Astro Boy is not the Japanese Pinocchio. He might sound awfully similar, what with being a robot (rather than puppet) who desperately wants to be a real boy, but actually Astro Boy is a hell of a lot cooler. He’s a robot boy who fights crime, evil, all the usual bad stuff. He does this thanks to his impressive arsenal of weaponry, including a machine gun that fires out of his posterior to put it nicely. It makes for an excellent sounding video game character doesn’t it? It did once upon a time in the guise of Omega Factor for the Gameboy Advance, however this game is not very good at all. Instead it is positively mediocre.
To be fair to the Astro Boy name, this game is based on the film rather than the Manga which makes a crucial difference. Astro Boy this time round is a perfect example of just how half-hearted a game can be when made in conjunction with the release of a film of the same name. The game follows the narrative of the film quite well, with some brief expansion but nothing too major. Cut scenes from the film are used in the opening and closing sequence of the game but disappointingly all other cut scenes use the in-game engine’s graphics to demonstrate what’s going on. Astro Boy wouldn’t look out of place on the Playstation 2 despite having the graphical prowess of the Wii behind it, so it’s a shame to see the graphics are so middle of the road. Much like the rest of the game, the graphics are just rather hideously bland and uninteresting.
Action is divided between two quite traditional genres: the 2D side-scrolling action platformer and the 2D shoot ‘em up. I enjoy both genres usually, some of my fondest gaming memories stem from the likes of Streets of Rage and R-Type. However Astro Boy offers very little to make it anything more than functional.
In the case of the 2D side-scrolling platformer levels, jumping feels too light and inaccurate. It’s needed quite frequently which makes it all the more annoying. Although you can’t die from falling down a bottomless pit (you just lose some health), it’s still an annoyingly antiquated way of designing a game. Shooting the many dull and predictable foes is possible through an array of different weapons (including the aforementioned ‘butt’ machine gun) but there’s no variety. It’s all just a matter of pressing a button and watching as Astro Boy performs a predefined animated movement in order to defeat the foes. Most irritatingly, you can’t cancel the move which means quite frequently you’ll find yourself being hit by another foe all because you can’t adjust the trajectory of your lasers mid fire. Despite these niggles, Astro Boy is actually extremely simple to complete, boringly so in fact.
The R-Type-esque shoot em up sections are reasonably fun admittedly. Again it’s far from challenging but at least the mechanics behind these sections work smoothly and make for an entertaining distraction. It’s unfortunate that these levels are all too brief and few and far between, as a few more of them could have made Astro Boy slightly more bearable.
Astro Boy fortunately isn’t very difficult to complete. The only real problem is the internal struggle you’ll have as you realise you can’t face playing the game for much longer. It comes as a great comfort when you realise that Astro Boy also isn’t very long and completion only takes a matter of a few hours. There is a co-operative mode available which does make Astro Boy slightly more enjoyable but it feels like an afterthought as nothing in the game has been designed with a co-operative experience in mind. Still, if you’ve bought this for your kids (and that’s the only reason why any sane adult would) at least it means fewer arguments over who gets to play the game.
Astro Boy really isn’t worth anyone’s time. Those after retro side scrolling fun have plenty of other options on their hands with 20 years worth of quality gaming to peruse. Those after an enjoyable game for their children have just as many options with the likes of Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter, A Boy and His Blob and the Lego series of games, to name just a few. If it wasn’t for the fact that I did have some fun with the homage to R-Type levels, this game would have had an even lower score than it’s going to get.
VideogameUK verdict: 3/10
