Astro Botis as close to a perfect video game as I can remember.That’s what the 5/5 means. For the depth of its level and sound design, the inventiveness of each ability, the confidence to throw out ideas before they get old, and the charm it delivers (both through nostalgia and simply its own brilliance), it is perfect. But it could be even better. There is only one thing I would like to see added to Astro Bot, and it would (somehow) make an already perfect game significantly better: time trials.
Time trials are a classic staple of the platformer genre. Once you beat a level, you replay it to find all of its secrets (with TheGamer’s guides, no doubt), you then try to beat it as fast as you can, without dying, for the ultimate thrill. But sadly, this isn’t possible in Astro Bot, unless you want to sit with a stopwatch and a pencil and paper while playing the game. And if you do, well, I don’t want to be your friend. You sound a bit odd.
Since Astro Bot is so well versed in the world of platforming, with referential levels to the different cameo bots we rescue and a whole range of tropes both inverted and played straight, this is not just a great platformer - it’s a manual for platformers to follow. And it’s strange, maybe even disappointing, for a game to understand the genre so well, and yet miss a fairly basic feature like time trials.
They would especially fit in Astro Bot because of its approach to difficulty. While some of the challenge levels stretch you, that’s mainly because they need to be done in a single run. The basic levels aren’t going to stump you outside of a well hidden collectible. There are few things more frustrating in platformers than an obscene difficulty spike in the latter stages that derails all of the game’s momentum with the aim of separating the true gamers from the casuals. I have ascended those spikes myself in 2DMarios, which tend to be the worse for it, and have never reached the peak and felt grateful for the journey. Astro Bot’s approachable difficulty with intelligent world design is perfect for the no checkpoint stakes of time trials, and that only makes their absence even more noticeable.
Of course, this may not damage its replayability too much. My favourite platformer isCrash Bandicoot 3: Warped(I think still, despite the mighty challenge from Astro), andI’ve replayed that dozens of times. If I ever settle in for a proper replay, a real ‘start to finish’ adventure, then sure, I aim for all the relics. I can get all the blue relics in my sleep, and all gold with a decent bit of effort, but only around half of the platinum relics. But most of the time, I replay one of my complete saves and just goof around in the levels. Same withSpyro’strilogy, which lacks time trials due to being open zone rather than linear as Crash and Astro are.
So I’m sure I’ll still replay Astro a lot. After beating it in 11 hours, I took my total playtime up to 30 across rescuing all the bots,scoring every Trophy, recording bits of footage or snapping shots, and just generally larking about. I’m sure by this time next year, even with so many games coming out, that number will double for no reason in particular. Just to play it because. But if there were time trials, I’d triple it, easily. I wouldn’t even be writing this now. I’d be dashing through Bathhouse Battle looking for corners to cut.
It’s too easy to be tempted to ask for more though. Obviously, we’d all love Team Asobi to come out with an expansion, maybe even a full sequel, in the near future to solidify Astro Bot as one ofPlayStation’sgreatest mascots. But this game is a monumental effort, one that swims against the tide in a photorealistic, live-service world, and has been vindicated for its approach to game design. It’s worth celebrating it for what it is, not poking holes for what it also could have been in an ideal world where video games were designed for me and me alone, listening to all my ideas but also doing new things and surprising me. Astro Bot is already perfect.
