The Astro Bot IP has garnered a sizeable fanbase in recent years with some legitimately excellent (and equally beloved) outings, but it’s fair to say that up to this point, the series hasn’t really been allowed to fully unfurl its wings. Astro Bot Rescue Mission was an excellent game, but it was a PlayStation VR exclusive, and similarly, Astro’s Playroom was an absolute blast, though ultimately, it was little more than a free pack-in tech demo. Soon, however, the series will be getting its first full-fledged console game.
Sony and developer Team Asobi recently unveiled Astro Bot, showcasing a gorgeous, vibrant, and packed reveal trailer at a State of Play presentation, and the game, which is due out in September, has instantly become one of the year’s most highly anticipated games for a great many PS5 owners. We, too, are more than a little excited to get our hands on the game, so here, we’re going to go over a few key details that you should know about it.
SETUP
Astro games, much like any platformer, are never too focused on the narrative side of things, but what can we expect from the upcoming PS5 instalment’s core setup? Astro Bot will task the titular protagonist with going up against his nemesis on a journey that will take him to over 50 planets across a vast galaxy, with his mission being to rescue and reassemble his crew, and to rebuild the PS5 mothership- which, you guessed it, is a literal PS5-shaped spaceship.
ASTRO’S BIGGEST ADVENTURE
The couple of times Astro has been the star of his own game, the games in question have been pretty short, with Astro’s Playroom being about 3-4 hours long at best, and Astro Bot Rescue Mission being slightly longer at 7-8 hours in length. The upcoming Astro Bot, however, is being billed as a much larger experience. The game’s been described as Astro’s biggest adventure yet, a sentiment that Team Asobi studio head Nicolas Doucet also echoed in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, where he called Astro Bot “a really, really big game” and the biggest game made by the studio to date.
LEVELS
So what exactly can we expect from Astro Bot in terms of how many levels it will have on offer, especially given all the talk of how big the game is going to be? As per Team Asobi, Astro Bot will see players exploring six different galaxies, across which you’ll visit over 80 unique levels. And as you’d expect from a 3D platformer of this nature, those levels will also sport plenty of environmental diversity, including beaches, forests, deserts, volcanoes, and more. Other, more high-flying levels will also show up from time to time, from a level set inside of a giant hourglass to one on the canopy of a singing tree to one on a casino-themed planet.
ABILITIES
As Astro is making his way through his planet-hopping adventure, he will also be making use of a variety of different abilities. In fact, it seems diversity is something that Team Asobi seems to be emphasizing quite a bit, when it comes to Astro’s moveset. Plenty of the moves and skills at Astro’s disposal will obviously be familiar to fans of Astro Bot Rescue Mission and Astro’s Playroom, from his punches to his ability to hover. On top of that, plenty of new abilities will also be introduced. In fact, Astro Bot will feature over 15 new abilities.
NEW ABILITIES
We’ll have to wait until September to know what the entirety of Astro’s arsenal of new abilities is going to look like, but a number of them have already been revealed by Team Asobi. One that we saw in the reveal trailer is Giant Sponge, which, as its name suggests, turns Astro into a sponge that can grow increasingly large by soaking up larger and larger quantities of water, in turn letting you wreak havoc in your surroundings. There are also the Twin-Frog Gloves, which not only let Astro swing off of poles, but also unleash long range punches in combat, while the Bulldog Booster lets you use air dashes that can smash through metal, glass, and even enemies. Oh, and speaking of enemies…
ENEMIES
Another area where it looks like variety is going to be the name of the game for Astro Bot is its roster of enemies. According to Team Asobi, in total, the game will feature over 70 new types of enemies. We’ve already seen a fair few of these in the game’s reveal trailer, with different foes sporting wildly different designs and movesets even in what little we’ve seen of the game so far. And, of course, this also includes a number of bosses- which brings us to the next thing we want to talk about.
BOSSES AND CHALLENGES
You can’t have a full 3D platforming experience without also taking on a roster of bosses, and sure enough, Astro Bot will have plenty of those on offer as well. Team Asobi has confirmed that each galaxy in the game will end with a major boss fight, which means we can expect at least six bosses in the game. We saw a number of these in the game’s reveal trailer, such as a giant bird that you fight while on its back as it soars through the air, or the returning gorilla boss that fans of Astro Bot Rescue Mission will remember very well, or a giant octopus wearing boxing gloves. Team Asobi has also revealed that the giant cobra queen boss we saw in the game’s reveal trailer is named Lady Venomara, and awaits players “in her golden lair”. The developer also says defeating each boss will “uncover a wonderful secret”, but the studio hasn’t elaborated on exactly what that means.
FLYING
Something else that we saw multiple glimpses of in Astro Bot’s reveal trailer were sections that showcased Astro soaring through the air on a plane shaped like the PS5’s DualSense controller (which we’ll be speaking more of in a bit). Called the Dual Speeder, it serves as Astro’s ship and primary method of transportation as he travels from planet to planet, though it looks like there will also be gameplay sections that will task you with navigating it through obstacle courses at high speeds. Whether gyro gameplay will also be supported during these sections is unknown, but one would assume that that would be the case.
DUALSENSE
Nearly four years into the PS5’s life, we’re yet to play too many games that have been a better showcase of the DualSense’s haptic feedback and adaptive triggers than Astro’s Playroom was, and sure enough, Team Asobi says that the upcoming Astro Bot will also be implementing the controller’s features. Further details on what that implementation will look like are currently scarce, but given how convincingly Astro’s Playroom knocked the ball out of the park in this area, expectations will be high from Astro Bot as well.
PLAYSTATION ICONS
If you’re playing an Astro game, you’re almost expecting to find an abundance of easter eggs and cameos related to not only the PlayStation brand as a whole, but also a number of characters and cameos from throughout PlayStation’s history. The upcoming Astro Bot won’t be breaking tradition there. As confirmed by Team Asobi and as seen in the game’s reveal trailer, a number of beloved PlayStation properties will be represented in Astro Bot, including the likes of God of War, Uncharted, Ratchet and Clank, Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, PaRappa the Rapper, and more. In fact, Team Asobi seems to be teasing that the PlayStation characters that we saw in the reveal trailer (and others like them that have yet to be revealed) will have a bigger part to play in the game and its story than just as cameos and easter eggs. What exactly that will entail remains to be seen.
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