In just over a week, the 6th of September to be exact, Astro Bot will finally get his own AAA game. I was recently lucky enough to go hands on with the 3D platformer and it’s shaping up to be something really special.
When the PlayStation 5 initially released, Astro’s Playroom was a pre-loaded onto it. It was a fantastic tech demo, packed with PlayStation references and showed off what the DualSense was capable of. If Astro’s Playroom was the entree, then Astro Bot is the main course… And in that analogy, the PS VR game Astro Bot Rescue Mission would be the fruity cocktail on the side.
Hands-on with Astro Bot!
Before I played it for myself, I was expecting the game to feel like a Christmas episode of bad TV, full of shoe-horned product placement. But once I was into it, I realised the whole thing was absolutely dripping with charm. Once again, PlayStation is being celebrated in the game. Astro Bot and his friends fly around in a ship made from a PS5 console, and at the start of every level, you fly in on a DualSense controller with wings and jet thrusters!
If you’ve played Astro’s Playroom you’ll already have a feel for how Astro moves (and if you didn’t play it, off you go). Astro still has his run, jump, double jump, hover and punch mechanics, but within those there are more than a few contextual upgrades. Astro’s punch can be charged to spin rotating levers for example.
Each level has a unique upgrade that is given to you off the bat, that you need to learn to master. The earliest one of these lets you inflate like a puffer fish and float vertically. While it seems simple at first, you quickly learn that you can inflate partially, or let out air to coast along and land on hard-to-reach places to find hidden rewards.
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In the levels I played through there were also magnetic powers, a boosting dash, a mechanic to stop time, and a handful of other abilities. Each level gives you a new power, then quickly tests your ability to use it, whether that’s completing platforming sequences, saving Astro Bot’s friends or defeating a boss monster.
There’s also incredible detail paid to the DualSense controller and the haptic feedback therein. As you run around the levels, you’ll feel perfect little tippy-taps as Astro’s metal feet skitter over metal grates, or experience glass floors cracking and breaking underfoot. The adaptive triggers too, that provide different levels of resistance and you use your various abilities.
It’s Dangerous To Go Alone
Throughout each level there are a set number of Astro’s friends that you need to find. Some of them are on the main path, while others are hidden behind little skill challenges. For example, in one level I found myself swimming through a deep pond, at the bottom was a domed force-field with some coins in it. However, the flower in-between the coins could be spun with a charged attack, which took me to a secret room with a hidden bot to save.
When you save each bot, you get this great on-screen animation of the DualSense controller, with all the bots you’ve saved so far swinging from it, lying across it, or using the touchpad as a spa bath. Through the levels I played, I didn’t see any of these animations repeat, which was really cool.
As it was in Astro’s Playroom and Astro Bot Rescue Mission, the visual design is spectacular. Astro Bot himself and all of the levels are dripping with that shiny new toy energy, and every level feels tightly designed so you’re always moving forwards.
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Ooooh, Shiny!
As you’d expect, there are numerous little nods and guest appearances from the wider PlayStation ecosystem – and they’re all freaking adorable. In my short time with the game, I saw the Astro-bot versions of Kratos, Atreus, Jak (from Jak and Daxter), and the mysterious protagonist of Journey. These characters act as sort of mascots for the challenge missions, and you can add them to your collection by completing the mission and saving them at the end.
These missions significantly upped the difficulty from the baseline levels, and certainly showed how the team is looking towards all players for this title, not just young gamers.
The first challenge-style mission I completed was a boss battle with a giant octopus named Wako Tako, who was kitted out with a snorkel and boxing gloves. His mission armed me with extendable boxing gloves that were mapped to the left and right triggers, so every punch could take out enemies from a distance or swing from bars to leap over large gaps.
The boss battle itself happens over multiple stages, but each is totally different than what came before. One phase you’re dodging punches, the next you’re punching giant sea urchins from the air, then you’re doing platforming sections while dodging tsunamis before slingshotting yourself into the big bad beastie’s face at full speed.
It’s a kinetic, responsive set of abilities that in a normal game might have been the whole suite of skills, but here it’s yours for one level and then you move on to something completely different.
While I only played a handful of the 80 levels, so far Astro Bot is shaping up to be something special. The core design is tight and responsive, the challenges enjoyable, and the PlayStation fan service is suitably adorable.
Astro Bot is available for pre-order now, and due for release next week on the 6th of September. Keep an eye out for our full review.
