There’s been a lot of debate aroundAstro Bot’suse ofso many PlayStation mascots, from how authentic this love-in is to how odd it is to see aSonyproduct celebrate other beloved Sony products that Sony is no longer producing. My colleagues James Troughton and Jade King nailed the issue before and after launch -it feels like a graveyard of gamesthat should be given a new chance at life, andAstro Bot has the potential to be morethan a walking commercial when the game plays so dang good.
Essentially, how I feel is that Astro Bot gets away with these often hokey tie-ins because it delivers the goods. It’s not using Bot Joel to distract you from its shallow gameplay, the bots could be a bunch of characters I’ve never heard of and this would still stand out as the best platformer of the decade. Case in point,who the heck is Alundra?But watching the Sony State of Play, I was instantly reminded that this is not a winning strategy long term.
This Is Isn’t A Big Deal, But Like, It Still Kinda Bothers Me
It had nothing to do with Astro Bot itself. I don’t suddenly hate the VIP bots because it has Eve fromStellar Bladeand as a woke gaming journo she makes me sick to my stomach as I evacuate my bowels. I thinkEve has the potential to be a great character with her design, enjoyed Stellar Blade enough, and hope it gets a sequel to add more depth to its fairly shallow narrative. Eve has as much claim to a place in Astro Bot as many of its current cast, and arguably substantially more than some of them. I’m looking forward to saving her, and to seeing who else is added to the game. Given itsrecent Stellar Blade tie-in, is it too much to hope forAutomata?
In any case, what I’m talking about isLego Horizon Adventures. Lego games can be a little hit and miss with how universal their humour is, and I think this one is a miss. The trailer seemed hollow and irritating, even for someone who likes the wider world ofHorizon. I’m looking forward to heading back there in Lego form to see it in a new light, but when the costumes were wheeled out, I felt the way I had feared I would feel playing Astro Bot.
In Horizon Adventures, you can dress up asRatchet, of & Clank fame, anda bunch of other PlayStation characters. It’s light-hearted fun and I’m not going to go off the deep end about a goofy costume in a Lego game. But while this tie-in will have been planned separately from Astro Bot’s gimmick, I get the sense that whoever put that trailer together was expecting to ride the coattails of Astro, not be left in its dust.
Astro Bot’s use of cameos worked because there was such a wide spread that it reminded you of forgotten classics, broadened your horizons, and made you feel smart when you recognised a more obscure one. Yeah, they were wheeled out in service of worship to the Sony brand, but it felt like the devs were making choices that were meaningful to them. With Horizon, it doesn’t.
On the one hand, Horizon is caught in the crossfire here. It’s not to blame for Astro Bot doing this idea with so much more guile just before Horizon’s own reveal. On the other hand, Horizon should be used to being collateral damage now, after the first game’s launch clashed withBreath of the Wild, the sequel withElden Ring, the expansion withStar Wars Jedi: Survivor, and now theZero Dawnremaster is coming out the same day asDragon Age: The Veilguard. I’m not one to advocate for firing devs, but whoever chooses launch days might be best reassigned to somewhere they don’t tank the entire project with one boneheaded choice.
Again, Horizon using goofy costumes is mostly neither here nor there. But it’s a sobering reminder to players (and hopefully developers) that just because Astro Bot did the cameo thing well doesn’t mean other series can or should try to pull it off. If anything, Astro Bot needs to leave the gimmick behind in future, rather than other studios picking it up. The Ratchet costume felt like the clunkiest moment in a trailer that already stumbled, and while I still expect the game to be a larf, hopefully this is just a coincidence and not a new Sony trend.
