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Astro Bot Hands-On Preview – Surprise And Delight

Astro's biggest adventure yet!

Astro’s Playroom remains my favourite next-gen feeling experience to date, taking advantage of all of the DualSense features and bringing together over 25 years of PlayStation history, so I was extremely eager to see how Astro Bot, a fully-fledged standalone game would expand and improve on the experience.

Unlike Astro’s Playroom which was laid out in parts, Astro Bot is structured much more like a traditional platformer, split into worlds and levels that see Astro trying to build his PS5 mothership, and get back all of the parts that have been lost.

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I got to experience three levels and two challenge levels from the game that were clearly laid out to show off a number of the game’s gadgets as well how things differ from Playroom.

Each level starts with Astro gliding into the stage on his little DualSense ship, with this being a moment to take advantage of the gyroscope functionality of the controller. For anyone that played Playroom, the core gameplay will feel extremely familiar with Astro having a one-hit death in general levels  but there’s a few key differences.

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The first is that whilst there’s still 300 bots to collect from PlayStation’s history, they’ve now been grouped by games into level, so for instance in the first level I was collecting Ratchet & Rivet, whilst the second was based on Parappa the Rappa characters, and challenge levels were based on rescuing Jak and The Traveller from Journey. There’s also puzzle pieces to collect in each level although how they’ll tie into the game wasn’t immediately clear.

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The second major change is through the introduction of new power-ups which you unlock at a certain point in each level. These feel like Mario Odyssey in the sense that they’re introduced for moments to change up the gameplay and help you solve particular puzzles within the level.

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The three that I got to experience was a balloon power-up that allowed Astro to get to higher areas, the second was the Dog rocket that was featured in the trailer which was used to get to further away ledges and take down certain enemies, and the last was extendable boxing gloves that allowed me to traverse and grab things from afar.

Whilst this was a quick demo and clearly designed to show off a range of these gadgets, I’m excited to see how they evolve and are used together among the 80 levels, my hope is that you’ll be needed to backtrack and use them to access earlier parts of the levels that were previously locked off in order to find bots and puzzle pieces.

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Again, this only was a few levels, but it’s clear that there’s a lot more personality in the levels as well, with them feeling a lot more expansive and ever changing with a lot more hidden areas as you make your way through. One of the levels in particular was a construction zone with a lot of moving parts, and it felt super dynamic and visually stunning.

Outside of the core levels, there’s a boss battle at the end of each world. The one that I got to experience was the octopus level from the trailer. This took part across three waves that felt like a traditional boss battle in the sense that it kept upping the anti, but the final wave really impressed me as it cleverly transformed the stage into a platforming component.

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There’s also a number of challenge levels that are based on the PlayStation symbols. These are smaller levels that have you getting from point A to point B and are super tough to complete. These riff on another gadget or component from the game, such as a slowdown mechanic that was used to get past the next wave of enemies as quickly as possible. One of the challenge levels that I got experience was already present in the level select screen, whilst the other dynamically appeared as a little shooting star that I had to chase down in my DualSense speeder.

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Probably the most interesting part of the demo was how it ends, and I suspect will have a bigger part in how the game ends up, with Kratos and Atreus giving the boss the final blow, and then appearing on the level map as their own icon, implying that you’re able to visit them. The thing I loved about Astro’s Playroom was that sense of mystery and not knowing what was coming next, and that’s exactly how I felt during my hands-on session and walking away from it.

Astro Bot releases exclusively on PS5 on September 6th, 2024.