Astro Bot

This is a love letter to Playstation 

Game no: 531
Genre: Platformer
Platform: PS5
Release Date: 2024

What can I say about Astro Bot that no one else can say. I can say that this is a fun game. This game hits all the right notes spanning 30 years of PlayStation history and finally I can say that it's been a long while where a game can make me smile to play from start to finish. So lets begin my Astro Bot review. We all know that this game is going to be great since the first time I played Astro Bot is from the preloaded PS5 game Astro's playroom. This time Team Asobi manage to do the same game but made it 10 times bigger. 

The game premise is simple. You have to save 300 of your robot freinds scattered throughtout the galaxy and you need to travel to each planet in the specific galaxy to rescue them. At the end of the level. The number of bots your rescued will unlocked the boss for that galaxy and once you beat them you have a specfic VIP bot (more on that later) that will unlock the specific planet with that bot gameplay. Since I am not sure when you will read this so I can share with you the VIP bots that come with their own unique gameplay is Ape Escape(PS1 classic), God of War (plays excatly like the actual game), Uncharted (my favoruite), Loco Roco (I miss this game) and Horizon Zero Dawn (I have to play this game one day). The VIP bots provide some variety into an already polish gameplay. 

Astro comes with a lot of special items to aid him in his quest. Items like the Chicken and Dog which provides vertical and horizontal boost. The Frog hands which acts like boxing gloves, the rock outfit which gives shielding against rocks and heat. There are also enviornmental items like the mouse that makes Astro sink and a sponge that makes Astro suck a lot of water. Each of them provides a unique gameplay and I wish that they could make more stages like this. Sometimes it is just one stage and then you can't use the powerup again. I think that a miss oppurtunity. There are also some stages that requires the gyro controls from the DualSense. I can say that this game uses all the features of the DualSense controllers.

I think the star of these games are the VIP bots. We need to resque 300 of them and out of the 300 there are 140 VIP bots from PlayStation history. Some are well known based on what they are wearing (Solid Snake or Crash Bandicoot) to the obsurce ones (Vib Ribbon and Incredible Crisis) to the who are these people again (No idea??). They don't tell us who are these characters since by rescuing them you'll get a short description on what they were famous for rather than thier name. The bots play a role in advancing the gameplay since the hub world needs a certain number of bots in order to go to the next galaxy. The PS5 is also a character in this game in where you need to rescue the parts scrattered throughout the galaxy. Overall you can see me smiling everytime I got something that reminds me of my past gaming history 

After beating the game there are a lot of secrets to get such as portals to the lost galaxy (shorter versions of the actual stages), puzzle pieces and the best part challenge levels. Challenge levels are basically hardcore challenges of platforming where you have only one chance to get from start to finish without dying. The challenges range from easy to extremely hard. If you mange to beat them all you will be treated to the Master Level Challenge which is by far the most awesome challenge of all (It took me 1 hour to get through). Other than that there are 8 bit stages and glass floor stages. The game really just wants to you play more of it 

After finish the 20 hour game you are left with a satisfied conclusion to a very special game. It doesn't overextend its welcome but I wish it had more. I hope that this game sells a lot and team Asobi can make something else using Astro Bot as the star. So far I can say this is my number 1 game of the year and I will give this an S-Rank