myreviews2024

There's a moment in Astro Bot—one of the unscripted moments when you hope to hold the DualSense at just the right angle, and at that time, the haptics vibrate against your palms like a living thing. The console turns into an accessory for your hands, which you can feel “Astro.” The tension in a rope before it snaps, the floaty feeling of mid-air spin, or the squirrelly little feet of Astro skittering across a grind rail. All of a sudden, rather than a thirty-something with deadlines and bills to worry about, you're an eight-year-old – cross-legged and carpet and wholly immersed in a universe that responds to you.

This is the magic Team Asobi captured. Not nostalgia—not quite. It is something deeper than that: the overwhelming, raw enjoyment of play.

The last game I wrote about – “Black Ops 6: A Thriller That Keeps You Moving” was the name of the review – was a realistic first-person shooter action with strategic combat and a mature narrative; now I write about Astro Bot – a game prioritizes lighthearted fun and creative gameplay.

LED Eyes and the Soul of a Bot

What struck me wasn't how precise the jumps were or how secrets were densely packed into every level. Rather, it was the eyes.

Blue LEDs—glistening with excitement, narrowing with determination, and pupils dilating with surprise—are far more expressive than most human photorealistic faces. Doucet's claim of them being a “huge element” of the bots' designs was far from an exaggeration. There's personality there, a flicker of life that goes beyond polygons and shaders. His eyes screwed shut in embarrassment when he stumbles and burst wide open when he spots hidden collectibles.

Those bots, devoid of their eye-centric designs, could not be faithfully translated. That fact tells you everything. They are not simply avatars; They are characters. And with filmic weight becoming more ubiquitous in the medium, Astro Bot has the audacity to wonder: What if we only aimed for fun?

The DualSense: A Toy, Not a Tool

The feel of platformers is crucial: the interaction and action feedback must be perfectly aligned down to the millisecond. But Astro Bot does something wickedly clever: it turns the controller itself into a playground.

The hard work geared toward creating the DualSense features on the haptic controller is apparent in Team Asobi's execution. The haptic feedback on the controller makes you feel like you're in real-life warzone scenarios. The haptic speakers make it so that every time you collect coins, it feels as if there's a reward in the form of tiny celebrations. The touchpad on the controller, which has been ignored in other PS5 games, gets attention here whenever the player removes fog from the map using swipe gestures, making it feel as if fingers are wiping surfaces of glass.

When compared to Lego Games or New Super Lucky's Tale, both of which are entertaining in their own ways, you can tell quite a difference in physical connection. Yes, those games do have chaotic sandboxes where you can enjoy destruction as a reward, but the imagination cannot physically feel that the game is alive.

The Ghost of Platformers Past

I recently replayed Sly Cooper and to my surprise, the nostalgia did hit hard. Unlocking moves from storybooks and turning each page to slay more glorious theft. Sly Cooper is more of a product of nostalgia and sarcasm, but Astro Bot relied more on the pure childlike impulse to uncover things. Sure, LittleBigPlanet pioneered the path with its murder of DIY charm and hand-made aesthetics. But Astro removes the creation tools and cutscenes (My daughter loves playing, so why bother with the cutscenes?) and focuses purely on 'run, jump, feel' as the essence of the genre.

Plus, there is VR.

The VR Mirage

The experience of Astro Bot Rescue Mission on PSVR was mind-blowing. It felt like a rollercoaster with the constant shift of perspectives and dizzying drops. Looking over cliffs and ducking underneath obstacles had the world wrapping around you. It wouldn't be accurate to say that the PS5 version is entirely devoid of VR elements, but it certainly doesn't have them as the main focus. However, Astro's DNA is present when he incorporates those numerous impossible angles alongside collapsible, interactive foregrounds and backgrounds.

It's the same rush as Ace Combat's VR missions or Star Wars Battlefront's X-wing trials—pure, unfiltered spectacle. No exposition, no grinding. Just wonder.

Why this, why now?

Astro Bot is an antidote. In a world where busy open world and endless service content is taking the game industry lightly, Astro Bot reminds us that it's okay to be light-hearted, and fills the need nowhere else does; It is a toy box. While boasting an endless number of features, It's an indicator reminding us that the best games create moments where players are left laughing while grinning like an idiot.