The cost of all this momentum and polish is that Astro Bot can be a near-frictionless experience. So eager is it to show you its selection box of surprises, it's zealous with checkpoints and stuffed with enemies that can be brushed aside, even some larger ones keeling over in a scant few strikes. In many cases, if you're unsure what to do, simply activating your current gadget is halfway to a solution, or if not, finding a power cord that you can heave out of the ground or a zip you can pull down – pleasant sensations in themselves – will trigger the next step. Even end-of-galaxy bosses, while spectacular, will likely force one or two retries at most before you've sussed their patterns.
Somehow this never feels like a deal-breaker. It helps that some of the lost bots and puzzle pieces you're hunting are cleverly tucked away, asking you to poke the boundaries of each level, and that the optional mini-planets are devious, removing checkpoints to extract a faultless performance. But more than that, remember, Astro Bot isn't a matter of life and death. While arriving at the destination is all but a foregone conclusion, the pleasure is in getting there, a journey that never stops serving up extraordinary moments and sequences and details. Ultimately, it's almost a footnote that this is an ode to PlayStation and, yes, the primary justification to own a PS5. Take away the branding and there remains a core of irrepressible imagination, the fuel of so many great games, that is anything but robotic
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