GAME CLEAR No. 191 -- Astro Bot
video games game clear astro bot playstation ps5Astro Bot (2024, PS5)
Developer: Team Asobi
Publisher: Sony Interactive Entertainment
Clear Version: PS5
Clear Platform: PS5
Clear Date: 9/11/24
| Why should I care? |
|---|
| Astro Bot is as good a platformer as there has been in years. Overflowing with ideas and great feel, it is fun at literally all times. |
Live in your world, play in ours
A couple weeks ago, Astro Bot became the highest rated game of 2024 on review aggregators like Metacritic and Opencritic. As much as I enjoyed Astro’s Playroom, the free PS5 pack-in game in which the eponymous robot goes on a platforming adventure through levels themed after PS5 components, I didn’t expect its sequel to be quite such a critical darling. I was excited for it, mind you, but those scores were something else.
Now, as an aside, I try not to put too much stock into those sorts of things anyway, and I generally advise others not to as well. Having spent my whole life obsessed with this pastime, I feel like I’ve settled pretty comfortably into what I like and don’t like. Aggregated review scores can be nice for knowing if something really bombed or failed to deliver, but they’re still only an indicator. It’s good to go outside one’s comfort zone from time to time and try something outside that 80s-90s range anyway. But when a 3D platformer rockets to the top of the critical ratings instead of some photorealistic, narrative-driven thing, I can’t help but perk up a bit.
You won’t see my sentiments on any of those aggregators, but I will say Astro Bot deserves every bit of praise it has gotten.
To briefly explain the concept: Astro Bot is a cute little robot that lives in your PlayStation. Well, loads of them do, ostensibly, but only one of them is named Astro with a blue accent color on his body. His first full game was actually Astro Bot Rescue Mission for PSVR, which was apparently great but no one played because it was on PSVR. Conversely, many people played the second game Astro’s Playroom because it came free with every PS5. However, the latest Astro Bot game is actually structured more similarly to Rescue Mission. In both games, the space-faring Astro Bot and Co. are minding their own business flying around when an evil Space Bully accosts them. He fucks up their ship and sends all the little robots hurtling into space and onto various planets. Continuing with the theme of Playroom, Astro’s ship is a PlayStation 5 in Astro Bot, and its critical components also go flying off into the cosmos in the assault. Poor Astro and the PS5 crash onto a desert planet and things are looking rough, but fortunately his DualSpeeder still works, so he blasts off from the crash site knowing he must recover his crew and ship parts. Another adventure is afoot.
So you set out to the first set of levels and begin the platforming proceedings. Astro controls simply enough. He can run around, punch things, jump, and double-jump (which also fires damaging lasers from his feet). It’s a solid, basic moveset perfect for all skill levels. Using these abilities, you’ll need to traverse each stage, finding your lost crew members on the way. Many are pretty directly on your path to the end of their respective stages. Usually they are in some predicament, such as being chased by enemies or stuck in some obstacle. Smack ’em, and they’ll hop in your DualSpeeder to return with you to the crash site. Others are better-hidden, requiring you to keep an eye out for hidden pathways, nooks, and crannies. Each level also contains a number of collectible puzzle pieces for you to keep an eye out for as well. These are needed to build various fun facilities at the crash site, so don’t skip them.
This sort of shit really works for me. You’re not required to, but I’m deeply compelled to find every little guy and trinket on every level. It helps that it’s pure fun to run around as Astro, and no two levels are quite alike. Team Asobi seemed to take the approach that they should never do the same idea twice. Obviously all of the stages follow many of the same rules and conventions, but there’s something novel in every single one, whether it be a fun gravity mechanic or a setpiece boss or an actually-fun water level. Many stages also feature recurring powerups, such as a robot dog that doubles as a jetpack or boxing gloves that let you pummel everything in your path. There’s something new to look forward to in every level.
At the end of each set of levels is a major boss, all of which are quite fun and appropriately challenging and engaging. Defeating them unlocks a final stage that is themed after a major first-party franchise from each of the PlayStation consoles, except the Vita (RIP) and PS5 itself. These play as an Astro-ified version of a level from those games. In the first such stage, for example, Astro gets the net from Ape Escape and must capture a bunch of the mischievous little guys. In another, he gets Nathan Drake’s signature, uh, gun and must do some treasure hunting. These are pretty fun overall — although they can feel like a bit of an interruption in the flow of the regular stages — and they serve another of the game’s goals, which is ostensibly to be a celebration of the 30th anniversary of PlayStation.
See, a bunch of the robots you rescue in Astro Bot are dressed up as characters from various famous PlayStation games, both first and third party. This is a continuation of a theme from Astro’s Playroom, in which Astro was not rescuing anybody but frequently would encounter little vignettes performed by his fellow bots based on noteworthy PlayStation titles. You’ll rescue dozens of these guys, and they’ll return to the crash site with you, where they’ll perform a little looped animation of something their character is famous for (when they’re not assisting with the ship-rebuilding effort). While I’m generally wary of hyper-referential, IP-crossover stuff, as it can often be slop, I think Astro Bot somehow gets away with it. There are certainly moments where the brand reverence gets a bit silly, but as someone who loves video game history as much as I do, it’s unfortunately kinda hard for me not to enjoy a game of Let’s Remember Some Guys.
I also liked to be informed about guys I didn’t already know existed or have heard of but have not become personally acquainted with. Team Asobi has said that they want Astro Bot to encourage people to play the classics, and as upcoming GAME CLEAR posts will make abundantly clear, that shit has already worked on me. It also worked on me in my youth when I played games like Super Smash Bros., with its thorough trophy descriptions helping to fill me in on Nintendo history. Now, as multiple news outlets have already rightfully complained, a lot of the games referenced in Astro Bot are not available on PS5, the only console Sony currently manufactures. This doesn’t affect me, as I have every PlayStation console and lots of disposable income to spend foolishly, but those aren’t things Sony can expect of everyone. To their credit, Sony has left even their oldest online storefront up on PS3, which beats both of their competitors in the console space. Still you gotta have the fuckin’ thing, and they don’t make ’em anymore. But anyway, anyone who reads this blog knows that broad, legal access to old games is in horrible shape, and it needs to be fixed. I hope Sony will continue to release games from their catalog to PS5 and will start to do so at a much faster pace than they have been.
One take in this regard that I will push back on a bit is the notion that Astro Bot celebrates a bunch of “dead” series and that that is somehow a problem. I actually think it’s fine and even good that Sony has a bunch of one-off games in its history and finished series like Uncharted. I’m glad they’re not about to release Shadow of the Colossus 4 or whatever. They shouldn’t! Again, I obviously wish literally every game referenced in Astro Bot was readily and affordably available to everyone, but I just don’t totally buy into this notion so popular in the gaming space that games franchises should receive sequels until the end of time. This makes sense for some story-light and highly-iterable franchise like Mario or Mega Man, but we should have room for things that aren’t that.
Talking about all this PlayStation theming seems like a huge digression from the meat of the game, which is excellent platforming action, but it is a pretty constant part of it. I found it palatable and even charming most of the time, but I totally understand anyone who might be put off by it on principle alone. What’s more, I would definitely argue that the next Astro adventure (the future existence of which is implied in the game’s platinum trophy description) should ditch the overt PlayStation angle in favor of returning to its own identity. Astro Bot Rescue Mission only had minor elements of it, which I think is more appropriate and allows the IP to exist outside this brand-worship paradigm.
I’d also argue it’s important to do so because in Astro, Sony finally has a rather malleable and charming mascot. There was a time when it could have perhaps acquired the rights to characters like Spyro or Crash Bandicoot, who both got their start on PlayStation, but that ship has long since sailed. Astro can be that guy, but it’s important that his role isn’t only to be a PlayStation theme park tour guide. That will get tiresome. Astro Bot is the kind of game that can have endless sequels somewhat harmlessly, and Team Asobi has repeatedly demonstrated strong platforming chops. But if they’re confined to only releasing games to coincide with major PlayStation milestones or launches, I think that’d be a bit of a shame.
To throw a bone to the article above that described Astro Bot as a “graveyard,” there is some truth to that notion inasmuch as Sony’s business model has changed a lot since the good ol’ days. Obviously the recent memory-holing of Concord comes to mind, but more generally, Sony has really gone all in on the “prestige” gaming model. They want heavily narrative-driven, high-fidelity, expensive games to headline their consoles’ lineups. The problem is these naturally take for-fucking-ever to make. So you spend a zillion dollars to make Spider-Man 2, a game that still has not sold as many copies as the much lower-budget Luigi’s Mansion 3. For the many ways Nintendo quite frustratingly bucks industry trends, one thing they do accomplish is putting out fucking video games for their console. This year alone, they’re dropping a Zelda, a new Peach game, a Mario RPG, and even a new fucking Famicom Detective Club game of all things, just to name a few. They recognize the value in consistently delivering something for their customers to play instead of occasionally putting out a bloated “prestige” game that maybe they can option into a TV show also. If Sony can put more 10-14 hour, genuinely fun games like Astro Bot out from time to time, I think they might find that people will like that. But that’s just one man’s opinion.
Ugh, well there I went. Despite not really wanting to be another one of the people writing about how Astro Bot made me think about Sony’s missteps, I’ve gone and done it. Please buy and play Astro Bot so maybe Sony will fucking learn something, okay? It’s genuinely great and my favorite major release of the year so far.