Last year on December 12, the annual Game of the Year awards show was held. There were many great games that were nominated for Game of the Year 2024, such as Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Metaphor: Refantazio, Black Myth: Wukong and Balatro, to name a few of these games. In the end though, the winner turned out to be Astro Bot, a Playstation exclusive platformer.
Many people were mixed about whether or not Astro Bot truly deserved the award, due to it not being as story driven as many of the other nominees. While I can see why some were upset at this, I believe that it truly earned the award.
There were a lot of games that I played last year, one of which was Astro Bot, and I can say, Astro Bot was a really amazing game. I enjoyed nearly every moment I was playing it. Sure, it did not have much in terms of story, but that never made it any less enjoyable.
One of my favorite things about Astro Bot was the level designs. Each level in Astro Bot was really beautiful to look at and explore. There was a vast arrangement of these environments too, and each one felt so unique. There was this one level that had a casino look to it, and it had you jump across slot machines and falling poker chips, or launching yourself into dart boards in order to traverse.
Another favorite level type of my own was the ancient ruin type levels that had you make your way across these “Indiana Jones” like environments, making sure to watch out for spike or fire based traps.
Now when it comes to the gameplay, I believe that the gameplay was very interesting and engaging. Rather than just making you hop around the whole time to traverse, it gave the player items and abilities to help the player make their way through. Each item felt very unique to each other in terms of how they worked and looked.
There was this clock item that allowed the player to slow down time to make their way across fast moving objects, one of which being those falling poker chips in the casino level. Then there was this monkey ability that allowed the player to climb up walls using a mixture of the triggers on your controller and tilt controls. My favorite ability though, had to have been the frog boxing gloves that just allowed you to punch rapidly as well as grab onto and pull objects.
Speaking of the triggers on the controller, another thing I loved about this game is that it is actually one of the very few Playstation 5 games that makes use of the controller’s haptic feedback features. For those who don’t know, haptic feedback essentially makes the controller vibrate in a way that corresponds with the game.
For example, when the character walks you can feel small taps on the controller that correspond with the character walking, or whenever you use a shooting ability the triggers of the controller will vibrate and have a pull to them as if you are actually shooting. Though these things aren’t really necessary, I enjoy them and find these features very enjoyable as it makes the game feel more engaging, so it’s nice to see how much Astro Bot utilizes these features.
Back to the abilities though, I think they really come to shine when in regards to the boss fights. Astro Bot has only a total of six main bosses, and despite how few that may be, they all are very enjoyable. Each boss typically revolves around the player using one of their base abilities from the levels, except for the final boss which utilizes all of them. Each boss typically has the same music, but what makes it cool still is that it is remixed slightly to fit each boss.
Following these boss fights, comes probably my favorite part of the game. After each boss fight, you are pretty much sent into a level themed after certain old Playstation games that play very similarly to the original counterparts. These levels even give you a unique ability from the protagonist of the corresponding game. For example, one of the levels is based on God of War and has you use Kratos’s axe as a weapon and come across characters from the series.
The references do not just end there though. There are a multitude of references to old Playstation games throughout the entire game itself. You collect these characters throughout and add them to your base where you get to see them going about their lives in these mini scene recreations of their games.
All in all, Astro Bot is the perfect example of what an amazing game should be. It shows that even without a large and complicated story, a game can still be very enjoyable. Hopefully, by winning Game of the Year 2024, it will encourage the creation of more fun and engaging games in years to come that don’t solely rely on the story to be fun, but rather making the gameplay engaging as well.