The best 3D Platformer in a long time! (Astro Bot in review)

     Hey friends, it's rare that a game will come out and it just so completely resonates with me that I almost have to play the whole thing as soon as possible, but that's what happened last week. Astro Bot was released on September 6th, and it was a joy to play through from beginning to end. There are very few games of this quality and genre that aren't put out by Nintendo, and it's such a delight to see Sony not only putting out an excellent 3D Platformer, but also appealing to nostalgia and making a connection between these older franchises and some younger fans. It's time to board the PS5-shaped ship, friends, because it's time to go to space with Astro and his friends!

An Intergalactic Quest!

    Astro Bot is the sequel to the PS5 pack-in game, Astro's Playroom, which functioned as a tech demo for the console itself as well as what the DualSense controller could do. Even though the PS5 has been out for four years now, it's still probably the best showcase of what this system is capable of, in terms of the controller's capacities, as well as just how the visuals look. In the older title, you played as Astro Bot, a robot who lives inside the PS5 (which is a rocket ship, by the way), and you platformed through 4 levels based on different aspects of the console, being Cooling Springs (based on the cooling system to keep the console from overheating), SSD Speedway (Based on the Solid State Drive that the PS5 has), GPU Jungle (Based on the GPU chip, which literally sings for you while you're in this level), and Memory Meadows (Based on the internal system memory). Within each of these four levels, there are tons of neat pieces of nostalgic memorabilia from Playstation's past, including some really weird stuff. Who remembers the PS1 Multitap, which allowed you to play with 4 people at once instead of the two slots that came built into the console? How about the EyeToy Play Camera for the PS2? So many cool easter eggs, as well as characters designed to look like nostalgic Playstation characters populate these levels. This game was a tech demo for the console, as I said, so it only took around 3 hours to beat the game, or maybe a bit more to complete it. I, along with many others were hoping that they could get another game like this some time in the near future, but with more content. A full game, if you will, as opposed to a taste of what could be. It took 4 years, but the full game version of that title is finally out, and I'm so excited to talk about it.

    Astro Bot begins with Astro and his friends taking the PS5-shaped spaceship out for a drive when an alien drives by and steals the ship's CPU chip, which causes the ship to crash and spread all of the different bots out into the reaches of space. Astro lands along with the ship on a deserted planet, needing to use his Dual Speeder (which happens to look like a PS5 DualSense controller) and save his friends, along with the other components of the ship: his GPU, memory, cooling fan, and SSD, which also got blown off as the ship crashed. It's a pretty basic premise, but it works. There are 5 main galaxies, each with a few levels inside, and you unlock the boss of each area by rescuing a certain number of bots. Once you beat the boss, it unlocks a special bot character, themed after the main character of a previous Playstation game or franchise. You have to do a special mission as them in order to actually collect the ship piece that you're after, which wraps up the galaxy. The formula goes like this with almost every area other than the Lost Galaxy, which is made up of bonus levels that you can find by locating the secret exits. It's a really great system, and I was dying to find the next exciting set piece or fun concept every chance that I could. The normal levels have 6 or 7 bots in them for you to rescue, and three puzzle pieces to locate. The more puzzle pieces you have, the better your home base will be on the Crash Site, constructing new buildings for Astro to explore and customize various features. This is also where all of your friends wait for you. There are 304 bots in total, and I was absolutely not satisfied until all of the bots had been saved.

    The mechanics of this game feel just as good, if not better, than those from Astro's Playroom. Astro has his standard punches, his wind up spin attack, and a jetpack (hover jump which doubles as an attack), which carry on from the previous title, but along with those, there are a whole bunch of new abilities and power ups that he can collect. There's a robotic bulldog that doubles as a jetpack to give him a lot of forward momentum, there's a pair of boxing gloves that look like frogs to give him a lot of extra punch with the triggers, there's an octopus that will inflate Astro, allowing him to fly through the air like a balloon, and many more along with those. All of the power-ups and special items that Astro is given are really cool, and I think the adaptive triggers add a really cool sense of weight to each of them, giving just a tiny bit of resistance to each reaction. 

    It would be wrong to spoil too many of these tools in Astro's belt this time around, but I have to give a shout out to the controller once again. The DualSense's full power was never shown off in a better way than in Astro's Playroom, though this sequel is definitely pushing its limits in the same way. Team Asobi has done it again, filling the game with cool gyroscopic effects, haptic feedback, and sound effects to come from the controller the whole time, leading to a sense of immersion into the game world that is rarely attained outside of VR games. You're constantly hearing water trickling along the walkway, a projectile whizzing past the little bot, even the crackling of electricity if you get too close. It's wild the number of effects that come through the controller. My favorite, again, has to be the haptic feedback of raindrops bouncing off of the umbrella over Astro's head. You can nearly feel points of pressure on the controller where a raindrop has bounced off of it, and it's really something special. 

    Of course, I cannot close this discussion of the importance of Astro Bot without having a quick side note about nostalgia. This game is chock-full of references to older Playstation titles, and I was constantly cheering every time I found a character that I recognized, but had barely thought about since I played the original games, sometimes 24 years ago or so! In the trailer, of course, we saw Parappa the Rapper, Kratos, Nathan Drake, Ico, the traveler from Journey, all realized in robot form, but I have to say that there were some references in this game that I was shocked by, leading to some of the coolest revelations in the whole title. I can't give too many specifics, but I cannot express just how excited I was to see some of my favorite characters and games referenced in this very cool way, and I really hope that a few of them will spark some interest in younger players, and that maybe it will lead to some of these titles receiving new life somewhere down the road.

    I could go on and on about this game all day, but I'll spare you that song and dance for now. I just have to say that it has been a long time since I've played a game that made me happy while I was playing it, and that's what Astro Bot is all about. Constant joy and excitement every time I came across a new power up, character, environment, I just loved it. It's just so nice to be looking forward to something for a while, and absolutely loving everything about it once it releases. I cannot recommend this game enough, especially if you've been itching for a new 3D Platformer.

    Thanks so much for reading this post, friends! I really loved my time with Astro Bot, and though I beat it pretty quickly, it's a game that I'm looking forward to playing through all the way over and over again, even streaming it a bit. I've already done one stream of it, and I hope I'll be able to do many more in the days ahead. I hope you've been able to find something fun to play recently! September is packed with highly anticipated releases, and this was just the beginning of that! I hope you're all having a good week, and I'll talk to you again soon! Until next time, I'm Jonathan, a Self-Proclaimed galactic rescuer, and I'm happy to report: mission accomplished!