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Astro Bot Is a Nostalgia Fest — for Better and Worse
Joyful platforming, an adorable mascot, and a heaping helping of recognizable Sony IP.
Absent is the elevated tone of Sony’s prestige titles like 2020’s samurai action game Ghost of Tsushima(which arrived with an Akira Kurosawa visual filter); present are emotions of joy, delight, and finely calibrated nostalgia. At various points, all I wanted to do was prod and poke at this wonderfully tactile world — to pirouette on ice and peer at the scratch left on its surface by my blade; to bounce up and down on a rubbery balloon, watching each elastic swell and contraction. The chibi figure lacks the interiority of the genre’s most memorable characters: Sonic’s effortless, blue-hued cool; Mario’s proletariat work ethic; Donkey Kong’s toxic, pent-up rage!
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