Astro Bot Review - A 90s Platformer Done Perfectly

Astro Bot has had a long history of showing off the best of what's new for the PlayStation. Whether it was being stuck inside a Dualshock 4 in The Playroom or letting you see the best the Dual Sense has to offer, Astro Bot was there. Now, in their own full-length adventure, does the fun and frantic platforming and nostalgia-driven antics of Astro Bot continue to hold up?

Join Astro and 300 other Astro Bots as they chart across the stars in their PlayStation 5-themed spaceship. It's not long before this merry voyage is interrupted by an alien who robs the PS5 of its major components forcing the spaceship to crashland flinging all but one Astro Bot out across a number of galaxies.

Super Astro Bot Galaxy

Astro Bot is a 3D Platformer that takes heavy inspiration from the kind of 90s titles that made PlayStation the powerhouse it became.

Starting on a sandy hub planet with your wreck of a spaceship you'll need to set off to the stars. Visit galaxies filled with full and bite-sized levels to rescue your missing comrades. Many of these are just generic Astro Bots while many highlight popular franchises, first and third party.

Each level also has a secondary objective, puzzle pieces that open up new features in the hub world, and some levels have secret exits that lead you to bonus levels in a Lost Galaxy.

Like a scavenger hunt, you'll drop into these different worlds fighting off the strange robotic enemies and rescuing the Astro Bots. You'll be rewarded no matter what as you search every nook and cranny of the world.

Even if you don't find an Astro Bot or Puzzle Piece you'll obtain coins that can be spent to give your PlayStation-themed Astro Bots iconic props, or they can be spent making the collectibles you're missing easier to locate.

I've got a deep love for the classic PlayStation platformers, Spyro and Crash among the top, so I loved how each level in Astro Bot is filled with colorful settings and creatures. As a fan of collectibles, I also appreciated how the game allows you to 100% complete each level on your first try. 

Astro Bot does a fantastic job leading players to missing collectibles, without taking the fun out of exploration. If a level has seven Astro Bots and you pick up the first two and then suddenly have the fourth one then you know that somewhere after the second one and where you currently are in the level is another Astro Bot needing your help.

This is a fantastic way to continue to prompt players to hunt around for secrets without them needing to leave the game or be given explicit instructions about where to go.

Each level is relatively short to get through, taking 10 or so minutes. This makes the game easy to pick up and put down, but will also keep you saying to yourself 'just one more level.'

Some of the smaller levels, especially those tied to the four face buttons of the PlayStation controller, offer some real challenge to fans of fast-paced platforming. You'll need to time together falling ice paths, swinging through hazards, and enemies out to get you to make it through.

Platforming as Astro Bot is an absolute joy. In his base form, you're able to run around as Astro Bot, jump, hover/glide with foot lasers, and throw a punch. Multiple levels add new abilities to Astro Bot's move set in fun and interesting ways.

The Monkey gives you two arms to reach for switches and climbing frames, the bulldog rockets you horizontally allowing you to reach new places, and the Chicken blasts you vertically.

Astro Bot Was And Is Once Again The Best Dual Sense Game

Each of the additional move sets in Astro Bot uses the haptic triggers of the Dual Sense controller, and some like the Monkey arms while climbing even have you turning the Dual Sense left and right to shift Astro Bot's weight.

Outside of the power-ups, you'll also be using your Dual Sense's motion controls to play with the controller when collecting new Astro Bots and when flying through the air on your way to levels.

I'm normally not a fan of the Dual Sense's additional features, mostly feeling like they're thrown into a game for the sake of having them and not for any actual benefit to the game. Many implementations of 'Dual Sense for the sake of Dual Sense' give me the same feeling as when I watch a movie and see a character's hand reach towards the screen as a 'for 3D audiences' bit.

In Astro Bot including so many Dual Sense features makes sense through both Astro Bot's history of being used as a 'tech demo' and how little of a fourth wall the game has.

A Love Letter To PlayStation's History

While Astro Bot's PlayRoom was a love letter to first-party franchises and PlayStation hardware throughout the years Astro Bot is a love letter to all PlayStation games. You'll be seeing cameo appearances and references to current franchises like God of War Ragnarok, retro titles like Parappa The Rapper, as well as multi-platform titles with characters from Resident Evil, Street Fighter, and way way more making their appearance.

After each Galaxy's boss fight, there are even special themed stages to a single franchise where you don't just get to experience the environment of a game, but new mechanics are introduced that allow Astro to really run a mile in another character's shoes.

The game knows how much it's dipping into the well of nostalgia, but it does it so well that it's hard not to smile at every reference you come across.

After collecting the different Astro Bots from around the world it's on the hub-world where you'll get to really cash in on the nostalgia. Each game-themed Astro Bot has its own place in the hub world, normally grouped up with characters from the same game. Using the Gatcha mechanic you can also obtain different props for them.

Seeing Jax standing around is one thing, but you've got to make sure you unlock a mechanical Daxter for him too.

It's in the hub-world that you can also work together with your unlocked Astro Bots to reach new areas and open special eggs, filled with non-Astro Bot shaped references like Spyro the Dragon or a retro robot dog toy. While it was fun to see so many Astro Bots working together it did sometimes take an unnecessarily long amount of time for them to assemble. I know that 120 Astro Bots working together is a lot, but if I was able to call all of them at once I wouldn't be waiting for Astro Bot Atreus to catch up to complete the work.

Astro Bot Review | Final Thoughts

Astro Bot has managed to perfectly recreate what made 90s platformers so special. Fun and whimsical worlds are enjoyable to explore while they never overstay their welcome and a player's desire to hunt down secrets is rewarded in spades.

While it seems like a simple idea, to recreate classic platformers in this way, it really goes to show why 3D Mario games have never faded from popularity, while other 3D platforming series have gone awry while trying to add too many features.

The Astro Bot players who will truly get everything out of this game will be those who have been with PlayStation since its beginning. Those who will see an Astro Bot based on I.Q: Intelligent Qube and have flashbacks to a strange game experience on a demo disc they haven't thought about in 25 years. It's a heartwarming trip down memory lane.

Astro Bot was reviewed on PS5 with a copy provided by the publisher over the course of around 14 hours of gameplay - all screenshots were taken during the process of review.