These aren't going to be my full thoughts, I'm mostly posting this because I don't see a thread on Astro Bot, which is surprising given the amount of praise the game is garnering and how squarely it hits the Giant Bomb demographic.
I'm a huge fan of 3D platformers and Astro Bot was one of my most anticipated games of the year. I think Astro's Playroom is a true masterpiece, a rare game that makes almost no missteps, and I was hoping Astro Bot would be a similarly magical experience. It wasn't, at least for me. I really enjoyed the game and I'd rate it something like an 8.5 or maybe a 9 out of 10, so I don't regret buying it on launch or semi binging it, but for me it was just a well-made 3D platformer, not something amazing. Given how high the metacritic is and how much praise I've seen for it I'm a little bit alone in this and I wanted to tease out why I had that slightly muted reaction.
Part of it is that I made the mistake of playing Astro Bot Rescue Mission in the days leading up to Astro Bot's release (I was hyped), and while I enjoyed that game (and want to write about it too) it was probably too much Astro Bot. He's a simple character with a simple move set, and a lot of the ideas in Astro Bot come out of that VR game so they didn't feel as fresh as they would have if I hadn't played it, or had played it 6 years ago.
Part of it just that Astro Bot is a much longer game than Playroom, and so it can't be quite as tight. Playroom has almost no filler, while Astro Bot definitely has levels that drag a little bit, and even some levels that I'd argue are kind of just there to fill out the game. The same can be said for the bots that you rescue. A lot was made about the cameos in the game, and there are a ton of them, but there are also a lot of generic bots that just feel unexciting compared to the fun of finding a favorite character or an obscure reference you haven't thought of in decades.
They also massively de-emphasized the vehicle sections. I really liked the creativity of Astro's Playroom interspersing different modes of play with the main levels. Astro Bot doesn't do that. There are powerups that change your move set to some degree (though they aren't super creative; you get both a vertical rocket and a horizontal rocket, for example) but with only a couple exceptions you're always just Astro, on foot, with a very small moveset doing your thing. The final level of each world makes more significant changes, and these are a ton of fun, but only one of them makes the game feel truly different from the rest of the time. That one is great, and is a little bit of a deep cut, even though the series does have games available on PS4/5.
But I also think there's an element of, I don't know if hypocrisy is the exact word I'm looking for but it's close, in Astro Bot. Jeff Gerstmann talked about this in his video on the game, where it's a celebration of PlayStation's rich history and amazing library at a time when a lot of that stuff has been jettisoned and left by the wayside. Celebrating Ape Escape is fantastic, but fans have wanted a new Ape Escape game for decades now and we can't even get a remaster of Ape Escape 3 (I know there are some licensing issues but they shouldn't be insurmountable.) There's a whole section of the home base devoted to WipeOut and, yeah, WipeOut Omega is around so that's good, but the problem isn't so much that old series have been dropped as that there's nothing similar to replace them. Sony used to have such a wide ranging and creative catalog with so many different tones and genres and ideas, and now it's pretty much all 3D cinematic third person action like Dad of War/Last of Us/Horizon/Tsushima/Spider-Man, and Live Service Future War. I like the 3D cinematic action games but Astro Bot made me remember how much I miss games like Jak & Daxter or Sly Cooper and just the attitude towards gaming that came with them.
Astro himself is a nothing character. He's literally just a manikin you put costumes on to remind you of other characters you used to like. And while you definitely don't need some great character for a 3D platformer, the fact that Sony has chosen him to be in their very rare 3D platformer says a lot about their thinking. The last 3D platformer they put out starred Sackboy, who is basically the same thing, except a little weirder. Astro is just Sackboy with all the hand-crafted elements removed and replaced by soulless robot, even though they try to make him cheerful and charming. And Sackboy was already a non-entity of a character.
For Astro's Playroom this didn't matter to me because it was a tech demo. Astro was just there to show off the controller and praise the system. But now he's in a $60 adventure and it's about fixing a broken PS5 and he's still just a soulless corporate robot meant to showcase other "IP" that Sony doesn't care about and...it all rubs me the wrong way a little bit.
All that is not to say that I hate Astro (he's fine, just doesn't bring much to the table) or that that's my main issue with the game (as I said, there are some mediocre levels, some parts where I got stuck because of hard to read visuals etc... other minor flaws.) And I really liked the game. It will almost certainly be in my top 5 of the year. But it also feels a little bit disposable. And I think it speaks to a deeper philosophy about gaming, and especially gaming outside those prestige titles, that I really don't like.
So while everyone else is praising Astro Bot to high heavens I can't help but feel a little left out. And more than any specific issues with the game itself, it makes me uneasy about what the next five years of PlayStation are going to be like. I'll get my Dad of War and Spider-Man, and I'll like them, and there will be another Ratchet & Clank game someday, which is cool, but we're a long way from Vib-Ribbon and Patapon and I don't think those days are coming back.
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