Astro Bot and the Death of Art
I just got the platinum trophy in Astro Bot for the PS5. I really enjoyed it! To be honest, it’s the most fun I’ve had playing a video game in years. It was joyous, inventive and really creative. It also made me feel really weird about the state of video games.
The PlayStation turns 30 this year and Astro Bot is Sony’s big celebration of their brand all wrapped up into one cute little platformer. If you have a PS5 you are most likely familiar with Astro’s Playroom, a fun little demo for all the fancy controller tech that was pre-installed on every console. The game itself was fun and full of personality but the real draw of playing Astro’s Playroom for most people was finding little cameo robots of different PlayStation characters. Astro Bot expands on that, greatly increasing the amount of cameo bots and introducing special levels where you get to play as them.
The original PlayStation was my first encounter with video games (I also turned 30 this year). It was the late 90s and I remember two instances of it - going to a pig roast at my dad’s coworker’s house where all the kids crammed into someone’s bedroom to play some wrestling game on their PlayStation, or going to an elementary school friend’s house and watching him play Spyro the Dragon. I was fascinated and begged my parents for one.
My brother and I got a PS2 for Christmas a couple years later. It was the year the PS2 launched - I remember being confused and slightly disappointed because I didn’t realize they had made a second PlayStation and that I wouldn’t be able to play Spyro or Crash Bandicoot on it. That year, a bunch of my cousins wanted one too so my whole extended family ended up putting all their names in for the console lottery at Sears or Best Buy or something and they were able to get a couple. Getting that console for Christmas put me down a dark path that is culminating with me writing this blog post at midnight on a work night. Sorry mom and dad!
The PS2 was really an incredible console. I had a GameCube as well because I got the Super Smash Brothers bug like most children of the time, but when I look back at the video games that really influenced my tastes growing up it was all the weird, unique and artsy stuff I played on the PS2. I was completely addicted to Dance Dance Revolution and that (along with discovering Daft Punk through music videos on Toonami) got me into electronic music at a young age. I remember going to GameStop one day and seeing the box art for We Love Katamari, immediately falling in love with it, getting the game for Christmas one year and making all my friends play it even if they didn’t understand it. Of course there was also Tony Hawk, SSX, Ape Escape 2 and 3, all the weird shit we rented like Ribbit King… I kept buying PS2 games as I got older. I still do! The library is endless and there’s just so much to explore.
Now, tying this back to Astro Bot… as I mentioned earlier the biggest draw of that game is going through the levels and rescuing little robots that are dressed like characters from various PlayStation games of all eras. It’s both very fun and very depressing. I love God of War so of course I was happy to see a Kratos bot - and being able to play a whole God of War themed level with the axe and everything was a good time. It was fun seeing the deep cut bots too and trying to figure out what game they were from.
But at one point I collected a bot that looked like the game Intelligent Qube. Then I collected one that was dressed as Reiko Nagase from Ridge Racer Type 4. I unlocked a costume that let me dress up as Kat from Gravity Rush. I even played a whole level where every cameo bot were representing the teams from the original WipEout.
Intelligent Qube hasn’t had a game since a Japan only PS2 release in the early 2000s. Their developer is still around… But they haven’t released a game since 2018 and it was a live service smartphone game. Namco hasn’t made a Ridge Racer game in over a decade. Sony shut down the creators of WipEout, London Studio, years ago. Hell, Astro Bot itself is made by Team Asobi, the remnants of Sony’s famous Japan Studio that existed since the PS1 and that they shut down right after the PS5 launched!
It all makes for a really fascinating juxtaposition when you actually play the game. I don’t want to say “content slop” because Astro Bot is a legitimately well made video game but so much mainstream media of today being a “spot the references” type thing just makes me feel weird. It’s kind of giving Marvel Cinematic Universe in a derogatory way. So many of the artists and programmers and musicians that made these games and characters have seen their studios closed down, their teams laid off, their games cancelled, their creations left to rot on a “List of franchises owned by Sony” Wikipedia article forever and with no support from the big IP holders to the actual artists that made them.
I’ve seen critiques of Astro Bot both calling the game a love letter to PlayStation and an idea graveyard. I’m kind of inclined to believe the latter. As much as I loved seeing the different cameos, the ones that gave me the most impact were from game series that have been dormant for years and with no way to legally play most of them.
It's crazy because the rest of the game is an absolute joy to play. Astro Bot is a 12 hour game (perfect length imo) jam packed with extremely well designed levels that are super fun to explore and find secrets in. All the gameplay mechanics involving the different powers you get are really fun and I wish some of them like the shrinking mechanic were in more levels. The art is super cute too and it's just a really nice looking game. Literally the only gripe I had with the actual gameplay was some of the challenge levels just fucking sucked to play due to classic 3d platformer camera and hitbox jank. But other than that I had a really fun time with the game and I’d absolutely recommend it.
I think playing Astro Bot has made me realize that I’m kind of starting to hate a lot of modern games. Astro Bot is too good and games like it are much too infrequent. I got a PS5 at launch and most of the games I’ve bought for it have been disappointing in some way. God of War 2018 is legitimately a top 10 game of all time for me but its sequel Ragnarok just felt more of the same with significantly worse writing and storytelling. Final Fantasy XVI is a game I really had high hopes for and wanted to like but outdated quest design and its kind of swagless Game of Thrones aesthetic made me put it down and as much as I like Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, it's almost overwhelmingly massive with the amount of things to do.
Games like Intelligent Qube and Wipeout could and would still be made today, but never with the backing of a major publisher. Games are worse because none of the major companies take risks and back smaller projects. Everything either has to be an overly expensive cinematic single player game that takes 5 years to make or a live service multiplayer game that has to keep printing money forever and making our profit lines go up otherwise we have to ruin hundreds of people’s livelihoods. It’s dire! Playing Astro Bot made me realize how good video games can be if the companies in charge actually gave a shit about treating their artists and developers well and if they were less about chasing unsustainable trends. It’s fun, but it bums me out too.
I’m sure Sony is hoping that people who play Astro Bot and see cool looking cameos will go into their back catalog and spend money on something like The Last of Us Remastered. I think instead now that I’ve finished with the game, I’m going to download an emulator and finally get around to playing Boku no Natsuyasumi 2 or hooking up my PS2 and playing the OG WipEout games again.