro Bot. All in all, “phenomenal” is the only word I could use to describe Astro Bot: I had an Astronomical amount of fun playing it.
Writer: Addison Delgado
Artist: Brooke Barnes
