Astro Bot First Hands-On Preview: Worlds of Fun
Did you like Astro’s Playroom? I sure did. In fact, the meanest thing I can say about it is that there wasn’t enough of it – I finished its five levels and final boss battle within a single evening. But as if in response to my hunger for more of PlayStation’s newest mascot, developer Team Asobi has opened the floodgates in Astro Bot, a game that looks to be everything I loved about the Playroom, but galaxies more of it.
I played a 45-minute demo of Astro Bot at Summer Game Fest Play Days over the weekend, and what a blast it was! What Astro’s Playroom got right, and what Astro Bot continues to absolutely nail, is making it wildly fun to just run around and be Astro. Everything is tuned precisely to feel just right: his movement speed, his jumping height and distance, the exact way he smashes little crates and zaps enemies with feet lasers, the density of obstacles in my path and the exact way each stage follows a linear path but branches and loops back on itself to allow room for secrets. Running through a single level in Astro Bot clicks my brain cells into a flow state where I am constantly moving and always have an objective in mind, but don’t feel overwhelmed by my options. I love smashing stuff; I love jumping over stuff; I love bouncing off stuff.
Where Astro’s Playroom had five major levels themed loosely around PlayStation 5 components, Astro Bot sends our little hero cruising through space atop a giant DualSense controller, hopping from planet to planet in search of his lost bot buddies. I’m told Astro Bot has around 80 levels to visit, all bursting with hidden bots, puzzle pieces, boss battles, goofy power-ups, coins, and little challenges leading to delightful secrets.
I saw five levels in my playthrough. One, a lush area with clear pools, pink flamingos, and rolling green hills in the distance, was full of water-based mechanics. I swam through little reefs of colorful fish, slid down a giant water slide, and unzipped giant water bubbles to unleash the flood inside. There, Astro could inflate like a little robot bubble to drift quickly up to higher areas, a skill especially useful underwater. In another level themed around a construction zone, Astro flung paint around to uncover hidden platforms, sucked up metal items with giant magnets, and equipped some kind of dog jetpack to zoom across long distances his usual hover wouldn’t normally clear.
Another level centered around a boss fight with a giant octopus wearing boxing gloves. To compensate, I got ahold of a pair of my own frog-themed gloves that let Astro punch enemies at a distance and swing like a monkey from certain overhangs. Another (wildly minor) criticism I had of Astro’s Playroom was that some of its power-up/vehicle sections frustrated me due to cumbersome movement mechanics as they tried to showcase the PS5’s unique features. Freed from that obligation, Astro Bot is better able to focus on giving me new toys that are just pure fun to use. Quick, solid, alternating punches using R1 and R2 made me feel like I was Goku-fighting the octopus, and I sent him packing.
The final two stages I tried were special challenge levels designed to test my platforming abilities. One of them tested my ability to dodge rapidly spinning enemies on crumbling platforms, while another forced me to execute sections of tricky jumps in limited periods of time. I managed to finish both in the demo time allotted, though not without some struggle on the first one. It’s hard to gauge just from these two stages how high the difficulty of Astro Bot’s platforming will eventually scale. But what pleased me the most about them was how the fast respawn time and overall brevity of the stages made trying again and again and again so easy and enjoyable. I found myself thinking, “Just one more try,” more than once, only to try two, three, ten more times. There was a moment toward the end of the demo where I stopped, looked around, and realized everyone else had left the room already. Just one more try…and I nailed it.
And yes, Astro Bot looks to be a nostalgia-fest. Sure, when compared to Playroom, I think Astro Bot seems a bit more focused on being an excellent platformer rather than reveling in PlayStation history. But that’s to its benefit – levels like the watery/flamingo one don’t need to have references to Bloodborne every two feet to keep me happy. Rather, Astro Bot’s PlayStation celebration largely resides with the bots I’m rescuing through each level, some of whom are dressed up like favorites such as Ratchet, Rivet, PaRappa, and more. And I have reason to suspect fans of PlayStation’s biggest franchises might be well-rewarded for finishing certain levels. When I beat the octopus, for instance, I rescued a bot pair clad as Kratos and Atreus, who then flew off to an icy-looking planet I couldn’t access in the demo. If my reading is right, we might be in for a full-blown God of War-themed level in the full game, and perhaps more besides.
When Team Asobi first started making the Astro games, it was easy for me to mentally make a shorthand comparison of their work to Nintendo’s long history of platformers. Both have similar throughlines, especially with how the two make games that feel like touchable, experimental toys and how both emphasize playfulness, joy, and surprise. But I’m pretty well convinced Team Asobi is beyond chasing Nintendo’s pedigree. Built on the foundation of Astro’s Playroom, Astro Bot seemed poised to elevate the Astro games into a league all their own, if they weren’t there already. You’re telling me they’ve got 80 levels of what I just played? Sign me up to fly with Astro and crew.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to [email protected].
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