I was hyped about Astro Bot, bought it day one but didn't play it because everything I purchase is shipped to my cousin's house, so I only started the game yesterday. Now. I'm over 60% complete with the full game and it's a great platformer, but with how much praise it's been getting I was pretty sure I was going to get a the quality of a 3D Mario game or an extension of Astro's Playroom.

I'm not going to spoil anthing here, so if you haven't played either one of these games then don't worry.

Starting off though, Astro's Playroom is a shorter game, there are four worlds and four maps in each of these worlds. Each of these maps have a lot going on in them in literally every single area of every single level. Everything in Astro's Playroom is so dense with different visual aspects, whether it's the bots acting out characters in differen't Playstation games or whether it's the regular bots doing many different animations throughout these levels, every bit of these levels you're seeing something that you just want to stop and look at. In Astro Bot there is literally NONE OF THAT. Each level in Astro Bot has you rescue six or seven bots, some of them are unique, most are generic, but within the levels, the bots don't do anything except one animation after you save them, then they disappear, there is a fraction of the charm in these stages that Astro's Playroom had.

The Astro Bot stages are great stages for a 3D platformer, but they are not Astro's Playroom. The animations from the Playstation characters? Gone, the animations from the bots? Gone. You do see some animal bots throughout the stage that do have some nice animations and cool things going on but not again, not like Astro's Playroom. Most of the game is simply just, platforming, and saving these bots. Now all of these animations and such are still in Astro Bot, they're just not in the stages. Once you get back to the main hub you can spend coins to do the gacha machine like in Astro's Playroom, and that's where you get to see these animations. Astro's Playroom had a gacha machine as well and there were a lot of unique ammibo so you got animations in stage and then you got a lot of different unique amiibo like things you could view, where in Astro Bot because all these animations aren't done in the stage, they're now relegated to the gacha machine so losing all the unique gacha things.

And even as a great platformer, I don't think it's comparable to Super Mario 3D Land or Super Mario 3D World. I'm not much of a fan of Super Mario 64 like most people, because I don't really like the games star system Where you go through the game seven times per stage to collect each star. And this is even when the "gameplay" is an enhanced Astro's Playroom, but the level design, gameplay, all of it combined makes Astro's Playroom a much better game for the time you're spending with it. How condensed everything is, the solid gameplay, the great level design, all combined make for a game that is on the level of games like Super Mario 3D Land, but level design that isn't quite as good as Astro's Playroom and levels that don't have near the density and charm and yeah, it sounds weird, but yeah, it's hard to explain but if you played atleast Astro's Playroom and watched a single stage of Astro Bot you'll understand what I mean.

It is a great game, great gameplay, great level design, but not best 3D platformer ever made as people are stating. It is definitely one of the better 3D platformers, but not 3D Land and 3D World tier.