Everyone with a PlayStation 5 has received the Astro’s Playroom game. That extensive tech demo of the possibilities of the PS5 already left me wanting more, and Astro Bot certainly offers more.
Astro Bot often feels like a game from a parallel universe. Because where our games industry is now in a spiral of increasingly expensive games with enormous, often rather gray game worlds and online possibilities – this is the kind of colorful platform fun that reigned supreme on systems such as the Nintendo 64 and GameCube, but also on the PlayStation 2.
After the enormous success of Super Mario 64, 3D platform games were once the crown jewel of every gaming console. PlayStation tried to outdo Nintendo for years with then a Jak and Daxter, then a Sly Cooper, then a Ratchet & Clank. Successful in itself, but the studios behind those cheerful action platformers have matured and now make The Last of Us, Ghost of Tsushima and Spider-Man. And fortunately Insomniac still makes a Ratchet & Clank every now and then, but for a pure, colorful and nice and large 3D platformer you really had to turn to Nintendo.
Astro Bot, in turn, feels like a game from a universe where the flow of 3D platformers has never stopped. Or perhaps as a game from a universe in which Nintendo does use the latest hardware. Because to anticipate the conclusion: Astro Bot plays like a mix of the best Nintendo platformers, but with 4K graphics that really pop off the screen.
The existing wheel already runs fine
Astro Bot knows how to do just enough new things with all the known ingredients of a 3D platformer. Here too you jump from level to level, where you can choose the order of the levels yourself, but ultimately they do have a beginning and an end. There is well-known variation: a desert world, a lava level, a jungle with a temple, pirates, a haunted castle and so on.
Even more than in Astro’s Playroom, you can move through those levels in all kinds of ways. Running and jumping, but also flying with liquid, like in Super Mario Sunshine. In any case, Astro Bot borrows a lot from Nintendo’s famous plumber – although that rarely bothers. The wheel does not have to be reinvented every time to deliver a fun game, as Astro Bot proves.
The ‘objective’ of the game is to collect all kinds of robots dressed as well-known PlayStation characters, from Nathan Drake and Aloy to Kratos and the Ape Escape monkey. Then you can move on to the next levels, sometimes you get bonus worlds with special powers and you keep moving forward. But like any platform game, the fun is just playing the levels. It goes back to the essence of a game: a group of developers has created a puzzle for you, a challenge and you have to get past it. And if it works, if you understand what they want you to do or if you are agile enough, then that’s wonderful.
Still a PS5 blast this year
Astro Bot is more, much more of what made Astro’s Playroom so much fun. It plays like a charm and it looks great, and it’s finally something different. To get back to that feeling of a parallel universe: Astro Bot is so much fun that it makes you both happy and sad. Happy because this is a very fun game, sad because a game like this doesn’t appear every year.
In all its simplicity, Astro Bot is the gaming surprise of the year. For a while it seemed as if the PlayStation 5 would not have a big bang this year after hits like God of War: Ragnarök and Spider-Man. Astro Bot can easily carry that title of ‘PS5 autumn stunner’, and in retrospect it’s strange that I ever doubted that. As if that honor can only be given to an ‘adult’ game full of action and violence: not so. Astro Bot is a party you really shouldn’t miss.
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Source: www.bright.nl
