That focus on variety also applies to the game’s visuals and aesthetics, with the game painting a huge swath of memorable locations — from ghoulishly haunted mansions to arid desert settlements and vast space stations. The simplest way to describe Astro Bot is honestly to compare it to Mario, as it employs a similar kind of “world” structure. There are six themed galaxies you’ll explore, each of which is filled with a handful of main story worlds, hidden extra levels and challenges, a boss battle, and a final world themed after a prominent PlayStation franchise. The series began with 2018’s Astro Bot Rescue Mission, a title for Sony’s PlayStation VR headset. It was followed by 2020’s Astro’s Playroom, a free pre-installed launch title for the PlayStation 5. The series’ first retail, traditional title, simply titled Astro Bot, released on September 6th, 2024.

Astro Bot Rescue Mission

Feel every moment through the DualSense controller with advanced haptic feedback, adaptive triggers, and motion controls. 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. [newline]Still, I can’t deny that Astro Bot deserves every bit of praise it gets.

Team Asobi really mined Sony’s vaults, far beyond simple Crash Bandicoot callbacks, and into weird and wonderful games like LocoRoco and Vib-Ribbon. Platformers have so long followed in the footsteps of Mario, with so many titles trying to emulate what the mustachioed plumber has achieved. Astro Bot’s utterly overflowing creativity and ingenuity make it one of the first platformers that feels like it can stand outside the long shadow cast by Mario. It’s a grand celebration of PlayStation’s legacy and a sign of what its future can become. What’s amazing is despite how wide-reaching the references are in Astro Bot, this isn’t just a celebration of PlayStation’s first-party stuff but so much of what’s defined gaming for decades.

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In every level, there are a number of bots to rescue and puzzle pieces to find. Puzzle pieces help reveal new features in your base at the crash site, like costumes. Saving bots brings them to your base, but having more bots also lets you solve puzzles around the crash site. But what’s really interesting is that roughly 160 of the game’s 300 bots are themed on past PlayStation games, wearing adorable little costumes. At your base, you can also use coins in a vending machine to unlock items for these themed bots, giving them little motifs that you can interact with. In Astro Bot, there are 300 bots to find, including 169 cameo bots, as well as dozens of puzzle pieces and several secret Void levels hidden within the game.

This is what Shawn Layden called for all those years ago, but he seems to have been ignored. As usual, happy to answer any questions about the game and the review Thank you for reading. The iconic marsupial is none other than PlayStation’s Crash Bandicoot! Once you have unlocked Crash Bandicoot Special Bot and its unique cosmetic from the Gatcha Lab (Protective Spirit), find Crash at your Crash site.

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Astro Bot’s not the largest game in the world — you’ll perhaps see the credits roll in hours or so. Those aiming to rescue every robot, complete every challenge, find every jigsaw piece and unlock every trophy, however, will probably end up playing for around 20 hours or more. It’s the type of game that you’re likely to return to as well, simply because of its feel-good nature. It’s a heartwarming and flawless experience, and a 3D platforming masterpiece. While there’s plenty to like about the hub, which we’ll get into later, the main attraction is the game’s range of levels, which are as varied, playful, and fun as you’d hope.

I consider myself a decent platforming player, but I know my limits on having perfect reaction timing. The mothership — a PS5, finally filling a role it’s always looked designed to play — crash lands on a desert world at the centre of several nearby galaxies. These systems house the game’s stages, where you’ll spend most of your time, but you’ll also regularly return to the hub world, which evolves and expands as you progress. It falls into a great rhythm of exploring each galaxy and its stages, then returning to the hub to drop off your robot buddies and discover new things to see and do.

The game begins with a scene of traveling through space in a huge spaceship that resembles a PS5 console. Suddenly, we are attacked by a green alien, who destroys the spaceship and scatters its parts across various galaxies. Of course, we weren’t traveling alone on the mothership; other bots were with us, and as a result of the wicked attack, they now find themselves in danger.

Team Asobi asserted dominance in this area with Playroom, but the range of effects delivered here through haptic feedback and the adaptive triggers outshines it. These conditions do drain the battery, but the implementation is too good to really worry about that. There are even gameplay mechanics that utilise the haptics in ways we haven’t seen before, like feeling particular walls for a rough texture to reveal a secret. It really shows what the DualSense can do like no other game before it.

Even within a level, an ability is used in several different and creative ways, but always stemming from its singular mechanic featured in that level. It ramps up the platforming and combat sequences via an approachable but challenging incline and chains these little moments together in such a way that there’s never a lull in any level. Whereas many platformers may drill down on a key feature or small set of features, Astro Bot displays confidence by often disposing of exciting new tools shortly after introducing them. It expresses iteration in cycles of five minutes each, rather than iterating on one idea for five or more hours, which I find both refreshing and bold. g28 ‘ve seen that’s similarly willing to dispose of cool ideas like this is It Takes Two, and Astro Bot does it more often and with more enjoyable mechanics. There is both depth and breadth to most levels, and frequent checkpoints mean you’ll rarely be punished for exploration or missing a jump.

If you have even the slightest interest in the platformer genre, Astro Bot is a must-play game. Following the release of the first set of speedrun-style DLC levels, many fans were wondering if Team Asobi had anything else planned for the popular game. After releasing a full-sized holiday level and teasing an unreleased level at the PlayStation XP Tournament Final in London, Team Asobi officially confirmed a second wave of DLC levels for Astro Bot. Unlike the first DLC, these levels would focus more on platforming and offer a time attack version with online leaderboards once completed for the first time.

These are structured in a certain order, so you’ll need to beat each level to unlock the boss battle, something that requires a set number of bots to have been unlocked. Thankfully, should you return to a previously completed level, you can pay a small amount of PlayStation coin currency to have an assist bot show you where the remaining bots and puzzle pieces are. Each star system also has a level that’s specially themed around a popular PlayStation franchise, allowing Astro to make use of unique skills for a short while. Needless to say, Astro Bot keeps you on your toes, and sometimes challenges you to think outside the box in order to solve a problem or find a well-hidden secret.