Astro Bot Review | Attack of the Fanboy

The PlayStation 5’s launch lineup was filled with huge AAA hits like a new Spider-Man spinoff and even a remake of the classic Demon’s Souls, but a surprising underdog dominated the conversation surrounding everyone’s shiny new consoles. Astro’s Playroom, a small pack-in game meant to show off the next-gen tech of the new console and controller, was so much better than it had any right to be.

Players were instantly enamored with the loveable little robot (and real ones already loved him from his VR debut), and a full game based around Astro seemed like a no-brainer. Four years later, Astro is finally back in a fully-fledged PS5 adventure with no VR barriers to hold him back from general audiences.

Astro Bot is technically Astro’s third adventure, and Team Asobi’s experience with the character shows in spades. The lessons learned from the VR-exclusive Rescue Mission and the PS5 pack-in Playroom give Astro Bot a huge leg up for his AAA platforming debut.

Astro Bot has a simple but infectiously charming setup. Cruising through the galaxy on his PS5-shaped spaceship, Astro and friends are attacked by an alien that steals the critical components of the PlayStation 5 and leaves the crew lost with a non-functioning console and hundreds of missing bots. As you platform through each world, you’ll recover missing bots — several of which are PlayStation references — and battle bosses to retrieve the parts required to repair the PS5 ship.

Astro’s moveset is fairly basic, only equipped with a single punch and a laser-boosted double jump, but each level provides him with a special item that the entire level is designed around. These range from boxing gloves to rocket-powered backpacks, and the game gets a surprising amount of mileage from each of them. When the game gives you the same power up in a new level, there’s always a twist on the established mechanics that keeps things feeling fresh. Astro’s long-range boxing gloves may have been used to bash waves of enemies in one level, but they’ll be used to grapple and swing from sticky things in the next.

These power-ups are made all the more satisfying thanks to Astro Bot’s DualSense integration. This feels like the game the controller was designed for in the first place. It has all the typical gimmicks that you’ve come to expect at this point in the PS5’s life cycle — trigger resistance for punches, tingly haptics to simulate raindrops, and so on — but some levels take things even further with haptic vibration changes revealing weak spots in walls or tilt controls moving platforms around to solve puzzles. Astro Bot feels like a tech demo in all the best ways, a natural evolution of the marriage between technology and level design introduced in Astro’s Playroom.

The technology at Team Asobi’s disposal also gives Astro Bot an absolutely gorgeous presentation. The crisp 4K graphics do a lot of the heavy lifting, but the PS5’s extra horsepower lets the levels be filled with all sorts of fun stuff to play with. Several levels are littered with nuts, bolts, and other miscellaneous trash that you can smack around or run through. Sometimes it’s just for fun, but other times the clutter hides secret areas or collectibles if you take the time to clear it. The framerate holds steady the entire time, too, and it’s just a blast to see all the particles and effects on screen at the same time.

While the missing bots are the main collectibles in Astro Bot, there are other secrets to find within each level. Bots are easy enough to find (and the joy of discovering the next PlayStation reference never gets old), but puzzle pieces are the real secrets of each level. These unlock new features back at the hub area like the ability to dress Astro up with costumes or even photo mode so you can take snapshots of your adventure. Some levels also have secret exits that unlock entirely new stages as well, so exploration is always greatly rewarded in Astro Bot.

Astro Bot is so focused on filling every possible moment with fun that it’s easy to lose track of time and sink hours into it without realizing. Even something as simple as moving around the galaxy map in between levels is exciting since you can encounter comets and other things that will add more levels to the map, leading you to more PlayStation bots, more mechanics, and more fun. The optional levels can get pretty tough, too, so platforming fans of all skill levels have things to look forward to.

Every inch of Astro Bot feels handcrafted like that, too. Every single level has something unique to offer, the PlayStation references run much deeper than you’d think, and there are trophies for the smallest victories like dunking a basketball or jumping through a hoop with dolphins. You can practically feel the developers smiling down on you when you find the next PlayStation bot or discover the next twist on an existing mechanic. It’s rare to find a game with this much love poured into it, where the developers clearly had just as much fun making the game as you will playing it.

No matter your history with PlayStation, Astro Bot is an undeniable hit. It’s one of the most inventive platformers in years, rivaling even the best of the best from Nintendo and other industry masters. Team Asobi has a never-ending series of tricks up its sleeve that keeps Astro Bot feeling fresh even after the credits roll. Astro Bot is a breath of fresh air in every regard, and it hopefully marks a new chapter for PlayStation where family-friendly platformers are treated with just as much respect as prestige third-person adventures.