These short sprints are littered with fast-moving objects, numerous enemies, and precise gaps to hop across that are designed to trip you up. Throw a complete lack of checkpoints into the mix as well, and these are easily some of the toughest tasks in Astro Bot, with a final level that’s a real tough nut to crack. It’s a non-stop gauntlet of quickfire threats that made me piece together everything I had learned up until that point in a frantic, but still fun test. Unlike ASTRO’s Playroom, ASTRO BOT is a standalone, full-sized adventure that offers over four times more worlds, 300 bots to rescue and dozens of new powers and features to discover.

Having grown up playing every PlayStation console to date, he’s developed an eclectic taste, with particular passion for indie games, arcade racers, and puzzlers. He’s also our go-to guy for Sonic-related matters, much to his delight/chagrin. A collection of endlessly inventive levels and fantastically fun abilities, it delivers joy in spades, never once becoming even remotely dull or repetitive.

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Beating Astro Bot’s main story took me about 10 hours, while getting the Platinum trophy took a little over 15 hours. Physical editions of Astro Bot come with a physical poster of the robots on their PS5 mothership, plus the preorder bonuses detailed below. In Astro’s Playroom, the Puzzle Pieces found throughout will piece together murals in the PlayStation Labo. In Astro Bot, however, they’ll still put together a picture, but once it’s complete, it’ll spawn a new place to explore and others to customize both yourself, your Dual Speeder and the saved Bots around you. For example, you can get a Changing Room that keeps all the Outfits you get from the Gacha Machine for you to choose from. It’s pretty worthwhile and honestly a lot of fun to reap sweet rewards from your treasure hunting.

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There are a few different reasons for this, the first of which is that Astro Bot’s core gameplay is as solid as titanium. If you’ve played any other Mario-esque platformer, you know what to expect here, but Team Asobo has really created a game that feels astoundingly satisfying to play, even in the most minute ways. You have absolute control of Astro’s jumps and punches, with smart features like lasers that come out of his feet opening up even more options for gameplay.

Critics have praised its charming aesthetics and the seamless gameplay mechanics, but some note the occasional repetitive elements. Despite minor flaws, it stands out as one of PlayStation’s finest platformers, with many calling it a Game of the Year contender. Astro is revived by his Dual Speeder, a smaller spaceship resembling the DualSense controller, and together they begin reactivating satellites and exploring galaxies to rescue the crew and rebuild the mothership. Along the way, he rescues V.I.P. Bots (guest characters from other games) and explores planets based on Ape Escape, God of War, Uncharted, LocoRoco, and Horizon. The second highlighted moment comes after Mighty Chewy has been vanquished.

I hate the level design, totally unbalenced when compared to the rest of the game. Essentially, here, key mechanics from the most recent God of War are put to use – specifically the axe where you can throw, freeze and retrieve the axe. This puts a completely different spin on platforming and combat. But they go even further to the point of referencing those narrow passages you often see in big AAA cinematic titles where the camera pulls in and your character slowly makes their way through it. The game is constantly toying with expectations, introducing ideas and concepts you might never have expected – it’s overflowing with fun. On top of all this, Astro Bot is basically a tribute to PlayStation’s history and, in fact, in some ways, the medium as a whole.

We’ve also outlined which character each of them represents, what series they’re from, and where to find them in the game. The game has a total of 300 bots to collect and find throughout the game. OK8386 GAME disabled CD support on both the PS4 and PS5, so inserting a standard CD into the console simply doesn’t work out of the box.

But it’s the temporary abilities that come with each level that make things truly exciting. The Twin Frog gloves are a particular favourite, with their sticky tongues flinging out to provide a grapple swing option. They’re also spring-loaded, meaning any incoming projectiles can be sent back from whence they came, exploding in an enemy’s face. I also very much enjoyed the mouse mechanic, which reduces you down to a super small size, effectively turning on a “Toy Story” mode that lets you clamber up oversized shelves and leaves in search of secrets. For 30 years, Sony has given us a vast library of top-quality PlayStation games, but there has never been a mascot platformer among them to rival the heights that Nintendo’s Mario regularly reaches. Packed with dozens of colourful levels and experimental abilities, Astro’s latest outing thrusts him onto centre stage, joined by a supporting cast of PlayStation’s past heroes to provide hours of pure joy.

While it’s beautiful to see people celebrating online, it is a shame when a moment of joy, such as a less well-renowned title like Astro Bot winning Game of the Year, is tarnished by a negative swell. Combine this with the fact that extreme views increase the number of likes a post gets, and therefore how much it’s seen, and what you’re left with is an environment that’s set up to prioritize strong opinions. An interesting study reported by Scientific American showed that one of the elements that drives online polarization are influencers. As the piece explains, in network science, an influencer is someone who is connected to lots of other people.

@kcarnes9051 The main levels I would say are fairly straightforward to get through without much difficulty. However, as you play through the game, many smaller challenge levels will become available and these amp things up, testing your platforming and combat skills with short gauntlets. Generally speaking, it’s pretty easy breezy, but there are tougher challenges to find if that’s what you want.

Dodge cranes, smash through crates, and even speed through a flying car wash on the way to rescue your stranded crew.

Team Asobi has shipped the kind of polished product you expect from the best developers – refined to a fine sheen, excellent performance and clever solutions for every possible rough edge. Loading between levels never robs you of control and is super fast. It feels finely tuned from top to bottom and I think that’s something to commend.

A whirl of bots to rescue, of loving Playstation references, of deep cuts like Ape Escape and more recent stars, who get outings I don’t really want to ruin. It’s boss fights when you expected them and boss fights when you absolutely didn’t. There are jokes about tech demo ducks in here, then, but there’s also the sense the whole thing is, on some level, a huge tech demo. It’s a sustained tech demo, one that never runs out of new wonders to show you, new marvels to fling at you and swiftly discard. Previous Astro Bot games have been employed to showcase new bits of kit. It feels like Sony is trying to channel its whole spirit into this game.

It’s not just movement though, as the creak of Aloy’s bow and arrow, while aiming in the Horizon level, is insanely satisfying and much better than in the actual game it’s based on. Bafflingly though, none of the characters are ever named – not the first party Sony ones or the third party ones. Instead, Ratchet, for example, is referred to merely as Tooled-Up Mechanic and Jill Valentine simply as Alpha Female. There’s also a character called Pro Skater, which we assume is Tony Hawk, but perhaps it’s one of Sony’s forgotten extreme sports games – it’s impossible to tell.

Astro Bot levels are beautiful, brought to life by genius art direction and some of the best graphics on the PS5. It all feels so alive thanks to how the DualSense controller reacts to what players see on the screen, with Astro Bot making great use of the DualSense’s haptic feedback and speaker. It’s a shame that most other PS5 games don’t even come close to utilizing these features to their full potential. For those hoping to get as much playtime as possible out of the package, Astro Bot packs in plenty to do. There are secret levels to find, puzzle pieces in each level, a gacha machine filled with outfits, and a home base that evolves into a full-on playground over time.