Astro Bot PS5 Review – Pure, Perfected Joy

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Fast Facts

Slowly Becoming A PlayStation Icon

Hasn’t my little fellow come a long way since their initial reveal in The Playroom in 2013? Astro Bot was first introduced as part of the PlayStation camera demo, where you could interact with multiple robots with your head. It was great fun at the time but no one could have then predicted how far this little plucky android would come. Since then we have had them in The PlayRoom VR, Astro Bot Rescue Mission, the PS5 pre-installed Astro’s Playroom and now, the amazing Astro Bot, their first fully-fledged adventure and strap-in people, it’s a doozy.

I have to go on a small rant here before I start the review, but when did games stop being fun? I love massive open worlds, souls-likes and roguelikes by the dozen but playing this title reminded me why I started gaming many moons ago. Pure, unbridled entertainment. There are no microtransactions, no bloat, zero bugs and just a bot-load of entertaining pleasure. Nintendo do it often and more developers can take note of all the failings in recent memory and learn from Team Asobi. Just make something fun, make something with heart, make something that works first time and the players will follow with their wallets.

Collect and Repair

Astro Bot’s premise is a simple one, a PS5 is cruising through space full of little robots. These robots range from standard Astro Bots to classic versions of PlayStation icons and other video game characters. The massive PS5 gets attacked by a horrid alien, the PS5 gets destroyed and the Astro Bots are spread across the galaxy. It’s your job to not only repair the PS5 ship but rescue all of those lovely little fellows that were manning the gargantuan PS5.

Astro Bot is a platformer, in each of the game’s main levels you will be traversing terrain, dodging traps and finding secrets. No game had brought my household together in recent memory like this one. We all crowded around the TV, taking a life each and working together to unravel each level’s mysteries and save all the Astro Bots. Each word nabs you a part of the PlayStation back from is initial crash and allows you to slowly build up the PS5 in the hub word.

An Ever-Expanding Hub

This hub world not only acts as the place where your PS5 gets built back up but it’s where all your collected Astros live and along with that, has unlockable items, a gatcha machine and a few other secrets to behold. Watching it fill up with video game icons and their items from the gatcha machine is great, along with the singing PS5 that gets repaired throughout your adventure. There is always something new to see and do, each time you visit.

Every time you rescue a PlayStation part you have to clean it, chop it, re-assemble it and insert it back into the main PS5 unit. You have to tilt your controller and use the DualSense in amazing ways to do so. The adaptive triggers and haptics do their work to make this mechanic feel amazing, tactile and immersive. It’s the same with the game all the way through though, no game since the last Astro Bot game has utilized the DualSense like this game does.

A Controller and Implementation Like No Other

You can feel every footstep across different materials, you can hear everything through the controller and it elevates the whole experience like no other game on the PlayStation 5. You feel it all, you hear it all and the tactility is off the scale. Every jump, every spin and every punch delivers information to your hands and you truly have to play it to experience it. It’s truly transformative. I wish more developers would use more of the DualSense, it really is an amazing controller when utilized to its full potential.

Playing with Astro Bot’s many toys also ties in with the DualSense controller. In many of Astro Bot’s levels, you will be given a little gizmo to help you through the level. An elephant on your back that sucks up liquids for you to use to make platforms or a chicken that propels you upwards, each of these uncanny friends utilizes the DualSense adaptive triggers and haptics to the max and all feel so immersive to use. Team Asobi did a superb job making the whole experience ‘feel’ superior to everything on the PS5.

Beauty for Both The Eyes and Ears

Along with all the brilliant DualSense stuff, Astro Bot drips with pure joy from a presentation standpoint. The music, the level design and the graphical choices all weave together to make a tapestry of happiness and joy. The levels sing with beautiful, joyous music. They had me bobbing my head along to catchy numbers from both previous Astro Bot games and even some PlayStation classics I recognized, especially in some of the game’s best, PlayStation-based levels.

At the end of each world you will rescue a PlayStation ‘icon’ of sorts. You know, Aloy from Horizon or Nathan Drake from Uncharted. Then, after that, a new level from that game unlocks. This stage is basically an Astro Bot version of the main game the character is from and they are not only the best levels in the game but also, a massive love letter to the games they represent. I don’t want to spoil too much about these levels as they should be experienced but boy, are they amazing. Not only do they match their respective games mechanics but music and presentation too. To a massive PlayStation fan, It’s glorious, they had me squee-ing with glee.

Absolute Brilliance

As you can probably tell, I adored this game. It took us about 15 or so hours to get all the trophies and do everything but it was 15 hours of pure merriment. Astro Bot has brought my family together like no other game, it’s beautifully crafted and as I said earlier, it really rebuilds some of the hope I have for the industry. Not every game is a micro-transaction filled cash-grab, some developers are still making fun games that create happiness and that makes me happy. Astro Bot is not only one of the best games I have played this year but one of my most fun video game experiences in recent memory.

5 out of 5

5