Astro Bot, a typically whimsical, imaginative game, features a heroic robot with blue pixelated eyes that wanders tentatively through space like a child. But Astro is an ardent puzzle-solver, even in a game that is enormous, interactive pop culture history.
Astro previously appeared in a tech demo for the PlayStation 5 that featured the bells and whistles of the new Sony console and its controller. That tidbit was fun, but Astro Boat is the full, 12-hour experience. It uses the PS5 controller to an impressive extent, emitting thousands of sounds and good vibrations. It is no exaggeration to say that I felt like I was holding an extension of the Astro Bot in my hand.
The simple sci-fi rescue story by Team Asobi works despite the fact that the only intelligible language comes through eye expressions and verbal exclamations. Astro’s delightful, warm laugh recalls Curly’s raspy voice in the Three Stooges’ vintage black-and-white short comedy.
Asobi means “to play” in Japanese, and Astro Bot has featured so many versions of the play from pop culture history that it’s somewhat like this. Steven Spielberg’s version of “Ready Player One”. About 150 PlayStation characters appear, including the dragon Spyro and Cylinder-Headed Prince from Katamari Demacy.
Astro Bot looks like some Nintendo or Sega games. Like Super Mario Galaxy, it consists of several planets. Like Pikmin, small creatures work together; At the base of your house, they come together to form a bridge held by the pelican’s beak. Go ahead and you’ll enter an area inspired by Sony’s Horizon series. Even the old board game, Rube Goldberg-style Mouse Trap, is raised on a level in which a white-and-blue astro shrinks to the size of a dog.
Some may think of this as excessive borrowing. I love the Newton-esque “standing on the shoulders of giants” idea as the astro bot, surprisingly, becomes its own thing.
Astro’s ship, a giant, rocket-powered PlayStation 5, is attacked; When it crashes, its crew is scattered across galaxies. Cleverly, the controller becomes a small jet, a dual speeder, which can also be played on a normally static pregame screen. Piloting jets and streaking through multicolored portals in space, Astro explores 50 planets and asteroids with as few as 300 members of his crew. On Funk Planet’s trunk, which has a giant laughing tree, a bot is hidden in a bird’s nest. Sometimes they are trapped in cages. Sometimes it’s hard to find them all in one level.
More than acting as a dual speeder, the controller uses haptic feedback and adaptive triggers to immerse players in this world. Handy-D, the banana-eating monkey in your backpack, climbs walls with long, Mr. Fantastic-like arms and hands when you tilt the device. When you press the trigger, Astro rocks a dinosaur head like foot on a giant, stiletto-legged pirate boss. (The controller works less effectively when used as a hammer.) Later, when I jumped on two mushrooms near a tree, the mushrooms felt spongy and made a sound like wet sod after rain.
Some tech is more familiar. Of the soundtrack’s 87 songs, none is more memorable than Kenneth CM Young’s short and poppy song “I’m Astro Boat,” which is almost as catchy as the hook from David Byrne and Fatboy Slim’s “Hear Lies Love.”
Astro Bot has a marketing gimmick that can be annoying if you’re not a self-promotion-minded streamer or influencer. A trope among platformers is the collection of gold coins; Here, they are exchanged to unlock variations of Astro’s clothing or animated bots that form the base of the house. The coins are branded with the PlayStation logo, an advertisement that appears thousands of times. Some may say that this shows pride for one’s employer. To me, that’s overkill.
Beyond those hiccups, Astro Bot is an enjoyable effort that often shows the brilliance of game makers who know their history. They repeat so inventively that you feel like you’re part of something mildly revolutionary.
With the expected success of the game, Astro, who is considered the mascot of the PS5 the way Crash Bandicoot was the mascot of the original PlayStation, will be widely imitated and promoted more aggressively as the holidays approach. Already, you can buy a beautiful Astro-branded controller. He has become a star among the planets.
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