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As of a few days ago, the game Astro Bot was released and, according to my 11-year-old son, this is a huge deal. If, like me, you are slightly confused how a 3D platformer can engender quite so much excitement then read on as I look at some of the things that I have observed whilst watching Astro Bot, and its predecessor Astro’s Playroom being played.
Let’s be incredibly honest here… Astro’s Playroom, at face value, was little more than a game designed to show off the capabilities of the PlayStation 5’s Dual Sense Controller. The game came free, pre-installed, on all PS5 consoles. It turns out that this free game was really flipping cool!
The haptic controller is used to immerse the player in the game and this made playing Astro’s Playroom a lot of fun. Mix in references to PlayStation games from the past and collecting PlayStation historic hardware for a bit of nostalgia. You also got a variety of different types of level design, that had different play styles with special “power-ups”. These “power-ups” again show off those haptic control capabilities, like having to press a button more gently when climbing to stop hand holds breaking when you use them. This is all backed up by a super catchy soundtrack that you’ll be humming snippets from it all day. Put all this together and you had a game that really exceeded expectations.
Fast-forward four years and you can appreciate why players would be really excited for a follow-up!
It is understandable, then, why players that enjoyed Astro’s Playroom when they found it installed in their new PlayStation 5 console are really excited to get their hands on the new Astro Bot.
As a game that has been formally released, rather than included as a tech demo, Astro Bot promises to be a far bigger and more fleshed out version of its predecessor. Given that Astro’s Play Lab was a game that punched way above its weight, that gives those looking forward to Astro Bot an awful lot to be excited about.
My son was so keen to get hands on this title that he paid for the digital version, arranged to sleep in the living room on the Thursday night before release (so that he wouldn’t wake his brother too early) then began playing immediately he woke up in the morning.
Watching him play the game I can see that the play style is very similar to Astro’s Playroom. Plenty of big levels to explore and find secret areas in. At the same time there are occasional exclamations of amusement as the Dualsense controller is used to do something cool; “I can feel the rain on my hands” was stated at one point. You can also here the controller rattle as Astro wades through a carpet of giant cake sprinkles!
The core Astro’s Playroom mechanic of finding puzzle pieces and fighting bosses to progress through levels remains. However, there is an added element of rescuing other bots, in fact there has been an update made available for those that have completed Astro’s Playroom that sees bot rescues added to it too.
When you rescue a bot the haptic controllers come into their own and you can “feel” it jump into the controller, whist seeing this visualised on screen. Similarly, when you pause the game, the bots you have rescued are shown sitting in the touch area. Flick the controller upwards and you can feel the little bots pop out and land back in again.
So far the impression I have is that Astro Bot is living up to the high expectations my son had!