Astro Bot: Hands on Review

There's a market for a damn good family-led platform game.

The artform's been largely ignored across AAA titles for a fair while, with hardcore gamers and more story-led releases coming to the fore.

For every Elden Tree currently, there's a Dave the Diver - but for those looking for spiritual cousins to the likes of Ape Escape, Crash Bandicoot or Sonic, there's been less fare recently. (Or certainly, it feels that way.)

Step forward Astro Bot.

A G-rated family friendly game which is due to blast off in September, Astro Bot is the sequel to Astro's Playroom, the Team Asobi title which came pre-installed on the PS5 when it first released.

This upcoming title pulls together the very best of platform games and offers a family-led title that will thrill as well as challenge.

With a simple story that is, at its heart, a collecting game (Astro's mothership has been wrecked, bots have been scattered around the galaxies), Astro Bot will take in 50 planets and some 80 levels according to the PR from the recent demo.

Making strong use of the haptics and deeply mining PlayStation's history as it approaches 30 years, Astro Bot's full length outing offers plenty of skill level challenges as varying degrees of difficulty are deployed.

The demo offered up five worlds, which ranged from extremely easy to mind-numbingly hard platforming destined to see people passing around a controller to others nearby. 

While a lack of local co-op play is a bit of a disappointment, this is purely a one player game that expands on the basics and brilliance of Astro's Playroom, with a game  that will challenge both seasoned and novice-level players.

From flying on a Dualsense controller that buzzes in your hands to feeling and hearing the cracking of ice through the controller's sound system, this is a game that's embraced both the haptics and the possibilities of what can be done. 

Sure, you can argue that it has built on what was on offer in Astro's Playroom when it comes to sound and vision, but with such solid basics, it feels like a natural progression rather than a shoe-horned approach.

But the expanded game is not beyond adding in new tricks to make occasionally short levels more enjoyable and replayable

From the ability to inflate via the controller's triggers to a dog who sits on your back and can send you zooming through solid but breakable walls, the game is about making it fun to muck about in the environments while collecting the AWOL bots. There is also a magnet to help suck up metal during a construction-themed level, hidden levels within the levels that contain bots - there's no lack of gimmicks for this game.

While these add-ons are great fun, what's not fully clear is whether the game will see you transfer them from level to level, or from planet to planet. From the demo, it was a case of them being locked into one level and no further - but whether that changes remains to be seen.

A boss-level fight saw Astro being guided as he took on an octopus, similar to a big boss from Astro's Playroom, with the L2 and R2 triggers being transformed into both suction cups and catapults as well as boxing gloves to pummel the slimy creature into submission. Quick-fire use of L2 and R2 here made it seem like Astro was in a boxing ring, dishing out worlds of pain to a contender as he slapped the octopus into oblivion.

Some levels, like the boss fights, limit the number of lives you have -a  sign that the difficulty levels can spike, and it's not all just jaunting around having fun.

(As a side note, it's worth mentioning this is a family game that doesn't go for "kills" - slapping enemies about and dispatching them is more about ACME levels of cartoonery than anything too serious.)

What is clear about Astro Bot is just how tactile the game is, how easy it is to experience things like running through grass, skating on glass-thin ice or swimming thanks to the DualSense Controller and its haptics.

It's easy to see why Astro Bot will capture a family audience. While it's a disappointment that it is one player only and you can't co-op locally (the idea for parent-child interplay is too delightful to resist), the option to simply hand on the controller to a sofa-bound kid or friend is too tempting to resist.

Complete with PlayStation-themed Bots to collect, there's a feeling of nostalgia throughout Astro Bot. It collects together the ethos of a Mario Bros game and the ideas of an Ape Escape - but while parts of it appear to look back to the past, thanks to Team Asobi, Astro Bot's future is clear - it will be a family-themed smash hit, too cute to ignore and too damn playable to put down.

Astro Bot releases exclusively on the PlayStation 5 on September 6.