We Need More AAA Experiences Like Astro Bot and Less Like Call of Duty

Now don’t get me wrong, I love experiences like Call of Duty and Battlefield, but Astro Bot is simply too beautiful to ignore. Now especially, since the popular military shooters have lost their creativity while moving like those rotting carcasses in Zombies modes.

I have been playing these military shooters since 2003. This is what gives me the feeling that the good old days are lost somewhere in an effort to churn out content to give more juice to those microtransactions. And this is why we need experiences like Astro Bot.

More Astro, Less Duty Please!

It feels like Sony is trying to show us the beauty of PlayStation 5 via the gameplay of Astro Bot. And without entering any argument, I have fallen for it; I want to stay there. The first time our character enters the Sky Garden in Astro Bot, it does exactly what video games are supposed to do: give us a sense of immersion.

Like we used to get lost in the worlds those famous books like Harry Potter or The Lord of the Rings gave us, Team Asobi seems to have been keeping something like that in mind. As soon as a user enters Sky Garden, it’s a different world. It’s a happy world.

Those military shooters used to do that too. Well, they didn’t give us something colorful, but they did give us those reality checks when it comes to a warzone; they were fun too.

A war game doesn’t really need colors. In fact, we already know what happens when they try to be colorful. A simple story would do wonders and might take it a long way.

It has been like this recently. Every time fans were expecting a big hit, they received a hard punch in their guts. Gollum, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, Modern Warfare 3, you name it.

The arrival of Astro Bot is, as clear as a day, a breath of fresh air. The environments, the simplicity, and the story are something worth admiring for the decades to come.

Astro Bot is A Beautiful Representation of Creativity

This is a time when everyone wants to churn out video games to satisfy that content-hungry audience. But the developers forget about the fact that quality matters the most.

Both Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and Battlefield 2042 had one thing in common: they were a product of a short development cycle that eventually led to their respective franchises’ downfall.

Astro Bot took about double the time, like three years. Developers began working on the game as soon as they were done with Astro’s Playroom. And their work paid off. Now people are calling it the next Game of the Year.

The game was supposed to be getting an open-world structure, but then it was decided to keep it the way it is now. It was perhaps the right one, or we have seen the kind of chaos it can create when something goes off track.

More AAA experiences like Astro Bot have more potential at this time. Major video games are crumbling, and they’ll keep crumbling until the desire to constantly churn out content is kept aside, and quality experiences are brought into the equation.

Technology allowing for the creation of a video game have come far, and this is also why platformers have more potential than those shooters. So many things had to be taken care of while developing games like Call of Duty.

Developers need to see if the gun is being reloading realistically or if the movement of those fingers is correct. So many details are there that they often have to compromise on other things. The environment indeed appears beautiful but isn’t entirely interactive for that matter.

Then look at Astro Bot. Developers didn’t really have to worry about the details that go into the character’s movement. All they have to focus on is how much more adorably they can make him go.

With that, it made them free to run their creative horses to make a simple but beautiful video game that anyone could adore, no matter the age. I am 28, and I still can’t get over how magical Funky Fungi is.

Have you played Astro Bot yet? If yes, what did you like the most about it? We would like to know in the comments section below.