Nintendo has Mario. Xbox has its Master Chief. PlayStation? Look no further. Starting September 6, Sony’s console will also have its own mascot, and a friendly little robot named Astro Bot will officially get his own video game.
The most telling evidence that this claim holds water can be found on Google: a simple search for the final version ofAstro Bot for PlayStation 5, a game with a high playload created from the small demo Astro’s Playroomwhich is found installed by default on all PS5 consoles as soon as they come out of the box, allows us to discover that almost all video game blogs have the same introduction as this article.
A video game character can hardly ask for greater unanimity… which players seem to share, by the way. A DualSense controller in the colors of Astro Bot, produced in limited edition and offered in pre-sale, has sold out in no time.
Astro Bot was created from scratch by Sony to demonstrate all the technical capabilities of its PS5. Its DualSense alone deserves such attention. Its haptic capacity, the vibration feedback integrated into the controller, is so refined that no game to date has fully utilized it.
So this will be the first discovery for players who launch Astro Bot Starting next month: We have no idea how far the PS5 can be pushed before it reaches its limits. It took a robot to challenge the machine!
30 years of PlayStation
This robot doesn’t travel alone. And Sony is taking full advantage of the environment and history of its console, which, by the way, is celebrating its 30th birthday these days. The original PlayStation was released in Japan on December 3, 1994.
Some may find the game a bit too self-promotional. After all, Astro Bot pilots a spaceship shaped like a DualSense controller, and is tasked with finding his fellow robotic companions who have been stranded across the galaxy after his flagship, in the form of a PS5, explodes.
At the same time, the thin line between video gaming and digital advertising these days has never been thinner. The Mario brothers have merchandise in every form, including a live-action Hollywood movie. Halothe futuristic military Xbox game from which Master Chief originated, has been given its own TV series on the Paramount+ online service.
One suspects that the younger target audience will not mind these details. Especially since the action itself is gripping enough to make one forget who is pulling the strings, and why the strings are being pulled, behind the scenes.
And all the more so sinceAstro Bot takes several forms, as the game evolves and the levels played. The characters are animated, have that light and smiling side that we often associate with Japanese video game culture, and the little storyline that brings all these beautiful people together in a single universe is refreshing, at a time when creators like to take players by the hand from one end to the other of their sometimes heavy, often complex, rarely fluid and logical stories.
In a galaxy near his home
In total, Astro Bot will take the most stubborn players through 80 levels, spread across fifty worlds, themselves divided into six galaxies. It is necessary to repatriate 150 other robots lost in all this. That is enough to justify a retail price of $80. We find throughout the action nods to iconic games of the platform, including God of War, Jak and Daxterand several others.
At first, you can tell that the programmers at Team Asobi, the Tokyo studio behind the game, mainly wanted to teach players how to master the PS5 environment as best they could. Express training, so to speak. It respects the origins of Astro the Not-So-Little-Robot. It obviously goes a little further.
The more the player explores the galaxy of the big-eyed robot, however, and the more his skills develop in handling the buttons, triggers and even the gyroscopic movement of the DualSense, the more engaging the game becomes. As the action progresses, we are reminded of other titles that have nothing to do with the PlayStation, but which have also marked their time, such as Mega Man, Super Mario, Zelda.
These winks are ours, since no one at Asobi will admit to having been inspired by anything other than environments already dear to Sony. But for the player, the result is an entertaining game, most of the time surprising, and much longer to finish than one might expect.
There is enough content in Astro Bot to keep the kids busy for more than one evening. There are enough winks and Easter eggs throughout the game to make their parents, or even their most disillusioned teenage cousins, smile.
In short, we are told at Sony thatAstro Bot is not an anniversary game to celebrate 30 years of the PlayStation. But if it had been, no one would have objected.
Especially since Sony seems to have finally found the best way to hook gamers for the next 30 years.