Part of the reason Astro Bot has been such a smash hit is because of how approachable it is. No matter your age or your gaming experience, Astro Bot offers a delightful time. This universal appeal is why I consider it the front runner for Game of the Year. A few games this year can claim to be excellent, even if perhaps none hold a candle to 2023’s Baldur’s Gate 3 and Tears of the Kingdom. But only one can claim to be excellent and easy for your grandma to enjoy.
This is a massive part of Astro Bot’s charm, especially as it never sacrifices creativity in making itself approachable. Slo Mo Casino is a fascinatingly complex gauntlet under the hood, as is Down Size Surprise. But they both translate into easily digestible ideas. In this level, you make things slow. In that level, you make yourself small. But what the DLC speedrun levels have done is make the game annoying. I love them.
Splashing Sprint Is Secretly The Best Astro Bot Level
There are a few levels of Astro Bot I think will live long in the memory. As well as those aforementioned two, there’s Bubbling Under, Luna Sola, and Bathhouse Battle. It’s interesting that most of the great levels (all of them here except Slo Mo Casino, in fact) contain powers or gimmicks that are only used once. The depth of Astro Bot is another reason we all love it. But the level I think will outlast them all is Splashing Sprint.
You might be thinking ‘I don’t recognise the name of that level’, but I promise you, you remember it all the same. It’s one of the little side levels where you have to make it to the end in one run. It’s the one with the duck and the lava. It’s the one you died on more times than the whole rest of the game combined. You hate it. I hate it. We all hate it. But my god, is it a great level.
It’s so great because it’s hard, because it makes you earn it. The whole game couldn’t be like this, that would ruin the broad appeal and good-natured fun of Astro Bot. Secrets and Bots being difficult to find is fine, but making it to the end of the level without much of a struggle is a core pillar of Astro Bot. Splashing Sprint works because it plays against that idea, and in a side level that doesn’t hamper progression. Just one more level like it might have tipped the scales too far, but on its own, it’s perfect. And the DLC levels brought that feeling back.
Rising Heat Is Exactly The Level Astro Bot Needed
In each of the speedrun levels, there are two VIP bots to unlock. One of these is just for finishing the course, and the other for doing it in a fast enough time. However, for the first three levels, I never realised this. I’m not a speedrunning expert, and died a few times on each run, but even without some of the wacky shortcuts I’ve seen online, a sensible attempt at the first three levels was enough to come in under time.
The fourth level, Helium Heights, was when I discovered there was a time limit on this. Though harder than the others, my big mistake was thinking the whale balloon was a shortcut when it actually added time on. I replayed it, got the speedrun bot (my fourth Helldivers 2 guy, woohoo.) and back Astro Bot went into the PS5 archive for a week. Then, finally, came Rising Heat. While not quite on Splashing Sprint’s level, it has the same annoying charm.
Your special power for this one is the monkey backpack, which requires rocking your controller back and forth or swinging your arms about in real life. This added motion element throws you off your ‘locked in’ element when you’re whittling down your time, and also has the side effect of making you look very silly.
Though Astro Bot’s controls are straightforward, introducing motion to the mix causes you to rush, and tasks that are simple to do with buttons alone become tough to master. Several times I grabbed the wrong banana or couldn’t flip my bot far enough to the left in Rising Heat, and the fact these complaints sound so daft and childish is what makes them great. We all hate Splashing Sprint because the rubber duck doesn’t extinguish the lava fast enough!
Rising Heat required the most successful runs before unlocking the speedrun bot (not a Helldivers guy this time, but Resident Evil’s Albert Wesker for some reason), and for that reason will probably be the speedrun level I remember best. Astro Bot is a very easy game, and one that shows gaming doesn’t need punishing difficulty to offer a high level of sophisticated design and unbridled creativity. But every once in a while, it needs a really annoying level to do your head right in. Splashing Sprint and Rising Heat, Astro Bot just wouldn’t be the same without you.
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OpenCritic
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Top Critic Rating:
95/100
- Released
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September 6, 2024
- Developer(s)
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Team Asobi