While my overloaded Switch can be counted upon for many first-party 3D platformers, the genre is going stale elsewhere. Hell, the last great new (and non-Ninty) collect-a-thons were LEGO Skywalker Saga (2022) and Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart (2021). For that drought season reason alone, you can imagine how stoked I was to jumpy-jump into Astro Bot.
There are other motivators beyond scarcity, too. Even though Astro’s Playroom was a pack-in PS5 freebie that ran shorter than its diminutive hero, it oozed visual panache and full-sequel potential. And that’s also off the back of developer Team Asobi conquering the VR space with its phenomenal Astro Bot Rescue Mission title. With today’s offering, they’re taking a serious shot at the AAA bigs—to piss with the big boy plumbers.
I’m happy to report to you, right from the outset, that my hands-on with Astro Bot strongly suggested that they’ve got the chops to compete. With a colleague of mine, I sampled a good seven planet (read: missions) slice of what will be an 80 missions galaxy.
We smashed this out old-school style, too—turn-for-turns after a death or a checkpoint reached. Which is absolutely how I’m going to play the full game with my two sons. (It’ll be the only way to stop fights.) And while we’re here, I guess this would be the only negative I can level at Astro Bot right now—no dynamic screen-split 2P local co-op.
We’re not even getting a token co-player mode where somebody slums it by playing as…I dunno, Astro’s suddenly sentient cape. I’ll stop spitballing ideas now. That one’s too Doctor Strange anyway. Lawsuits.
We smashed this out old-school style, too—turn-for-turns after a death or a checkpoint reached.
Perfect world hopes and dreams aside, I went into my Astro Bot hands-on hoping it would be at least as delightful as Astro’s Playroom, and it totally was. That would have been difficult to screw up, considering the impressive template that’s already been established (and is likely still installed on millions of PS5s).
For those of you who never played it: Playroom found its way into many a heart via its gorgeous cartoonscapes, an earworm soundtrack, and a veritable punnet of PlayStation protagonist ‘Member-berries. As to be expected with a larger budget and longer runtime, this follow-up sequel is an out-and-out escalation on all of those fronts.
What me and my buddy didn’t expect, however, is how bot-kicking the deep end of this experience is. If you blitz your way through the Easy and Normal designated planets to reach the murky Hard planet outskirts of a galaxy, you’re gonna get your thumbs tested, friend-o.
At the beginning of our demo time, my mate and I were passing the controller due to somebody raising the next checkpoint flag of a new section, or the odd screw up with the unfamiliar mechanics of a new power-up. On a Hard mission we had to instigate a “yeah, nah, let’s swap after three deaths” rule. (We were swapping the controller so much, it was breaking our ability to learn/adapt into a successful run.)
That’s a pretty significant upset for two veterans who were weaned on the classics, right at the mid-nineties advent of the 3D platformer genre. You know, back when your average Crash or Mario was considerably more crotch-kicking.
I’m not going to hand you a step-by-step solution to the challenge that awaits you in the deep ends of Astro Bot, but I will mention the basics of what’s coming to kill you, repeatedly. Obviously, the first layer is a mix of the 3D platforming chestnuts—tightrope walking across bottomless chasms with very limited real estate to land upon or fight against mobs of enemies.
Oh, and 60% of said terra firma just isn’t. Team Asobi hates a rapidly degrading chunk of land. They’re also quite partial to mixing those with a series of intersecting spinning blades of death, which get dangerously out of sync the longer you wait and try to time jumps. Be on a near-constant sprint or die.
Further to that concept, you’ll have some sort of one-use power-up that may give you a very short window of respite to turn an impossible leap into a barely-possible one. For our levels, that was a chuckable time-manipulator that would momentarily slow down spinning, awkwardly-shaped PS icon platforms. Problem: the provided window was just barely long enough for a flawless leapfrog across before everything slammed down on your thumbs. Said platforms would then return to being like the business end of an electric eggbeater on full.
platforms would then return to being like the business end of an electric eggbeater on full.
Also, I forgot to mention the best part! Whereas every other level in Astro Bot has a super inclusive checkpoint system with fast respawns and seemingly no penalties for deaths, joining the choir invisible on Hard will chuck you back to the start. I watched five minute runs end in full view of the finish line. Swear-tastic stuff.
I guess what I’m trying to tell you is that Hard mode in Astro Bot made me sit forward. Few games can achieve that these days. It’s one of the biggest compliments I can give.
All that being said, Astro Bot is way more about providing tons of middle-to-low stakes fun for the whole family. The majority of the planets we visited were quite familiar to the pack-in demo many of you fell in love with. Think: hopping and punching along, snooping behind the odd waterfall (or the like) for seven hidden Bots per level.
I want to tell you that each of those were a clever callback to some Sony game long gone, but most of the time that wasn’t the case. Disappointingly, around four of them per level seemed to just be generic Bots with no theme whatsoever.
My spirits improved in the power-up department, however. Astro’s Playroom was beholden to a mandate—show off every new facet of the DualSense in an occasionally naff fashion, for the lowest common denominator gamer to use. Astro Bot seems more geared to well-designed palate cleansers that worship at the altar of actual fun-enhancing gameplay mechanics.
I sampled a few. Turning Astro into a mini blimp had its uses, verticality-wise. Wearing a backpack holding a dog with a rocket-for-a-butt was another standout, though it was a bit of a suicide machine when used to charge-kill foes near ledges. I’ll leave you to discover the rest of the power-ups for yourself.
When it came time to put the DualSense down and get my arse-tro butt up off PlayStation AU’s couch, I stood impressed. I mean, purely off the back of the wonderful time I once had on PS5 launch day with Playroom, I was already keen to see more… if my schedule allowed. But now, having played what seems to be a bona fide, full-botied AAA sequel with serious skill-tests in its endgame, this is edging into must-play territory now.
