Astro Bot is pure delight. 40 minutes of demo were enough to make me fall in love again with that little robot that I had already become very fond of with Rescue Mission first and then Astro’s Playroom. There’s the whole world of PlayStation inside, and it’s wonderful in its free-wheeling citationism, in its lightness with carefree tones, in its ageless (video) toy character.
It looks like one of those games whose packaging would look great with the label “from 1 to 99 years“. Because Astro Bot is aimed at anyone, regardless of whether or not you are a lover and connoisseur of the Sony universe. This sort of universal language is usually spoken only (or at least predominantly) by Nintendo. It must be admitted, however, that PlayStation with this adorable 3D platformer could join the conversation.
Let’s save them all
The writer believes that Astro’s Playroom is one of the best PS5 launch titles. And to think that on paper it would be more of a free tech demo to give players a taste of the DualSense’s potential. All things considered, the journey with Sony’s robot was a triumph of ideas, short yes, but very entertaining: a springboard to make the public (and the various development teams) understand how the PS5 pad should have been used.
An example that only a few, to be honest, have managed to follow. Now, if you have played Asto’s Playroom, you can imagine what to expect from Astro Bot, which offers almost the same formula just on a much higher scale, with all that entails in terms of entertainment. The rescue of the other robots will in fact develop through 6 galaxies and more than 80 levels. Astro’s crew members are around 300, from what we have seen, but they are not all the same… quite the contrary.
There is here and there a PaRappa The Rapper, an Aloy, a Rivet or a Kratos, in a festive parade of PlayStation icons in the form of small, lovable and expressive robots. Landing on each planet occurs on board the Dual Speedersa small Dualsense-shaped glider that can obviously be controlled by moving the PS5 pad, and from there on the magic begins.
The levels are full of colours, scurrying enemies, secret passages where other robots hide or puzzle pieces to find: in the five worlds I have visited, everything had the flavor of novelty, and no action, situation or minigame gave me a sense of déjà-vu. I hope I can say the same when I venture into the final version. Whether they are ramps to jump on to run faster, water slides to dive into at full speed, elastic platforms to give yourself momentum and construction sites under construction in the clouds to climb on, in every situation of Astro Bot it feels like being in a playground for the eyes and the senses. Visually it is an absolute delight, and the DualSense is used perfectly again. But I had no doubts about this. In reality I have few doubts right now, also because Astro Bot just needs to diversify each galaxy as much as possible and then that’s it. And what a game! One where you can use a thruster dog to propel you, or where you can put on frog gloves and stomp on everything around you, with attached “spring effect” emitted by the DualSense.
Here: Team Asobi has nothing left to do but calibrate the various worlds well and make them all different. It won’t be easy, because 80 are quite a few, but it’s not an impossible undertaking, given that the studio has already proven on various occasions that it knows how to strike at the hearts of its audience. The secret weapon? The frank, reassuring simplicity.
Let’s all play
Astro Bot is clearly a game that speaks to everyone, I repeat. This can be seen, beyond the production attitude, from a downward challenge rate: all the worlds are divided into appropriately marked difficulty gradientsbut basically it is an experience to be experienced with absolute tranquility.
For example the gigantic Kraken Wako Tako, armed with boxing gloves, is clearly within anyone’s reach, and can get KO’d quite easily. This, however, does not mean that Team Asobi has decorated an adventure that is all form and little substance, in a package that is beautiful to look at and “perceive” but ultimately not very engaging.
Astro Bot is a platformer that, following the example of the best exponents of the genre, it proceeds step by step.
Below the surface, for those who want to commit a little more and complete everything 100%, there are hidden streets, secret minigames, paths that are not immediately identifiable that hide other little robots to save, and even entire mini levels all based on skill and timing. Optional challenges which, although they don’t require who knows what effort or talent, still manage to stimulate those who want to concentrate a little more. Whenever he recovers a friend, Astro greets the player along with his crew, and so it also did at the end of the short demo tested at the Summer Game Fest. However, it is only a goodbye, because on September 6th he will return to our PlayStation 5, hopefully bringing with him a load of variety directly proportional to the joy that he knows how to instill in players.
