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Astro Bot Rescue Mission

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  • Awesome Music: The credits theme, "I Am ASTRO BOT"—an energetic, triumphant theme celebrating Astro and the player's victory and reuniting of his crewmates. This would go on to become the theme for the entire series, getting slowed down remixes for the title screens of both Astro's Playroom and Astro Bot, more laid back mixes for the PlayStation Labo room in Playroom and the Gatcha and Dual Speeder Garage in Astro Bot, and finally a full remix in the Creative Closing Credits stage "Credits Clash" in Astro Bot.
  • Heartwarming Moments:
    • As described by Moe on the franchise’s main YMMV page, Astro Bot and his friends are very cute and friendly robots.
    • The introduction where Astro Bot and his friends are introduced to you, when the Astro Ship flies towards you.
    • Astro's bond with the player progressively grows as more ship parts and bots are recovered. It reaches to the point after you finally defeat the final boss, Astro is sad as he slowly walks to the ship because he doesn't want to leave the player who he grew to have a bond with. What's more heartwarming is the fact the bots and the Astro Ship realize this and decide to take him back to the player's side. Astro is clearly happy, but also a bit embarrassed that they figured him out and waves back at the crew, who fly off in space.
  • More Popular Spin-Off: Rescue Mission is actually the third video game developed by Team Asobi and serves as a Spiritual Successor to Asobi's The Playroom games, which first introduced the little robots that will shape into Astro Bot and his friends. Since its release, Rescue Mission far surpassed its predecessors in popularity and recognition, so much so that the next Playroom title was Astro's Playroom, further cementing the series' future direction.
  • Scrappy Mechanic: The powerups, while being creative in their usage and fun when they work, are implemented rather awkwardly due to being applied to your controller rather than to Astro himself as in later titles. This means that aiming them is done entirely through motion controls, and even the combination of the internal DualShock 4 sensors and the PlayStation Camera watching the tracking light can't prevent a certain level of inaccuracy, jitter and drift. Possibly worse is the insistence on activating the powerups using the touchpad, forcing you to move one hand out of the normal grip constantly. Outside of stubbornly utilizing exclusive controller features, there's little excuse not to at least give the player the option to activate them using the triggers, as later games would, ditching the touchpad entirely. These issues are only mild annoyances in normal gameplay, but easily become infuriating when trying to get the gold Bot in all of the challenge levels.
  • Surprise Difficulty: The game is an overwhelmingly cheery, family friendly platformer. While the main story mode is generally easy, the optional challenge levels can be exceptionally difficult. It can take dozens of tries to complete the time trials, even just squeaking by less than a second.
  • Surprisingly Improved Sequel: The game follows up Team Asobi's first two titles The Playroom and its virtual reality counterpart The Playroom VR, both considered overall decent but forgettable ways to the PlayStation 4 and its VR headset respectively. Rescue Mission completely blows its predecessors out the water by presenting a more cohesive, complete experience and focusing on highlighting its genre's strengths through the VR headset while also featuring inventive gameplay ideas with said headset.
  • Tear Jerker:
    • In the beginning, the green alien forcibly takes the VR headset, causing the Astro Ship's parts to explode and scattering the bots to different worlds. Astro is the only bot still clinging to the ship until the part he's on explodes. Though the player's controller heals Astro, the truly heartbreaking moment comes right after: Astro looks back at the broken ship, lets out a series of sad, forlorn noises and slumps down on the controller. But in a moment that's both touching and inspiring, he pulls himself together, reinvigorated by the determination to find the ship's parts and reunite with his friends again.
    • Mixed with heartwarming and funny; after the player and Astro finally beat the green alien, recovering the stolen VR headset. Instead of being happy of reuniting with his friends and fully repairing the ship, Astro is shown to be visibly saddened at the thought of leaving the player's side. He slowly walks to the Astro ship, looking back twice with a sorrowful expression, before running to the ship's beam and giving one last wave to the player, showing how much he's grown attached to the player. Seeing this, after the short ending gag, the bots and the Astro Ship make a collective decision to turn back and bring Astro back to the player. In a playful moment, they even toss their captain at the player's screen, showing just how much they all want him to stay with the player!

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