Bosses appear at the end of each cluster of levels and randomly in the middle, always with a new way of attacking that forces you to use powers in new ways, think differently, and experience the level in a fresh light. [newline]Platformers used to be this bold and seemed to shed that personality in favour of retreading safe old ground. But despite being a museum to Sony’s past, Astro Bot is more concerned with looking forward, not backwards. I expected it to be a pretty fun little cartoon romp where the main draw would be pointing at the screen and going “Look! It’s Nathan Drake!”.

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Players seemed to love it so much that it warranted a fully-fledged game, so Team Asobi did just that in 2018. We’ve discussed that in a separate boxout, because none of that affects the game, but it is all very odd – and gives the distinct impression it was shoehorned in halfway through development. There are much more difficult optional levels – a set based around the face button symbols being the hardest – but these are all quite short and completely linear, with no checkpoints. They’re reminiscent of Super Mario Sunshine void levels but it’s a shame none of the normal levels also offer an increased challenge. The most interesting though is probably the one that shrinks you down to the size of a mouse, allowing you to explore levels at two different sizes. It’s just a shame there’s not more of those levels, as that’s when the game is at its peak in terms of game design – along with one-off themes like a day/night world that you can switch between with the press of a button.

Environmental puzzles and exciting set pieces await players in Astro Bot’s dozens of stages that can take anywhere from a couple minutes to a quarter of an hour to complete. Fans of PlayStation history will be very tempted to spend more time on each stage thanks to the many nods to past franchises and moments. I won’t talk about the other buildings players can build in Astro Bot’s hub world, but rest assured they are great as well, giving players extra incentive to hunt down every single collectible. The bird costs 200 coins, so players have to give up some gacha pulls to use it, but it’s a great way to keep players from getting stuck. Astro Bot pulls out all the stops when it comes to referencing older titles in the game.

The contrast between Astro Bot and Concord this week alone is absolutely wild. A whirl of bots to rescue, of loving Playstation references, of deep cuts like Ape Escape and more recent stars, who get outings I don’t really want to ruin. It’s boss fights when you expected them and boss fights when you absolutely didn’t. There are jokes about tech demo ducks in here, then, but there’s also the sense the whole thing is, on some level, a huge tech demo. It’s a sustained tech demo, one that never runs out of new wonders to show you, new marvels to fling at you and swiftly discard. Previous Astro Bot games have been employed to showcase new bits of kit.

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Every level has a set of hidden bots that Astro needs to rescue. https://g28e.com/ would be a charming Easter egg hunt, but Team Asobi isn’t just investing in empty references. It uses the opportunity to show its love for PlayStation history. According to the game’s reveal trailer and details shared on the official PlayStation Blog, Astro Bot will feature over 80 levels spread across six galaxies players will explore. That makes Astro Bot a significantly bigger adventure than Astro’s Playroom and PSVR’s Astro Bot Rescue Mission. We’re eager to see how Team Asobi expands the gameplay this time around.

The prizes you get here, earned by spending the coins you’ve collected, more often than not, are attributed to one of the bots you’ve found, like a specific weapon or object that gives them a fun interaction in the hub. Other prizes include cosmetics for Astro himself and his Dual Speeder, letting you customise his look with some iconic outfits. You can also unlock the Safari Park, a special zone to hang out in, but it also gives you access to a simple Photo Mode, then usable throughout the game. There are some levels in here that almost had me pulling my hair out (in the best sort of way). But regardless of the difficulty scale, you feel so cool when you figure out the latest mechanics or platforming puzzle. It’s structured in a way too where if you want to dig into the difficult stuff you can, but if you want to keep things simple with the main campaign, you can also do that.

Its soundtrack–already an array of bubbly earworms–reimagines familiar overtures from other games. In doing all of this for these most-special one-offs, the promise of its world comes into full view. Astro Bot swarms the player with bright ideas, sparking almost endless joy. Besides many of Astro Bot’s creative and exciting boss battles, nostalgia fuels much of Astro Bot’s most thrilling moments, especially with the few stages specifically themed after PlayStation’s most beloved properties.

There is, for instance, a God of War stage – I don’t want to spoil the others, most of which I liked even more, but Kratos has appeared in marketing materials thus far so I felt like the best choice for showing an example. Really, the whole game feels as if it were created to push as much ‘stuff’ as possible. Objects break, give and collect in huge numbers lending the game world a tremendous amount of life. As you rescue bots, for instance, they gather on the game’s central planet and the engine has zero trouble displaying all of them at once. You can recruit them to help you out and it’s a joy watching them all gather in huge numbers.

Astro bot Rescue Mission (VR ONE) is still the MOST transformative game I’ve played in my adult life. If you’ve become jaded or gaming bores you, it’ll legit make you feel like a kid playing games for the first time again. That feeling that desentized adults have to take drugs to feel, I kid you not.