Astro Bot review: A full-fledged galactic adventure.

Review:

Nearly four years after the incredible tech demo of Astro’s Playroom came out, Team ASOBI crafted a full-size adventure game in the form of Astro Bot, a game cared for by a company that's made mistake after mistake in this new generation. Despite all the failures of Concord and the comments made about the PlayStation 5 Pro, Astro Bot reminds us why Playstation got to be at the top of its game by doing something that fun.  

Unlike Astro’s Playroom, Astro Bot has more of a story to tell here. Astro and his 300+ buddies, both normal bots and dressed like gaming characters, were having fun exploring the cosmos in a giant PS5 when an alien named Space Bully Nebulax showed up and stole the CPU from the ship. So that makes you crash land on a deserted planet, and all your friends and ship parts are scattered through the cosmos, however, guarded by gigantic boss fights, so it’s up to Astro to save his friends, rebuild his ship, and teach that bully a lesson.

While finding every last piece you need to repair the PS5 mothership, you go through 6 different galaxies filled with unique planets to explore, each with its unique environments, enemies, secret bosses, unique powerups, collectible bots, and puzzle pieces that unlock different things for the hub world. In one world you might explore a giant singing tree with an elephant that makes platforms, or in another world, you go through a construction site while being assisted by a rocket dog. Throughout these galaxies, you also get to check out shorter trial levels that grant bonus bots, but they test your gameplay endurance because they are tough at times.

The controls here play the same as in Astro’s Playroom. You got your movements, your punch, the spin attack, and the hover boots to help get you to new places. But unlike Playroom, you get to have animal friends who are assistants helping you out. These range from a chicken who rockets you upwards, to an armadillo you get to roll on, to frog gloves that pack a ranged punch, and even a stopwatch that stops time for a few seconds. They all provide a noteworthy experience in exploring these worlds with relative ease. 

Beyond saving your bot buddies, you get to see what they’ve been up to back in the hub area. Everyone you've saved comes back here and they all have unique animations, both the regular AR bots and the ones dressed in costumes to match video game characters. Some of these range from Crash Bandicoot, Kazuma Kiryu from Yakuza, Jak and Daxter, Kat from Gravity Rush, and even some obscure bots like Vib Ribbon, the Dice Devil, and even the Polygon Man, who was a PlayStation mascot back during the 90’s, but was quickly scrapped. Including the fall update’s Speedrun Levels and the winter’s Winter Wonder level, there are 322 bots to rescue in total. There are also 120 puzzle pieces to collect in the main game that unlock a Gacha Lab (which spends coins for objects for your Playstation Bots), a Dualspeeder Garage (which changes the look of your Dualsense in-game), a Costume shop (which lets you dress Astro up in funny costumes), 

Beyond the Game’s levels that were included in the base game, Team ASOBI graciously gave us some free updates because they felt like it. These include the fall update’s Speedrun Levels, which are 5 high flying levels that you need to race to the end to rescue 10 more bots, and the winter’s Winter Wonder level, which was a celebratory time that unlocks more costumes, more dualspeeder colors, and brand new bots to rescue while winding down the year with holiday cheer.

Overall, Astro Bot is a rare example of a game where the hype surrounding it was well-matched. With the other major sites giving this game near-perfect or perfect scores, I feel like, after 100% of the game itself, these feelings are shared here. Astro Bot is a fun platformer with unique levels, never-dull moments, tons of action, and love towards PlayStation for it’s 30th anniversary. No wonder why this game won GOTY at the Game Awards.

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10/10