ASTRO BOT is a single-player experience designed to deliver a focused and immersive adventure. Nebulas is the main antagonist of the series, a space bully who loves causing trouble for Astro and his friends. He’s a green-skinned alien with a massive mouth, always looking for ways to make life difficult for the crew.
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What results is a 3D platformer very similar to Rescue Mission (which hardly anyone played because it’s VR-only) and Astro’s Playroom (which everyone owns because it’s free with the console). Although the biggest influence here is Super Mario Galaxy and Odyssey. Despite that, Astro Bot is not a typical Sony first party title. There’s practically no story, no real open world elements, and it’s aimed very much at a family audience – even if it has elements that will be of special interest to veteran PlayStation fans.
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These have no checkpoints, so they’re not for the faint of heart. Yet they never fall into the trap so many platformers do of cranking the difficulty up way beyond reasonable levels and changing the game’s essence. Astro Bot can be punishingly difficult, especially the final gauntlet once you have every collectible in hand, but it never feels unfair. If you missed it when it first launched in September, Astro Bot is a charming adventure game that mixes beautifully designed levels with fun platforming gameplay. 3D action platformers have many ways to keep their players engaged long after defeating the final boss.
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. So, at this point, it’s fair to say that Team Asobi nailed the core game feel, the level design and the visuals. It’s a beautiful game that plays like a dream and offers things that manage to feel completely new and fun – and ultimately, as I think about my time playing Astro Bot, I can’t help but feel great about it. It’s pure joy and a reminder of what the first three generations of PlayStation embodied. It’s a game that perfectly combines technology, design and creativity into a singular, ultra-polished whole without any filter whatsoever.
However, to everyone’s surprise, our adorable and bouncy bot jumped all the way up and cleared those hardcore RPG game’s levels to grab the “Game of the Year” award at The Game Awards 2024 hosted by Geoff Keighley. Climb up the snowball, pull the wire, and activate the vacuum device. Suck up all the ice blocks and head inside the tropical oasis to find the disco ball. Activate it to use the secret exit and unlock the Turtles in Trash level in the Lost Galaxy.
Platformers like Kirby and the Forgotten Land are at their best when they’re introducing new ideas that consistently surprise players. They tend to lag in their back halves when they’ve played all their cards, but have more levels to go. Even Astro Bot dips into that in its final world as it begins repeating power-ups and enemy types. It doesn’t have trouble keeping its double dips to a minimum, though. Whether I’m platforming up a singing tree’s branches, freeing a giant robot from its restraints, or busting through glass walls with my bulldog jetpack, I feel like I’m always discovering something new in almost every level.
At some point during your playthrough, I recommend muting your TV and leaving your controller audio on. You’ll immediately feel and hear just how much Team Asobi uses the controller to sell its visuals. While “toy” has become a derogatory term when talking about video games, Team Asobi sees no shame in embracing it. I can see that when I find a cardboard standee in a construction site level. I poke my head through it, only to summon a flock of pooping pigeons. There’s no tangible reward for doing it as it’s not a tracked collectible; it’s just a purely entertaining moment that gets an honest laugh out of me.
This is one of the only PS5 games that really feels like it was built around the DualSense, and it shows. At one time, this was a fundamental video game experience; a 3D platformer was just about the coolest game you could have. These were tightly designed adventures that understood the ways that digital play could activate creativity, even through a silly little cartoon with nothing to say.
It’s fine as a resource, but I don’t think it makes “all the sense in the world” to have it ready on day one. We never used to have guides like these from day one, and had lots of fun figuring things out. So I disagree – these kind of guides on day one should be discouraged and not commended. Not just one of the best games this year, but one of the best playstation titles. Amazing family game as well that shows off all of the PS5 abilities.
In Let it Slide, you will slip, slide and skate your way across a frozen sea avoiding the perilous icy waters below. 789win across crumbling icebergs, dodge spinning blades, and create your own frosty platforms on the way to rescue your freezing friends. In Building Speed, with the help of Barkster, the bulldog booster, you will blast your way through a sky-high city.
Five new levels are already planned to be added to Astro But starting on July 10th, further expanding the number of courses and bots in the game. These include Twin-Frog Trouble, Suck It Up, Handhold Havoc, and high Inflation. The fifth level remains a mystery, but Team Asobi did tease a new bot for Ghost of Yotei. It even teased a new feature upon completing these new Vicious Void levels. One power-up — which I won’t describe beyond saying it’s really cute since figuring it out is a big part of the fun here — truly captures the essence of Astro Bot.
Puzzle pieces are used to create images of objects that then become additional buildings for players to interact with in the hub world. The first one players build is the gacha machine that they will remember from Astro’s Playroom, and that’s where the majority of one’s coins will be spent as well. Items from the gacha machine fill the hub world out further, and it soon becomes an interactive monument to PlayStation history. It seems odd to say I don’t want to spoil a game that effectively has no story, but some of the game’s best secrets really must be discovered with your own eyes.