Still, Team Asobi may argue its smaller complement of baddies that grow in complexity are what keep it consistent. It’s a play straight out of Mario’s book, and in the platforming world, the plumber is still the king even as a new pretender climbs higher to the summit. Aside from elevating Astro Bot with strikingly tactile feedback to what is happening on screen, the DualSense is also the source of clues. In particular, the rumbling, or specifically the type and intensity of the rumble. For certain puzzles, including the Az-Tech Trail doors, the DualSense is crucial to figuring out how to proceed, so pay close attention on what your controller is telling you at all times. Like many of PlayStation’s limited edition DualSense controllers, the Astro Bot DualSense is based on one of its many franchises, specifically 2024’s Game of the Year, Astro Bot.
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. This is about as perfectly executed as you can realistically expect these days and I urge you to play it.
Vibrant colors make me feel like I’m in a cartoon, but Team Asobi doesn’t flatten its environments or skimp on detail. In one level, I start by walking across swaths of bright green foliage. I feel the crunch of the grass between my metal feet and hear the sound from my DualSense’s speakers. Then I move on to a metallic checkerboard floor, where I hear my legs lightly click-clacking on the tiles.
I can’t even say hey this Sega Rally like Indie should have more to it. Because the audience of players are too nostalgically stupid to care. Read the review, research what the game is, decide if you want to play it or not. The number at the end is , like any review, someone’s opinion and TBH borderline irrelevant. Sometimes a game is just what people need in a specific timeframe and that’s enough.
Astro Bot is a certified Game of the Year contender as our own review painted it as one of Sony’s best first-party exclusives in years. This review of Astro Bot was facilitated with a code provided by the game’s publisher. As of now, Sony does not have a PlayStation 6 on the horizon, nor does it seem to have any other major new hardware coming soon.
This includes all undiscovered bots, puzzle pieces, and Void levels, which are the secret levels found within other levels (as opposed to those found in the space map). The bird pings collectibles from quite far away, and the pinging intensifies as you get closer. As the PS5 ship crashes down below, you’ll visit six themed galaxies that each hold a crucial component of the console-ship, and then bring the fight back to Nebulax, who personally holds onto one final part. Each of the over 80 levels plays host to several PlayStation-focused cameos that need to be rescued. The worlds often delight in their color, creativity, and charm, and each of the main worlds ends in a final level that is designed around one particular PlayStation franchise, such as God of War and Uncharted, to name a few.
Explore Astro’s Earlier Adventures
They barely come up with anything that useful to use the foam for. They just don’t have that mindset, too much money focus then to be creative with the worlds/core mechanics. It annoys me with modern gaming, money, graphics, basic mechanics and bare minimum ideas.
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. The only other game I’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.
Meet Astro Bot
With the exception of the truly bad ones, most of them achieve a decent baseline level of fun, because fun is all they’re going for. You can enjoy them in the moment, and it’s not until afterwards you realise it’s an empty sugar high. Across that lifetime of experience, I think Astro Bot is worthy of a medal. For many players, part of the fun was discovering all of the cameo-inspired robots in Astro Bot.
The Game Awards Jury Is More Diverse Than Ever, But The Nominees Aren’t
What I got was one of the greatest platformers I have ever played, in terms of creativity, consistency, and cleverness, that just so happens to have a bunch of PlayStation mascots inside it. Pulling together tips and tricks for a game that is so welcoming to all types of players feels a bit odd. But, because Astro is a silent protagonist and a lot is inferred rather than explained outright, some of the game’s elements left to the player to decipher may not be all that obvious to all. This is the third full wave of Astro Bot downloadable content, which began with a similarly structured five speedrun levels after launch and, until this release today, most recently saw a special Christmas themed level released. Playstation’s Black Friday sale is now live, offering sweet deals like $100 off PS5 consoles, savings on dozens of games, and much more. Each of the 5 Main Nebulas contains hidden 1 Puzzle Piece on the Space Map.
While the studio could just do that again, it would risk coming off as repetitive. But if the studio creates something too different from what came before, then it may not be met with the same acclaim. “No chance,” Doucet said when asked if Astro Bot could come to PSVR2. “It’s designed for a different medium. g28 would be a different game.” Though the explanation makes sense, this likely won’t be welcome news to purchasers of Sony’s headset who are already frustrated over a lack of big games. Alongside the new content, Team Asobi has also released a PlayStation 5 Pro patch for Astro Bot, “featuring a constant best resolution while still running at 60 frames per second.” So that’s nice. The irony that Astro Bot is launching on the same day that Concord is being shut down will not be lost on anyone, even though that is essentially a coincidence.
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.
I even use the microphone to blow into a giant horn, a kind of delightful gameplay interaction that even Nintendo has moved away from in recent years. This is one of the only PS5 games that really feels like it was built around the DualSense, and it shows. That’s why Astro Bot feels as consequential as it does even if it just looks like your average 3D platformer full of collectibles and clever power-ups at a glance. The expertly designed PS5 exclusive plays like an intervention with its own publisher. It brings the PlayStation platform on an intergalactic journey through its history to rediscover its long lost sense of wonder.