And when it all collides, you are presented with some of the best moments the game has to offer. Players venture across six galaxies and over 80 levels, from lush forests, sandy beaches, hot volcanoes to more surprising locations such as a gigantic hourglass or the canopy of a singing tree. During this epic adventure Astro will reunite with over 150 iconic heroes from PlayStation history, helping to kick off celebrations for the 30th anniversary of PlayStation.
Now, I’m sure the gamers who haven’t tasted the sweet joys of Astro Bot yet will agree with me once they get their hands on this PlayStation title. So, congratulations on your well-deserved award and success, Team ASOBI. I’m indebted to you for pulling me back into the world of platformers. Instead of leaping to the boss fight, approach the large snowball that’s being nurtured by two penguins — after you defeat all the enemies.
The hardware quality is also mixed, with one customer reporting no marks or scuffs on their unit. But what I really love about Astro Bot is that it’s also just filled with bits and pieces. Stuff to roll around in, stuff that forms little piles that can be kicked about.
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Ingenious one-off mechanics like this feel like they could serve as the basis for an entire game; that’s how well-crafted they are. There are over 300 bots to collect with 173 advertised as special bots, all dressed as characters from the PlayStation family past and present. Finding these bots felt like collecting Waddle Dees in Kirby and the Forgotten Land, but with nostalgic excitement every time a special bot is recognized. Every bot collected throughout the levels gets sent to a hub world called The Crash Site. And while it is fun to go around and interact with the bots here, there is a small chance that you will recognize every single one of them.
Although it does rally at the end, with a wonderful on-rails section that is more reminiscent of the tone in Astro’s Playroom. Perhaps there is some sort of museum archive if you 100% the game but for the vast majority of players, they’ll have no idea who most of the characters are. If we don’t know then we’re sure more casual gamers are going to be even more lost, especially as so many of them look like generic anime characters. What’s most impressive, on a technical level, is the game’s use of force feedback. Surprisingly, the haptic feedback on the shoulder buttons, which was so impressive in Astro’s Playroom, isn’t emphasised but the audio and rumble design is the best we’ve ever seen in a video game.
Just before you lift the massive bridge out of the ground, you’ll find some moving metal boxes in the poison lake to the right. Cross them (destroying them as you go) and then boost up when you reach the final platform. You’ll reach another PlayStation bot hanging in the mouth of a gold snake statue. Like everyone else, I was thoroughly impressed with the game itself, not to mention all the free content it’s gotten since launch. But even if I think Astro Bot was every bit as deserving, I had my proverbial money on Elden Ring being the first game to win GOTY twice, with secret hopes for Balatro to pull an indie upset and turn the Game Awards on its head. Still, I can’t deny that Astro Bot deserves every bit of praise it gets.
The small robot must save fellow bots from danger, totaling 300 bots to rescue throughout the game. In a way, Team Asobi — Sony’s go-to tech demo developer and maker of Astro’s Playroom and the upcoming Astro Bot — has been doing this kind of preparatory work for the last 12 years. From 2012 to 2020, the Tokyo-based outfit made small games, often distributed for free, whose purpose was to demonstrate the interactive potential of Sony’s hardware. The Playroom demonstrated the PlayStation Camera; The Playroom VR and Astro Bot Rescue Mission the PlayStation VR headset; Astro’s Playroom the PS5’s DualSense controller. vz88 com had a talent for unearthing delightful and satisfying interactions from the devices, and they peopled their games with cute little robots who acquired more personality with each installment. It can be tough to critically gauge how ‘good’ a platformer is sometimes.
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Like Stephen has mentioned, this is an endlessly inventive title that joyously plays around with the level design, the mechanics, and the themes of every level. There are enough ideas in Astro Bot to fill a dozen regular games. The power-ups flesh out Astro’s move set which, on its own, is fairly simplistic. However, while his range of moves isn’t particularly deep, they’re executed excellently. Jumping, hovering, punching, and spinning all feels spot on thanks to tight, responsive controls. The true test of any 3D platformer is whether it feels fun to simply move around, and Astro passes handily.
There are shocking deep cuts here from every corner of PlayStation’s history, including its indie partners. If you have a seminal PS1 game in your mind or a semi-obscure PS2 horror game, there’s a good chance it’s represented here. Aside from a lack of Final Fantasy representation, Astro Bot pays its respects to several generations of formative games. A handful of excellent stages even go one step further by paying tribute to some key games themselves — expect gaming history nerds to go positively feral over them.
Like its predecessor, Astro Bot is a love letter to PlayStation–not just its current make-up, either, but its illustrious history. From first-party icons like Kratos and Ellie to third-party heroes tied to the hip with Sony’s gaming past, such as Lara Croft and Leon S. Kennedy. There are 195 hidden cameo characters in Astro Bot’s dozens of levels, and part of the fun is tracking them all down. Astro Bot is quite literally this year’s best game yet, and it being a single-player platformer makes it all the more special. It checks all the boxes of being a complete package with its visuals, story, value, audio design, and most importantly, gameplay.