Last year saw the release of Astro Bot, our biggest game to date. As well as picking several game awards, we have been blessed with countless comments and lovely words from you, the players. While “toy” has become a derogatory term when talking about video games, Team Asobi sees no shame in embracing it. I can see that when I find a cardboard standee in a construction site level. I poke my head through it, only to summon a flock of pooping pigeons. There’s no tangible reward for doing it as it’s not a tracked collectible; it’s just a purely entertaining moment that gets an honest laugh out of me.
Astro Bot: Has Playstation Finally Found Its Mascot Character?
While today PlayStation’s headquarters may be located in San Mateo, California, the history of Sony’s beloved video game console brand started in the early 1990s in Tokyo, Japan. Ken Kutaragi – who would later become known as the father of PlayStation – had been working together with Nintendo on a CD-ROM add-on for the Super Nintendo. When this got canceled, Kutaragi went to Norio Ohga (Sony’s CEO at the time) with the proposal of making Sony’s own console. It really feels like the developers thought of everything, and thanks to their efforts, Astro Bot is pure joy in video game form.
Astro’s Biggest Adventure Yet Brings Fun For Everyone While Celebrating 30 Years Of Playstation
It serves as both a celebration and an advertisement of the fun that Sony Interactive Entertainment offers. The number of references to games released over the years is overwhelming. At times, it’s so extensive that, even as a Sony fan, I wasn’t able to recognize all the brands and references.
As it stands, no Bots from those series are in the game, so there’s every chance they serve as some VIPs in the DLC. “It’s not going to be a huge amount, but it will be focusing on one of the features people enjoyed in Astro’s Playroom – that was the speedruns. Four years after Astro’s Playroom charmed PS5 owners upon release, the new PlayStation mascot has arrived in full force.
Actually the last one was probably last gen. I’m going to get this. G28 game loved Astro’s playroom and I have no doubt this is gonna be an experience up there with Mario Odyssey. People can want presentation, charm, graphics, whatever level design/easy mechanics, no puzzles (unless platforming related I assume), etc.
Like the rest of the game, Astro Bot bosses are inventive, defying player expectations while still rooted in 3D platformer tradition. The boss fights deliver on visual spectacle, have a nice challenge to them, and above all, are fun to conquer. Besides the main bosses, mini-bosses pop up in other levels unexpectedly, and they are also a lot of fun to fight. Like Team Asobi’s previous games, Astro Bot revolves around a community of tiny white robots. Following the events of Astro’s Playroom, they are attacked by the evil green alien that served as the final boss of Rescue Mission, destroying their PS5 spaceship and scattering them across the cosmos. After acquiring his DualSense controller ship, Astro has to travel to various galaxies and rescue the bots.
This year alone there has been some first class games released all over the shop. Could it just be that all the critics are right and this is a good game? Not overhyped, not over exaggerated, just a bug free, well made bit of fun.
But now that players have been treated to a fully-fledged platformer, it could feel reductive to go back to those smaller adventures. And while there are many routes that platformers can take, the way Astro Bot celebrated the brand really helped prop it up as something special. The game includes hidden levels that can pose a challenge even for veteran platformers, which makes it even more appealing in my eyes. For most of the gameplay, however, the difficulty is more balanced and generally easy, but this doesn’t detract from the almost childlike joy of completing each level. There’s plenty to do in the galaxies haunted by the green alien. I can’t wait to buy my own copy and work toward earning all the achievements in this charming game.
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Instead, Ratchet, for example, is referred to merely as Tooled-Up Mechanic and Jill Valentine simply as Alpha Female. There’s also a character called Pro Skater, which we assume is Tony Hawk, but perhaps it’s one of Sony’s forgotten extreme sports games – it’s impossible to tell. However, two of these levels are based on dormant Sony franchises and if you can avoid having it spoiled for you what they are beforehand, they’re amongst the highlights of the game. They both replicate the mechanics, and audio, of the original games exactly and are an absolute joy, that will instantly have you wishing that they’d get full-blown sequels on the PlayStation 5. Since what you’re actually after is the stolen pieces of the PlayStation 5 there’s always an extra level after each of the main bosses that is inspired by a first party Sony game.
It feels finely tuned from top to bottom and I think that’s something to commend. Astro Bot is an explosion of colour and creativity that constantly flips your expectations on its head. When it hits, you’ll feel the urge to stand up and cheer in excitement – but let’s step back and break this down into chunks to better understand why it’s so impressive.
One level allows you to explore a recognisably domestic world but you can drastically change size, bashing through doorways one minute and wriggling through a gap in the skirting board a minute later. Another lets you transform into an ultra-heavy version of Samus Aran’s morph ball thingy, and has brilliant stuff for you to do once you have. These levels feel so Nintendo-like because they get everything out of their ideas. If you’re small but you can become big, can you blow stuff up from inside?
From 2012 to 2020, the Tokyo-based outfit made small games, often distributed for free, whose purpose was to demonstrate the interactive potential of Sony’s hardware. The Playroom demonstrated the PlayStation Camera; The Playroom VR and Astro Bot Rescue Mission the PlayStation VR headset; Astro’s Playroom the PS5’s DualSense controller. The team had a talent for unearthing delightful and satisfying interactions from the devices, and they peopled their games with cute little robots who acquired more personality with each installment.
I thought bots you rescued were simply currency used to advance to the next level, only to realize that in the game’s hub world, they’re your friends putting their very bodies on the line to help you access even more collectibles. Some distinctive PlayStation-themed bots — think one wearing Aloy’s red hair or Kratos’ beard — serve a more special purpose. When you rescue them, they can give you that character’s power and take you to a special level modeled on a game like Horizon Zero Dawn or Uncharted, so detailed that they’ll even include side quests from the original. And I defy you to feel something other than the warmest nostalgia during the final boss fight and credits sequence — I didn’t know just how much emotion a PlayStation Move controller could make me feel. Spending coins in the game’s shop unlocks dioramas, ship paints, and costumes for Astro, even some based on unexpected series such as Bloodborne and Gravity Rush. The dioramas are especially fun, as they turn all your collected bots into animated statues, like one that shows Nathan Drake playing a game called Dude Raider on his couch.
