This year, Sony held off on releasing new games in its most high-profile series, but left room for interesting games, each of which had a chance to become a hit. At the beginning of the year, the hit game Helldivers 2 raised the ears of the entire industry. Then, the scandalous Stellar Blade hid a high-quality action game behind its appearance. There were also unsuccessful attempts, such as the recent Concord, which lasted just over two weeks. Finally, the turn came to Astro Bot. Find out how the new platformer by Team Asobi turned out in our Astro Bot review.
Hundreds of bots travel the universe on a ship powered by a PlayStation 5. Suddenly, they are attacked by an alien, who crashes the ship and steals its central processing unit. All the bots and other key parts of the ship (i.e. the PS5) are scattered across the galaxies. The player’s goal is to collect the lost parts and return the stolen CPU.
After the attack, we crash-land on the nearest planet, which will serve as the hub of our mission. Compared to the free-to-play Astro’s Playroom, in the new game our temporary home — is really a base, not just a crossroads to different levels.
In the center of the playa is a PS5, which has yet to be restored, while the rescued astrobots go about their business.
The puzzle elements collected in the Astro Bot levels form a complete picture that opens one of the rooms of additional features for your bot. Puzzles are assembled one by one. The first one gives you access to the Gacha machine already familiar from the previous part. For the collected coins, we can get costumes for our character or attributes of the found cameo bots from other games. For example, you can get a saw-knife for the Hunter from Bloodborne, which he starts waving around. After finding an attribute, the cameo character will play a small miniature if you interact with it.
For the coins you collect, you can hire a helper who will tell you where to look for bots or a portal to the Black Hole when you replay the level.
In the same way, a shop for changing Astro’s costume and coloring the starship is opened. There is also a separate location for the Safari. Here you can freely take photos of animals, and it also gives you access to a full-fledged photo mode, which has very basic functionality.
There are also places and secrets in the Astro Bot gab that require a certain number of bots to reveal. The help can be different: raising a few blocks to help us jump to the desired object, or raising a cage that holds several bots. Also, small helpers can form a rope or a ladder that can be used to reach high points on the location. Most of these activities are optional and do not affect the progression of the story.
But first, the bots need to be rescued. Our friends are scattered across five nebulae, as well as the Black Hole, with access to its planets hidden on the story planets. The nebula is not marked as a separate biome, but only hints at the main boss. The planets are always different: sandy, winter, tropical, and others.
The biomes are repeated, of course, but they are always beaten with new mechanics and obstacles, so you don’t get the feeling that you’ve been here before.
Each Nebula has four main planets, and only the last Nebula has five. To get access to the boss, you just need to go through three of the four planets (or 4 of 5 in the case of the last Nebula) and collect a certain number of bots. After that, all the necessary helpers break the lock and the level with the boss opens.
The boss is essentially a collection of mechanics from previous levels. It’s a kind of exam for passing the obstacles you’ve already learned. We are given two lives to overcome the main bosses, and if we fail, we have to start over. The battle takes place in several phases, and the first bosses are quite easy to defeat. I spent several attempts on the latter, but it still didn’t turn the game into Souls-like.
After defeating the boss, we will release one cameo bot that will open the final planet in the design and mechanics of the game. In order not to spoil anything, I’ll leave out the details. There are five such unique levels in total, one for each nebula. We take on the role of a hero from one of the PlayStation series with the corresponding mechanics.
The developers have recreated the cameo levels with maximum love.
This applies not only to the mechanics, but also to the environment, which is filled with small nuances that can be found at every turn. Those who have played the original games will enjoy these levels the most. But even without such experience, these levels can bring joy with unique mechanics and design that are no longer found in the game.
However, the two levels are somewhat similar in terms of basic mechanics, and it might have been worth replacing one of them with another. But I think the developers started from the world they wanted to portray, and only then adjusted the mechanics from the original game to fit it. However, there is also one that is completely different from everything else in the game.
If the main Astro Bot levels are not enough for you, you can discover several additional planets in each Nebula. As a rule, these are small levels that have a special style and are completely tied to one of the mechanics. For example, you can complete a level while standing on a ball, which is a twisted battleship.
At first, additional levels do not cause any problems, but the further you go, the more difficult they become. At some point, the game is clearly divided by difficulty into moderate main planets and challenging additional levels. At the end of each level, we release one cameo bot, so if you have a goal to find them all, you can’t avoid these levels.
There are half a dozen mechanics in Astro’s arsenal, but we are given only one to complete the level. For example, the dog allows you to make a quick jerk that can break thick glass and bend metal walls.
Some old mechanics have returned, and their capabilities have been deepened and expanded. One of them is the monkey arms, which used to allow climbing. Now they can pick up heavy boulders to throw at the enemy, or make a powerful kick to the ground, knocking enemies down.
These mechanics are repeated, but each time we are put in conditions in which they are revealed from different, sometimes unobvious, angles. Interestingly, several mechanics can only be tried in the end credits, and some are available only in additional missions. For some reason, they did not find a place in the main game.
Astro Bot makes full use of DualSense functionality, although without the fanaticism of Astro’s Playroom, which was intended to showcase all the features of the new controller. The speaker and tactile feedback accompany us throughout the game, and the vibration serves as a full-fledged mechanic for solving certain tasks. So I don’t recommend turning it off completely.
Gyroscopes and a microphone are also not forgotten, but their use is spread out over the levels and they always serve as an addition to the main mechanics. For example, rock climbing requires you to rotate the gamepad to raise your arms, but they are not very common. In the same Astro’s Playroom, entire levels were built on this mechanic.
This approach is more meaningful because these mechanics are built into the game as one of its many elements, rather than the game being built around these elements.
The first thing you will see when you launch Astro Bot is the Ukrainian interface. This translation is very important because the future of Ukrainian localization in Sony games largely depends on the success of Astro Bot in Ukraine. Therefore, it is very important that everyone who buys the game plays with the Ukrainian interface.
There is not much text in the game, but for some reason they decided not to translate the names of the bosses.
After completing the game, I wish there was more, more mechanics, more levels, more cameos. But if you really try to find flaws, it’s unlikely that anyone will succeed. I can only mention one controversial decision. When you find a level in the Black Hole, you need to enter it immediately to activate it and appear on the global map. And this can be in the middle of the current planet or even at the end, which means you have to start over again.
There may also be one convention. In the hub, when more than a hundred bots are needed to help, they can take a long time to build a ladder or a vertical wall. Sometimes I had to disband them and put them back together again. This happened only once, so it’s hard to call it even a bug, and the number of bots is not at all arbitrary, so the underlying problems are easy to understand.
Otherwise, Astro Bot is perfectly optimized and balanced. To complete the story, the game offers a moderate gradual increase in difficulty without kinks. For those who like challenging platforming, there are additional planets that can take several dozen attempts.
Team Asobi managed to create not only a great gift to celebrate 30 years of PlayStation history, but also one of the best games of the year. Astro Bot will bring incredible joy to both bearded video game fans and young people who are just starting to discover the magical world of interactive art.