Astro Bot Spiel

by Rian

If current generation consoles didn’t have that kicker exclusive, now we have one; and it’s called Astro Bot, and it’s on PS5. The game takes advantage of all the features introduced with the new controller and the console, most notably haptic feedback and seamless loading. It’s quite literally so good it should be illegal to be a first party game.

Now we got the pleasantries out of the way, let’s talk about what Astro Bot couldn’t get it right. I’ve briefly touched on the subject on the How To post, but simply adding an another axis doesn’t make it a 3D platformer. The camera in game defaults back to bird eye view if the player doesn’t move the camera. This behavior works most of the time, but when you are jumping over an electric fence for example, when the depth of the obstacle is as confusing as the height of the same obstacle, you will be shaking in frustration as camera can’t provide enough context for either the depth nor the height. And the level design rehashes the elements to keep the theme going for the area, so repeated frustration is guaranteed.

This curved ball of camera perspective affects the projectile behaviors the hardest, as they seem not consistent as you approach near the enemy itself. In some levels, shooting pumpkins and slimes often hit Astro when they are not quite angling for Astro’s hovering height, let alone the location 2D plane. This could easily be a trick of an eye from the camera angle, but my answer to the pumpkins and slimes was to simply avoid them until I have a proper window of opportunity.

Overly dense elements in levels, more than usual 3D platformer in my opinion, doesn’t compensate the shortcoming either. Take projectiles, for example. Avoiding projectiles is just another standard maneuver in platformer genre, but it’s quite impossible in Astro Bot as they are often fired from multiple enemies with difficult terrain or timer-ridden environment. From the YouTube video I’ve uploaded for the How To post, you can see where the transition (0:14) from one element to another acts as a chokepoint, regardless of intention. There are at least three timers running, the duck, the lava floor, and the rotating flamethrower, and then there’s a missile toad that will overwhelm the area.

Conclusions: Sony’s Odyssey Moment

Again, don’t be disheartened by some of the weird quirks the game has. I’ve seen some weird glitches, but none of them affected the gameplay longer than a few minutes, as the level or save point is frequent enough. Astro Bot looks casual on the surface, but it creates a gallery of old memories for players who have lived through all those IPs, all those gaming conventions that either stuck around or went away, and the new and latest features and conventions that should have been made more common since the release of the current generation consoles. As much as I enjoyed the game and will recommend openly, it makes me wonder what would it take for second-party or third-party to develop a game that envelops what’s given with the care and attention Astro Bot has given.