Astro Bot Review – A Perfectly Crafted 90s Platformer

Astro Robot has a long history of showcasing the best of what's new for PlayStation. Whether it's being stuck in a Dualshock 4 in The games room or letting you see the best of Dual Sense, Astro Bot was there. Now, in its own full-length adventure, does Astro Bot's fun, frenetic platforming and nostalgic antics still hold up?

Join Astro and 300 other Astro Bots as they travel the stars in their PlayStation 5-themed spaceship. It's not long before this joyous journey is interrupted by an alien who steals the PS5 of its major components, forcing the spaceship to crash, sending all but one of the Astro Bots flying across multiple galaxies.

Great Astro Robot Galaxy

Astro Robot is a 3D platformer that draws heavily on the type of '90s titles that made the PlayStation the powerhouse it became.

You'll start your adventure on a sandy planet with your wrecked spaceship and must head to the stars. Visit galaxies filled with full and small levels to save your missing comrades. Most of them are just generic Astro Bots, while others feature popular franchises, both first and third party.

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

Like a treasure hunt, you will dive into these different worlds to fight strange robotic enemies and save the Astro Bots. You will be rewarded no matter what by searching every corner of the world.

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

I have a deep love for classic PlayStation platformers, Spyro and Crash among the best, so I loved how each level Astro Robot is filled with colorful scenery and creatures. As a fan of collectibles, I also appreciated how the game allows you to 100% complete each level on the first try.

Astro Robot does a fantastic job of guiding players to missing collectibles, without spoiling the fun of exploration. If a level has seven Astro Bots and you collect the first two, and then suddenly have the fourth, you know that somewhere after the second and wherever you currently are in the level, there is another Astro Bot that needs your help.

This is a fantastic way to keep players interested in searching for secrets without requiring them to leave the game or receive explicit instructions on where to go.

Each level is relatively short, taking about 10 minutes to complete. This makes the game easy to pick up and put down, but will also make you think “just one more level”.

Some of the smaller levels, especially those tied to the PlayStation controller's four buttons, offer a real challenge for fans of fast-paced platforming. You'll have to time ice falls, swing through obstacles and enemies to complete them.

Playing platformers with Astro Bot is pure fun. In its base form, you can run as Astro Bot, jump, hover/glide with foot lasers, and throw a punch. Several levels add new abilities to Astro Bot's moves in fun and interesting ways.

The monkey gives you two arms to reach switches and climbing frames, the bulldog propels you horizontally allowing you to reach new places, and the chicken propels you vertically.

Astro Robot It was and still is the best Dual Sense game

Each of Astro Bot's additional movesets utilize the Dual Sense controller's haptic triggers, and some, like the monkey arms while climbing, even require you to twist the Dual Sense left and right to shift Astro Bot's weight.

Aside from the power-ups, you'll also be using your Dual Sense's motion controls to play with the controller as you collect new Astro Bots and as you fly through the air on your way to levels.

In general, I'm not a fan of the additional features of Dual Sense, mostly feeling like they're thrown into a game for the sake of having them and not for any real benefit to the game. Many implementations of “Dual Sense for the sake of Dual Sense” feel like watching a movie and seeing a character's hand reach out to the screen as a “3D audience” feature.

In Astro Robot Including so many Dual Sense features makes perfect sense given 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 history

While Astro Bot's Playroom was a love letter to first-party franchises and PlayStation hardware over the years Astro Robot is a love letter to all things PlayStation. You'll see appearances and references to current franchises like God of War Ragnarokretro titles like Parappa the rapperas well as multi-platform titles featuring characters from Resident Evil, Street Fighter, and many more are appearing.

After each Galaxy boss fight, there are even special franchise-specific themed stages where you not only experience a game's environment, but introduce new mechanics that allow Astro to truly run a mile as another character.

The game knows how much it's tapping 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 various Astro Bots from around the world, it's on the hub world that you can really enjoy the nostalgia. Each game-themed Astro Bot has its own place in the hub world, normally grouped with characters from the same game. Using the Gatcha mechanic, you can also get different accessories for them.

Seeing Jax stand up is one thing, but you need to make sure you unlock a mechanical Daxter for him as well.

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 references like Spyro the Dragon or a retro robot dog toy. While it’s fun to see so many Astro Bots working together, it sometimes took them an unnecessarily long time to assemble. I know 120 Astro Bots working together is a lot, but if I could call them all at once, I wouldn’t wait for Astro Bot Atreus to catch up to me to finish the job.

Astro Robot Review | Final Thoughts

Astro Robot has managed to perfectly recreate what made 90s platformers so special. The fun, whimsical worlds are fun to explore, they never overstay their welcome, and the player's desire to hunt down secrets is rewarded in spades.

While it may seem like a simple idea, to recreate classic platformers in this way, it really shows why 3D Mario The games never lost their popularity, while other 3D platformer series went awry by trying to add too many features.

THE Astro Robot The players who will really get the most out of this game will be those who have been on PlayStation since its inception. Those who will see an Astro Bot based on IQ: Intelligent Qube and have flashbacks to a strange gaming experience on a demo disc they haven't thought about in 25 years. It's a comforting trip down memory lane.

Astro Bot was tested on PS5 with a publisher-provided copy over the course of approximately 14 hours of gameplay – all screenshots were taken during the testing process.