The sequel to a simple pack-in game is a flawless love letter to both PlayStation’s history and video games in general. Team Asobi is the last remaining bastion of Japan Studio, the historically creative Sony studio responsible for the likes of Ico, LocoRoco, Gravity Rush, PaRappa the Rapper, and many, many more offbeat classics. Japan Studio was sadly dissolved in 2021, with many of its staff folded into Team Asobi to make Astro Bot.

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. What elevates that beyond a bit of throwback nostalgia is that developer Team Asobi may be the most skilled studio working today when it comes down to game feel.

Many of the PlayStation characters appear as short, charming cameos, but a handful play fully-fledged supporting roles. I won’t spoil who gets the star treatment here, aside from one – the previously revealed Kratos. His introduction sees you wield his ice-infused Leviathan axe and take on the role of the exiled Spartan himself in a thrilling change of pace, the frosty blade boomeranging around the level. It’s here where Astro Bot becomes truly magical, elegantly blending nostalgia with new ideas. Such moments essentially let you play these iconic games in miniature, lending Astro their powers and letting him loose in a level entirely built around familiar stories and settings, soundtracked by remixes of heroic themes. They’re charming and often the real highlight of the experience.

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Here’s what you can earn by collecting Astro Bot’s many collectibles, and the many, many easter eggs to look out for. At its core, Astro Bot is built on the technical foundation of Astro’s Playroom. Using its own in-house technology, the design objective seems clear – to deliver a smooth platforming experience at 60 frames per second while dazzling the player with physics and pyrotechnic effects at every corner. From a technical perspective, the execution is virtually flawless. gg88 ‘s not something we can often say about new games but in this case, the experience is so bulletproof and polished that it feels as if the team perfectly achieved what they set out to do.

Astro Bot 100% Walkthrough – All Bots, Puzzle Pieces, Secret Levels

Set across over 80 gorgeous worlds, Astro Bot will rely on a handful of abilities that are tailored made to each stage. One ability that is also used sparingly is the Sponge, which has you soaking up water and becoming a massive version of Astro Bot. Still, why the Mouse ability is only used a single time is bizarre, given that some abilities are used nearly a dozen times. Astro Bot is, at its core, a game built out of sheer creativity. Damn rights it does, but it puts them on display with a rare confidence few studios could pull off. Astro Bot revels in showing the player something new around almost every corner.

Also need to do all the extra stuff that was added to the playroom before starting. People can call me crazy, I don’t care, Astro’s Playroom is still one of my top 5 favorite games on PS5 and I had very high expectations for this. Have to play it to find out for sure but I’m very encouraged by these reviews as it’s grading ahead of even some of Nintendo’s best. Of course, this new DLC won’t be complete without new bots to save. Astro Bot[a] is a 2024 Platform game developed by Team Asobi and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment for PlayStation 5. It is the 5th game in the Astro Bot series, released after Astro’s Playroom (2020).

The small robot must save fellow bots from danger, totaling 300 bots to rescue throughout the game. You tend to start writing lines in your head when compiling a review, and one that stuck with me early was to call Astro Bot ‘the best platformer since Super Mario Odyssey’. Then I played a little more and started to think ‘maybe it’s better’. All I know is Astro Bot is a contender for the all-time crown in a genre that has felt a little neglected (especially by Sony, who once nurtured it to greatness) in recent years. It’s so much more than a PlayStation history lesson, and in climbing above those expectations, becomes a piece of PlayStation history in its own right – with Astro Bot, the PS5 may finally have arrived. It can be tough to critically gauge how ‘good’ a platformer is sometimes.

It’s easily better than any of the Ratchet & Clank games and, apart from Nintendo, its only real rival is PlayStation VR predecessor Astro Bot Rescue Mission. Although this game could be construed as a sequel to that and certainly shares many similar sequences and characters. It also features dozens of characters from first and third party PlayStation games from throughout the decades – although the way they’re handled is one of the game’s few failings. After the disaster of Concord comes the triumph of Sony’s Astro Bot, with a new single-player classic that is one of the best 3D platformers ever made. Let’s get the traditional Digital Foundry bullet point specs out of the way.

There isn’t anywhere else to spend Coin and you’ll always pay 100, no matter what. As long as you have more than that, you can buy from the machine. Plus, you’ll make a ton going to new and even older levels from exploring, destroying enemies, and collecting coins and old character and Puzzle Pieces. That said, it’s rather easy to get sucked into the charm of Astro Bot and get lost in the nostalgia of it all. I mean, when there are so many collectibles and elements going on, it may seem like a lot.

They are used to seeing the PS5 struggle with unreal engine 5 games, so a platform game that renders low quality cartoon textures at a fast rate but only occasional dips below 60 was a surprise. I am playing now with my daughter and I find something that team Asobi are geniuses. Here Astrobot has the talent & the polish but are the mechanics/moveset actually as good as the forgotten platformers nope. Splatoon 2 was good to me early this year, grapple/other details were simple but great QOL over 1 & the guns as grapples, etc. were fair & the level design was great. Pre-ordered as I have no idea when or what the next Sony game is I’ll get. Will be playing this next week after getting through the Blops 6 beta this weekend.