I’ve written about this before, but I love movement in video games. The feeling of locomotion does so much heavy lifting for me that even a mediocre game can be saved. Astrobot feels incredible to play, between the animations, DualSense haptic feedback and level design it provides one of the best 3D platforming experiences I’ve had in a long long time. Luckily, a mediocre game this is not, and essentially every other aspect of this game is created with such care that it’s easily one of the best things I’ve played this year. Despite all of this, I can’t help but feel it's a little bittersweet - a marvellous showcase of Playstation’s past that ultimately ends up highlighting the issues of its present.
Astrobot is on a mission. After a run in with a giant green alien, with a far too small saucer, Astrobot’s ship is destroyed and they’re friend’s have been scattered across space. The goal of this mission is to repair your ship - a gorgeous PS5 - and rescue the pesky little robots across a number of gorgeous and varied galaxies. Along the way you’ll encounter some familiar friends from Playstation’s history and experience Team ASOBI’s mastery of Sony’s technology pushed to its limits in some stellar player-game interactivity.
When The Legend Of Zelda: Breath of The Wild came out, I was really blown away by all the little extra sounds. Sounds like the clinking of Link’s weapons on his back would put a smile on my face, but what really excited me were the sounds of his running. Going from rock to grass to wood would elicit so much joy that I spent hours just running about listening to the almost tactile tapping of his boots. Well here, Team ASOBI’s use of the DualSense takes this sensation even further. When Astrobot runs you can feel the tapping of his feet in the vibration of the controller, and the sounds of metal on metal through the speaker. It's a testament to how top to bottom the attention to detail is, and that’s without mentioning the use of the adaptive pressure triggers, motion controls or air motion sensor. It’s a really wondrous thing and it elevated the already fantastic level design.
That level design is truly fantastic, too. In almost every level I was left slack jawed by what was on display. Whether I was jumping across balloons in the clouds, climbing a singing oak tree or shrinking myself down to the size of a mouse, Astrobot constantly threw a never ending supply of landscapes and ideas at me. That mouse level is particularly memorable. As was constant throughout the game, the ability to shrink yourself down was taken as far as I thought it could go, and then regularly taken further. My favourite moment is a simple one - I shrunk myself down to fit into a grate and then when I enlarged, Astrobot burst out of the grate, setting me free. Lots of little things like this, like being able to stand on flowers when small, really tied this whole level together for me in a big way.
The experience of playing Astrobot was a lot of this - being wowed by the intricacy and depth of its design. Then I’d encounter one of its many cameos and yell “Wow, I haven’t thought of this guy in ages” in glee. The cameos are delightful and there are even a few curated levels that highlight some of the experiences Sony has delivered to us over the years. These levels are particular highlights, with unique, character specific mechanics and platforming segments. I do have a small gripe though, and that’s how much this retrospective brings into focus the current state of Sony’s video game output compared to its illustrious history.
Astrobot is a gorgeously crafted retrospective on everything that has brought Sony and Playstation to where it is today - but that place is far from the colourful romp that you play through in your 10-20 hour adventure. Many of the games showcased here are representations of vast creativity and risk taking that Sony seems uninclined to do anymore. In a recent interview with Financial Times, the chief financial officer of Sony stated that they “...don’t have that much IP that we have fostered from the beginning…”. This was a few days before the release of Astrobot and after finishing it this statement reads as far more disingenuous than it did already. Sony has quite a few active IPs and this game shows they have even more dormant ones. It’s perhaps a little out of touch to suggest you don’t have that much IP when a celebration like this is around the corner. For me, the problem is that Astrobot is a showcase of all of the originality and risk they’ve removed in favour of that more homogenised, relatively safe slate of characters and games.
Given the way Sony’s leadership seem to treat IP, Astrobot could very easily have been very corporate - a collection of bobble head style homages to past Playstation franchises - but what it is instead is a hearty, genuine experience that celebrates its past. It’s clear that the folks at Team ASOBI have a deep fondness for the Playstation and its history. It’s hard to view this experience as anything but genuine when the final sequence is firing on all cylinders and I’m getting emotional at seeing the PS2 (my first Playstation console) flying through space. But this heart is there in all the smaller touches too.
One of those extra little pieces Astrobot provides is a gachapon store where you can spend Playstation branded coins to collect key items related to the characters you’ve rescued, as well as new colours for your DualSense spacecraft and costumes for you to dress up in. You can collect Ratchet’s omni-wrench and a cardboard box for Big Boss, and once you do they’ll appear at the crash site for you to interact with. Interacting with these characters once they’ve had their props returned to them will result in an adorable little animation that highlights how much thought the developers put into each and every one of these cameos.
A question does crop up for me though - where do they go from here? Astrobot is a fantastic video game, and the strongest candidate for a Playstation mascot that Sony have had in a long time, but with the well significantly pulled from, how does a second game develop on its predecessor? It would be a real shame for Team ASOBI not to develop their clear talent for platformers and it feels like a no brainer for Sony to make more Astrobot. The platforming is obviously the star of the show; it presents mechanically diverse and interesting gameplay in a way that Sony hasn’t for some time and I truly believe that it could happily stand separate from the showcase. This, coupled with injecting a bit more personality into the bot beyond being adorable, could really solidify Astrobot as a true Playstation mascot instead of one that only reminisces on the ones that came before it.
This look to the future isn’t to diminish the work of Team ASOBI, I just really enjoyed this game and would really love to see more of Astrobot someday - notwithstanding the incoming DLC. I’m just curious about the form it could take when it feels like this formula might need a shift if a sequel is considered. Who knows, perhaps ASOBI will take a crack at applying their world class talents to an original, platforming IP. Whatever the future holds, overall, the Astrobot of the here and now is a fantastic experience, elevated by an attention to detail and love for Playstation’s history that I think everyone could find some enjoyment in.
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