Astro Bot is a quirky old-school style 3D platformer polished to a shine via the power of the PlayStation 5.

The game builds upon the Astro Bot Playgrounds digital game that comes pre-installed on new PS5s. As with the free game, Astro Bot harks back to simpler times, charging players with the rescue of fellow Astro Bots whilst dipping into the nostalgic waters of the PlayStation brand’s iconic history.

Astro Bot continues from Astro Bot Playgrounds, with the little bots flying through space in a spaceship that looks suspiciously like a PlayStation 5. After being attacked by an alien creature and having vital components stolen, the PS5/spaceship crashes, its bot occupants scattered.

The game’s objective is to locate the stolen parts of the PlayStation 5 spaceship. Along the way, players collect coins and save the lost bots. The game world is divided into sections containing several levels, the final level being a boss level with the stolen part. You don’t have to collect the bots, many of which are hidden, to complete the level. There are also puzzle pieces to collect and optional hidden levels to uncover.

Your Astro Bot can punch, jump and use a jetpack to slow its descent. Special equipment adds a bit of variety to the levels. Some of the equipment is based on famous PlayStation games, but most just add abilities like punching fists, a rocket pack and slowing time. The abilities only last for the level they were obtained in, but some make appearances in more than one level.

The crash site serves as the game hub, and it’s here that the PS5 is reassembled and rescued bots congregate once rescued. The crash site is also where you get to put your collection of bots to work. Whilst rescuing bots is not compulsory, there are tasks in the hub area that require a specific number of bots to access. The reward is usually the rescuing of another bot or a puzzle piece, making this part of the game kind of optional as well.

The game uses the power of the PlayStation 5 to bring huge levels to life with incredible visuals. Everything that you’d expect from a AAA game has been incorporated into the game, making it the best-looking platformer I’ve ever played.

The more of a veteran PlayStation fan you are the more you will likely enjoy Astro Bot. There are references to the brand’s entire 30-year history in the game. You’ll see nods to games going all the way back to Tomb Raider, with a few levels based on iconic PlayStation franchises, such as Uncharted and God of War, including the game mechanics.

Once the bread and butter of video gaming, platform games become out of vogue in favour of the 3D shooters and open environments afforded by dedicated 3D graphics cards. Whilst Nintendo held the fort, with its ever-popular Mario games, the rest of us moved on. With Astro Bot It makes a nice change to play a game that is suitable for the whole family without reaching for the Switch.

Astro Bot is an absolute delight to play. The animations give the game a lot of heart drawing you into a rollercoaster of a platformer that you’ll have difficulty putting down.

The post Astro Bot (PlayStation 5) Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

It seems PSVR is really starting find its footing and releasing games with fantastic production value extended well beyond rote novelty, or single-serving “experiences”.

Astro Bot Rescue Mission is one of Sony’s first fully fledged campaign titles built from the ground up for Sony’s VR platform by Japan Studios (of The Last Guardian fame). And it’s just great.

Astro Bot’s genesis was from the Playroom VR “mingame” collection – developed and provided as a free download from the PS Store. Proving to be a neat showpiece for VR, there was apparently a huge appeal from fans to have a full game developed from this 15 minute sampler, of which Japan Studios took heed. 2 Years later – here we are.

On paper, the game sounds like a nostalgic retread of point to point linear platformers that permeated the 90’s gaming landscape. And on paper, that’s essentially what it is. But what VR brings to the table here breathes life back into an otherwise trite and innocuous genre, and then injects it with pure dopamine.

The story is, well, who cares. You control Astro, a diminutive robot on a quest to vanquish the cutesy robot scum of the Universe, to rescue his buds from captivity, and to repair his ship. It’s a thread designed purely to keep the game bouncing gleefully from one vibrant location to another. It’s a constant assault of charm!

There are 5 worlds, each with 4 Levels and one enormous end of world Boss. The worlds are incredibly beautiful and varied, often including simple, but unique gameplay mechanics to keep the platforming interesting and fresh. These worlds include construction sites, lush forests, dimly lit caves, underwater areas – to name a few

Your perspective is through the eyes of another robot character, that hovers at a fixed height tracking Astro through the world as he makes his way forward. You can look around nooks, crannies and corners, peer down at hidden locations, and peer up at bridges and girder pathways for Astro to explore. It feels like you are always in the center of an elaborate Meccano construction as you try and determine how to best puppet Astro around.

As a satisfying genre trope, Astro collects spinning coins, while defeating enemies and breaking objects also gives you coins. These can be used for purchasing unlockables (achieved through a “claw machine” chance minigame). It’s not much of a motivator, nor particularly exciting compared to the main game, but offers some more variety and it’s definitely more interesting than a items catalogue.  

Astro Bot screams high production value. Not only is everything impeccably polished and pretty, but the animations, sound, physics, water and particle effects are all very accomplished in a game that wouldn’t necessarily have drawn that level of scrutiny from its players. Japan Studios have really teased things right into the corners, which has become a running theme for Sony’s first party studios in recent history. They have an obvious mastery of the technology and are able to glean from it a level of fidelity that’s rare elsewhere on the platform.

All this level of detail and care only adds to the immersion in VR.

Astro Bot is a dualshock only game. But the dualshock is used in ever clever ways, enabling players to interact with the world not just through their control of Astro, but with the world itself. Certain Levels require gadget attachments which augment the digitally rendered in-game version of the controller. These include a grappling hook for creating tightropes and pulling down barriers, a water cannon for growing plants and dowsing flames, and even shuriken for firing into walls to aid in Astros platforming. These actions are performed by the often neglected “touch” pad on the controller and are all very fun to perform, adding some required dexterity to the controls.

The player must also interact directly with objects at certain points, such as “headbutting” obstructions as the camera tracks forward, or headbutting projectiles back at enemies. A couple of instances will have the player using the headset microphone in interesting ways – however gimmicky, it’s a neat touch.

The music contains fun, plucky riffs you would expect from a modern Sonic or Mario title, and although they do repeat, perfectly compliment the charm of the aesthetics throughout. 360 audio is also put perfectly to use, with the “help me” chirps of your fellow bots awaiting rescue indicating their location from all around, and other diegetic sounds filling out the environments with enormous personality.    

Combat in the game is barely that, with 3 attack types relegated to specific enemies that are mostly variants of the same basic skin. But that’s perfect for this type of game, where combat is more an extension of the platforming mechanic, requiring timing and precision rather than brute force. Most enemies can be killed with one hit. It’s cute, it’s charming and at times, kinda funny.

Then there are the Bosses. On a flat screen, these would seem pedestrian but unassumingly fun. In VR, they are enormous and epic in scale, dwarfing both the player an Astro himself. This sense of scale gives the pattern-based attacks a tense anticipation. They are some of the game’s highlights for sure.

Astro Bot’s campaign clocks in at around 8-10 hours if you’re not just zipping through the Levels, but if you manage to find a hidden chameleon camouflaged into the environment of each Level, an independent challenge Level is unlocked afterwards for you to attempt.

If Firewall Zero Hour is PSVR’s answer to multiplayer – Astro Bot Rescue Mission is its answer to single player. This game is so fun and accessible it will likely sell PSVR units, it’s just that good.

Also – Astro does “The Carlton” as a victory dance. Get it, play it, and you can thank me later.  

The post Astro Bot Rescue Mission (PlayStation 4 / PSVR) Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.