Astro Bot Rescue Mission is a pretty wonderful platformer, but VR does something that lifts it to the heady realms of actual magic: it allows you to climb inside its world.
As is often the case with third-person VR, something truly astonishing takes place when a character you control is no longer running back and forth across the screen, but is now running up and down and around the position where you are actually sat. Astro Bot is a tiny Aibo-like robot, a cute waddling toddler with a tiny cape flapping behind them. Astro Bot's friends have been scattered across the cosmos, along with pieces of their ship, and it's up to you to follow them down into various fantasy worlds and bring everyone back together.
But you sit in those worlds with them, and they often scale structures that see them lofted high above your head, or descend into pits that you have to lean forward to peer down into. At one point, I left Astro Bot to dawdle at a corner of the screen while I headered a football back at a distant foe who had chucked it my way. As is traditional with headering, I used my actual head. It was the only polite thing to do. Later on I used my head again to break through platforms and to nudge fronds of seaweed out of the way. In third-person VR, the player is suddenly a presence in the world in a way that goes far beyond their traditional in-game avatar. It's dazzling.
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