I really wanted Astro to get a full-fledged big game from Team Asobi. It has repeatedly convinced me of its extraordinary qualities, and specifically with the previous free game Astro’s Playroom, my only complaint was that it was too short. After various successful tech demos and VR adventures, Astro finally got a traditional big title. And I’m not the least bit disappointed with the result. On the contrary. Astro Bot met my high expectations, maybe even exceeded them in places.
Astro Bot is a playful and funny platformer that celebrates not “just” 30 years of the PlayStation brand, but the history of gaming in general. It is a nostalgic ride full of humor and lightness. It all kicks off in a comedic vein when a PS5-styled spaceship encounters an evil alien who turns it into a blasting calendar. A crew of cute shoes is scattered across dozens of worlds and levels, and important parts of the ship are lost. Our mission is to help the titular Astro to save everyone and everything.
You discover individual planets gradually, but you will definitely return to some. Maybe also because you usually don’t succeed in revealing all the secrets and discovering all the colleagues on the first try. I think almost everyone must fall in love with the content here. It’s easy to praise him, but at the same time I don’t want to give you too much away, because much of the magic and power of the moment lies in experiencing the surprise here for yourself. I can only give you a hint through our video review, but I don’t want to be too specific on purpose in the text.
During the game, Astro temporarily acquires various special skills and power-ups that grant him special abilities.
Almost every level has a unique look and you will often come across completely unique mechanisms and elements. You fly between worlds with the help of a small ship styled like a DualSense controller, and on board it you also enter the level in a short flight sequence. After that, the course of the mission very often varies in terms of appearance and abilities. During the game, Astro temporarily acquires various special skills and power-ups that grant him special abilities. By itself, only a few basic movements are enough, and you control the vast majority of the game with the help of an analog stick and two or three buttons. It goes to show that fun really isn’t dependent on complicated controls.
There are hundreds of bots hiding in the space here, which you gradually collect and transport to the central planet where your console crashed… I mean ship. Even here, however, many secrets and Easter eggs are hidden. After all, the game is literally riddled with them. It is full of links, hints, secrets, hidden rooms and bonuses. All you have to do is search. When you return to the same level, a small bird can optionally help you retrieve forgotten items. And don’t think, finding all the shoes is a real challenge. At the same time, you complete your collection, because in addition to ordinary robots, you will also come across dozens of those that refer to the history of the PlayStation. But the links don’t end here. Some levels were also inspired by Sony games, including design, gameplay and music.
The levels are bursting with great ideas. The environment is incredibly interactive and responds to various stimuli. I really enjoyed experimenting with it and trying different things. At the same time, the amazing thing is that many of the ideas fulfill rather the role of a kind of cameo or one-time distraction. Not even an entire level needs to be based on a successful mechanism. At the same time, someone would build an entire game around him. It seems like the writers have ideas to spare and can waste them. Sometimes you keep running into smaller bosses, and at the end of each larger region, a bigger boss is waiting for you. They have a great design and the fight itself often surprises with the course and various transformations. This is also the only time Astro can rely on extra lives, but if he loses them, the fight starts all over again. But you will often have a variety of ordinary enemies. Different tactics apply to everyone, and the initially mild difficulty gets quite hard over time.
One of the reasons I found Astro Bot so fascinating is that it’s not just about great content, it’s also about chiseled form. I’m not one to judge a book by its cover, but this platformer is seriously top-notch. While I usually avoid such comparisons, I have to make an exception here and say that Astro really feels like an animated movie. It has incredibly clean graphics with basically no blemishes or bugs. Developers also take full advantage of all the capabilities of the DualSense controller, although it is far from just them. They attack all your senses with haptics and adaptive triggers, cleverly use the speaker and microphone of the gamepad, and don’t forget the gyroscope either. It’s a great example of what you can get out of a gamepad when you want to.
Along the way, you discover not only secrets inside the levels, but also various bonus levels and challenges.
The developers cleverly hide all fast loading behind various animations. Your efforts are fueled by great sound effects and, above all, an excellent soundtrack that rides on the humorous mood of the entire adventure. The game gets away from you very quickly because it is so fun and intense. In the end, I think you’ll get through it in 10 to 12 hours, depending on your skill and desire to explore. But if you really want to mine the universe here, discover and collect everything, it will probably take you half as much time. On the way, you discover not only secrets inside the levels, but also various bonus levels and challenges.
To this you can add the Czech localization in the form of subtitles, but there is still not much to read in Astro. But this is good news even for the smallest players, who will fully enjoy the novelty even without text, because it can tell its simple story without words.
