So I went ahead and played Astro Bot for about 9 hours and finished it. No, not 100% clearing it and getting the platinum trophy, I don’t have time for that. But I did do a fair bit of going through side content and went through every stage that was available for me to play through. Now, someone might turn their head and ask “Why is it only 9 hours long?” And yes, I know a lot of us enjoy a good 30-hour game or so. But, how long does a game have to be for you to enjoy it? Things like RPG components like character progression kind of tell us that there would be grinding, or back and forth between similar or already explored locations. Where you generally fall into a play loop that means repeating a game. That’s pretty much the bread and butter of open-world games, Star Wars Outlaws being no exception. How long does a game have to be for it to leave a memorable impression? Dota 2’s “The Play” is no more than a minute long. An average boss fight in Soulslikes shouldn’t be more than 5 minutes. And any Hideo Kojima game has at least 3 full-length feature films worth of cutscenes. But anyway, what I’m getting at is that just because a game is short, doesn’t make it any less valuable as an experience. One of the most interesting games I’ve played before was called Journey, and you roughly finish that game in one hour, and well I’ve never forgotten that. Also, I somehow put over 300 hours into Monster Hunter World, and I can only remember a handful of hunts, Fatalis most of all.

So while the rather short playtime to clear for Astro Bot might turn some people off, I urge you to reconsider because of how much value it gives you in that relatively short amount of time because this title is eager to show you new ideas, new themes, and more. It has no interest in giving you something you’ve played through the game before. If it only takes maybe 10-15 minutes to clear a stage, imagine how much they have to think of to give you new experiences without really repeating content. The game never tries to waste your time, and it makes features to help you find more and more of what they’ve simply hidden in plain sight. The developers behind this game are mainly interested in you being to play the game, and being able to enjoy it. And as a PS5 exclusive, it also makes as much use of the controller as it can. In a sense, it’s like a Nintendo game that takes advantage of the console’s native features.

 

 

So, if you wanna hear more, stick around, and let’s break down Astro Bot to see what it’s about. You and your friends due to a series of unfortunate events have crashed on a planet, and you are tasked with rescuing your comrades who are in trouble, and to rebuild the not-so-discreet PlayStation 5 ship and save the day.

 

Production (4.5 / 5)

 

 

Astro Bot is a clean and shiny-looking game all over. With a colorful candy-like palette, it’s easy to tell things apart. From terrain, interactable objects, enemies, and things to avoid. It’s thanks to the simple and effective art direction that the game rarely tells you what to do. The only exceptions would be when making use of special controller features in gimmicky ways, or simply telling me how to control a new function I just got. Still, it does so with visual guides rather than words, which I highly appreciate. Even on an entirely new stage, you can tell what the next steps are, and if you’re willing to take a closer look, may find what they’re hiding from you.

Graphically speaking, the game doesn’t seem all that demanding, but the art direction speaks volumes about how to keep a game looking good. It’s able to run smoothly without issue on my PlayStation 5.

Pretty much everything in this world is some form of advanced technology or robot, though there are some exceptions such as bosses, but how they execute these designs is pretty great to look at. Without having them say any recognizable words, they continue to show their personalities as characters through their animations, general design, and behavior.

 

 

The character designs are also easy to tell apart for all types of enemies, letting you know what sort of obstacles lie ahead. The way Astro moves is easy to figure out, responsive, and easy to warm up to. The simple expressions he’s able to make through his LED eye display make him rather flexible despite being a full-on robot. Astro is pretty much the base design of every other friendly character you’ll meet in the game. Think of him as the primordial Funko, but you actually like how it looks. Every other character that is included in Astro Bot will be the same robot with extra accessories. The same goes for the many power-ups you get to use as you go through the respective stages they’re suited for. My personal favorite is the frog gloves, as they let me make an extended spin attack by throwing out a punch while Astro is spinning. 

Finally, while all the characters are pretty much voiced by something like minion babble, if at all. The music is quite pleasant. Even when dealing with more threatening bosses, everything continues to carry some form of a happy tune, you never forget that you’re playing a game, and it’s not pretending to be anything more than that. And when you get to keep your immersion at that level, it’s easy to get charmed by how excited Astro Bot is to show you the next stage, power, character, or more.

 

Mechanics (4 / 5)

 

 

Honestly speaking, there’s not a lot to Astro Bot’s mechanics. It’s a platformer with special functions that are bound to the stages you play them through. So you jump, float, attack, and make use of whatever gimmick function you have to traverse through the stage, find bots to rescue, and essentially beat the stage.

These functions can be as simple as floating high into the air like a balloon, which is a limited form of flight. Or punching at an insane speed as I  have mentioned before. There’s also stuff like types of dashes, becoming a giant sponge, manipulating time, and more.

 

 

Most of these extra functions are what stages are designed after, to the point that certain enemies can only be overcome by making use of these special abilities. And I think these are easily taught by the game. I think it might spoil what you’ll experience through Astro Bot if I talk about them in detail, but I think a few examples are okay.

For example: again, my favorite frog punchers will get you through the stage by making use of the left and right triggers assigned to each hand. You can use them to, one, attack enemies from a distance, or two, attack several enemies at the same time by combining it with your standard charged spin attack. But that’s not all, you can also make use of these gloves to punch through certain obstacles, namely walls marked with a certain face. Or even hit switches from a distance. Or even swing from one bar to the other, given that the bar is made of the same substance that your frog punchers can pull out of. Finally, while not really all that significant. You can sling-shot yourself through a vast distance if the stage provides you with one. I know it’s not a special or unique idea, but giving you more ways to play with one function I think is an extremely good way of allowing the player to explore their creativity as well as keeping the experience fresh with these variations on combat, traversal, and puzzle solving.

 

 

Another special function you get to use early in the game is the dog booster, which I think may need to have its diet checked. Because if it can drive you forward with that much force from its behind, I can only wonder what it eats. But it’s just a straightforward dash that can serve as an attack at the same time. However, they make use of the dash to also serve as a way for you to dodge fast-coming attacks, extend your airtime, and get through massive gaps between platforms with ease. Some functions are simpler and others will be more interesting. But it’s the playful design of the stage that makes these rather simple abilities shiny and interesting to use.

 

Content (5 / 5)

 

 

This is probably the most fun part of Astro Bot. There’s a standard amount of stages to play through before reaching a boss, and each stage is very unique in what it has to present. It’s sort of like Crash Bandicoot 3, but instead of making use of one theme for a set of stages, it continues to vary its themes for every stage you get to play through. So even if the game tells me that I only need to clear 3 stages before reaching the area’s big bad guy, I still want to play through every other stage to see what it has to offer.

And offerings are something it truly has, while there will be similarities between some stages like one has more of an ice theme or the other is more towards a beach, they are designed very differently that you can easily tell them apart. Even if they use, say, a similar aesthetic, they would be very different in design. A graveyard might make you want to use a light to either see invisible platforms or walls, but another stage based on the same graveyard might have you fighting ghosts a lot more than worrying about your footing.

They’re all designed so that you want to pay attention to everything happening as well, as there could be friends you want to rescue in hiding plain sight, or there’s a clue to where the next puzzle piece may be but you haven’t quite figured out the route to it yet, so you start looking around the immediate area to see if there’s a way to get there.

 

 

Also as you progress through the game, stages do get more intricate in what you have to do. While it’s easy to figure out, they also give you enough pause to think about how you can get through the next set of jumps with what tools are handed to you. Oh, and there will be many stages that will have mini-bosses to fight, which you will have to defeat to clear unless you somehow find the warp to a hidden stage instead.

All these stages, bosses and mini-bosses included, are presented in a pretty fun and cinematic way, that you want to see what is in store for you. This is one of the larger reasons I kept on playing, after fighting the first boss, I wanted to see what sort of ideas they had behind the next big encounters. Suffice it to say that I was never disappointed, or overwhelmed. I did have a lot of fun watching the scenes unfold though.

 

 

Finally, they have stages specially designed as if you’re experiencing the original Sony IPs through the mechanics and design philosophy of Astro Bot. Though admittedly, the Horizon and Uncharted-themed stages felt very similar since you’re still just shooting out projectiles whether you’re using a gun or a bow. But the platforming experience was unique enough for me to appreciate. These stages where you pretty much play as a different character, are probably the more exciting stages to play as they’re full of cameos and throwbacks to the games they celebrate.

That’s not to say that Astro Bot has limited their celebration of gaming to only their IPs. As you rescue more and more friends, you’ll soon run into familiar faces, old and new through the game. And you get to play with them more once you’re on the home base, the Crash Site.

 

Features (5 / 5)

 

 

All the little extra things you can enjoy are pretty much on the Crash Site, where your completion of the game unlocks more and more of what you can get out of it.

By rescuing enough bots, you can move things or get to places that may help you rescue more bots, or maybe find hidden treasure within the world. Eventually, your completion of collectibles helps you gain access to more content within Astro Bot.

 

 

The first one would be this gacha machine that lets you get either an accessory for another bot, an alternate paint job for your controller ship, or even a custom look to use for Astro. And I’m happy to say that this is for free, no microtransactions or battlepasses or anything of the sort.

All of the above features are accessible once you collect enough puzzle pieces, and thankfully Team Asobi already went ahead and made sure you’ll be able to find them without having to refer to a guide.

 

 

As soon as you finish every stage, you can revisit them to collect whatever you missed out on, and to save you the frustration of searching even the most obscurely hidden secrets, you can hire a bird with a one-time payment fee for every stage to detect when a collectible is nearby, be it a bot to rescue, a puzzle piece to pick up, or a warp to go through. It’s not too intrusive as it doesn’t automatically solve the problems presented to you, and you can simply choose not to use it if you want to challenge yourself.

 

Conclusion 

 

 

Concise is a word I’m a big fan of, it’s the sort of writing I’m prone to making use of as well. Straight to the point, without having to rely too much on padding your statements. I think this way of thinking makes the game design lean, not in terms of conserving their or the console’s resources, but in terms of how much time it demands from its player.

That’s right, I’m a big fan of games that don’t waste your time, sure videogames are essentially ways to kill time, but I don’t feel like a braindead zombie doing daily grind sets on your latest live service or gacha game just to keep up with new content. Astro Bot isn’t here to demand your time, at least not a lot of it, it’s here to ask you to check out these neat little ideas they came up with even with such simple mechanics. Team Asobi’s journey started as a tech demo but has somehow grown to be a full-on demonstration of what good game design is. We all know PlayStation needs a good win right now, and this is one of them.

I’d recommend this game to anyone with a PlayStation 5, particularly if you want to show a neat platformer to some younger kid. Show them that a game doesn’t have to need daily logins to be fun. This truly has rescued me from my cynical attitude towards the game industry as of late, and I certainly want to see more of them.

 

Astro Bot Rescue Mission brings me hope, scoring a 4.5 / 5

Available exclusively on PlayStation 5.