Astro Bot
This simple platformer warmly captures the grandeur of how the medium of videogames has evolved.
First Released: September 6, 2024
Platforms: PS5
It’s awkward sitting down to write a review of a game like Astro Bot because what more needs to be said? Not only did this game win game of the year at both the media-centric The Game Awards and the industry-centric DICE Awards, but it received such intense adulation from critics that its metacritic categorization of “universal acclaim" feels like an understatement. This is a game that has been described as “perfect” or “near-perfect” by at least seven different reviews. With praise like that, offering a new take means either saying something radically unoriginal or sounding like an unfounded contrarian grasping for attention.
And yet, that’s also what makes this game such a great candidate for the approach I want to take with this project. As I explained in my introductory essay, my goal here is to explore what kinds of responses videogames generate and how those responses create meaning. The question I’m trying to answer is less “is this game good?” and more “what does it mean for a game to be good?” And where better to start that journey than the latest game that people believe to be perfect?
So: What response did Astro Bot provoke in me? The phrase that comes to mind is “pleasant surprise” — not as a reference to the quality of the game but as a reflection of the game’s content. Structurally, Astro Bot is extremely uncomplicated; this is a very straightforward platforming game with mechanics so simple they only require the use of three buttons on your controller. But this simple foundation is merely a stage for a series of unexpected moments that provoke a mild, pleasant sense of awe. Astro Bot is, in many ways, a parade of subtle, grin-inducing surprises.
Exhibit A is the game’s visuals. Bold colors and adorable characters certainly serve as eye candy, but the really arresting visuals appear when the game loads the screen with hundreds of tiny objects that your character wades through, crashes into, or generally scatters. A pyramid of beach balls collapses and bounces down a water slide. A crate of acorns bursts open and gets tossed across the ground. A cave gets filled with tiny gems you must wade through. This technological flexing is a common sight in videogames, but in this context it manages to feel magical.
I imagine that many of us assumed that we would never again see a videogame that could impress us graphically now that modern consoles and PCs can more or less achieve photorealism, but watching your character scatter a mountain of objects in a way that feels organic brought back a small echo of the feeling I got the first time I manipulated the screen of an iPhone or watched television in High Definition—it brought back the exhilaration of experiencing a technological breakthrough for the first time. Add on to this the novelty of engaging with the little gimmicks that utilize the PS5’s DualSense controller (especially feeling for a hidden panel using the controller’s vibration) and you get a sensation long thought extinct: the feeling that you’re playing a game from the future.
Once the shine of the game’s technological prowess wears off, the gameplay starts surprising with one of the oldest tricks in the game design book: secrets. About half of Astro Bot’s total content is concealed when you start playing. What looks at first to be a 40-some level game ultimately ends up being over 80 levels once you start finding all the levels that are unlocked by finding hidden areas or discovered by interacting with the level selection screen in a surprising way. And that’s just the actual levels. Collecting hidden puzzle pieces unlocks new cosmetic options and simply wandering off the beaten path in most levels reveals little visual gags.
These secrets are all hidden at just the right level to serve as a surprise: they’re not so obvious as to be immediately apparent, but they’re not so tucked away as to never be found. They all stick out just enough to entice you, like a rose in a vast field of daisies. And then, when you pull the rose, the game rewards you instantly with pleasing lights and sounds and more videogame.
But the most talked about and perhaps the most pleasant surprise in Astro Bot are the cameos. As you are making your way through the game’s levels you must “rescue” a series of bots found along your path. While most of these bots are simple carbon copies of the main character, some are dressed as characters from other PlayStation franchises. There’s bots for Joel and Ellie from The Last of Us. There’s a Spider-Man bot and a Spider-Man: Miles Morales bot. There are bots for games ranging from Buzz! The Mega Quiz to Bloodborne. If you have a favorite PlayStation game, there’s probably a character from that game who’s been bot-ified in this game. Though you know you will encounter these characters, you never know who you’ll encounter, making the feeling of finding one of these bots land somewhere between the warmth of bumping into an old friend at the grocery store and the satisfaction of understanding an inside joke.
These characters are an extension of the entire game’s PlayStation aesthetic. The literal story of this game is that you are reassembling a PS5 that’s been scattered across space by a rogue alien, but the more metaphorical implication (one that’s made a bit more explicit in the end) is that you are reassembling PlayStation’s history. I’ve heard from a few critics that these in-your-face metatextual references make the game feel like an advertisement, but I don’t get that vibe. To me, it feels less persuasive and more celebratory — less commercial break and more montage at an awards show. And despite some of the more heavy handed references, the focus of that celebration feels less PlayStation-specific and more general to the medium of videogames as a whole. On a deeper level, this experience doesn’t feel like a celebration of Sony's IP, it feels like a celebration of the central element at the center of every videogame: interactivity.
That notion is reinforced by a few special levels where this game briefly transforms into a facsimile of a different game. For one level Astro Bot turns into Ape Escape because you are given a net that traps monkey bots. In another level Astro Bot becomes Uncharted because you get a toy gun that can shoot enemies. These levels create the impression that the mechanics these other games are built around are an extension of the mechanics of the game you’re playing. It’s as if Astro Bot is demonstrating how its platformer mechanics are the foundational experience of all videogames, the baseline from which all other videogames emerged.
As a history lesson, this idea is incomplete. But as a way of celebrating how videogames have evolved and morphed it’s…well, a pleasant surprise. And, when combined with the game’s awe-inspiring technological flexing and hidden elements (two core things that inspire a love of videogames), it’s an idea that imbues the player with a warm, blissful appreciation of videogames as a whole. Put it all together and this is a game that captures and reflects what people love about videogames.
In some ways, that disappoints me. I see this relentlessly cute and saccharine portrayal and I see a vision of videogames that I want the world to move on from. I see the context stripped away from these characters in a way that reinforces the naggingly persistent stereotype that all videogames are the same kind of mindless, meaningless fun. I see the Joel and Ellie bots waving up at me from the inside of a literal PS5 controller, and I can think of nothing farther from the experience of playing The Last of Us.
But, in the end, this is not the idea that it feels like Astro Bot is communicating. As I look out at the game’s little hub world, dotted with hundreds of different characters from dozens of different games, Astro Bot seems to be looking me right in the eye and saying “isn’t it amazing that over the last 30 years videogames have blossomed into all these different interactive experiences?” And I can’t help but smile at the profound truth of that radically simplistic statement and nod and—maybe even with a little tear in the corner of my eye—say “yeah, it really is amazing, isn’t it?”
I suppose if I had to put a word to that feeling, “perfect” would be pretty close.