Somehow, in defiance of reason, Astro Bot has been PlayStation’s best kept secret, seemingly only trotted out when Sony has new technology to show off. As far back as 2013’s The Playroom, when the little guy was tasked with acting as a digital concierge for the PlayStation Camera and the DualShock 4 controller on the occasion of the PS4’s release, you knew that he was a superstar in the making. That’s even been the case this gen. Ask PS5 owners if they knew that the system came with a free game installed on the SSD—the brilliant Astro’s Playroom—and if they actually played it. The yeses are going to be fewer than they should be.
Still, better late than never. As great as Astro’s Playroom was, it’s a mere tech demo compared to what Team Asobi has accomplished with Astro Bot. Here we have a full-on 10-to-20-hour odyssey that acts as a refinement of all the delightful, imaginative, magical things that Team Asobi has been doing with basic platforming mechanics since The Playroom. It’s more than just a big, beautiful celebration of PlayStation gaming over the last 30 years or so, but an absolute triumph of just straight-up, uncompromised, guileless fun in video games in general. In recent generations, it felt like Nintendo had the monopoly on that ethos of game development. Team Asobi just delivered an emphatic statement that Nintendo is far from alone.
Like Astro’s Playroom, though, Astro Bot is, above all else, a showcase for everything that PlayStation systems are capable of beyond marginally better graphics, framerates, and load times. Not that those things aren’t a tiny factor, because Astro Bot is an extremely pretty game. But it’s also one of the few games to truly take advantage of the PS5’s technology.
The DualSense’s haptics and gyroscopic abilities are crucial to the game, and it’s impossible to imagine it without them. Moving the controller around isn’t just some requirement to complete tasks here, but another of Astro Bot’s favorite toys to play around with. Flip the controller up on the pause screen and you basically turn it into a trampoline for the rescued bots to jump around on. Wave it around when entering a new stage to fly around and grab powerups. There’s a certain type of block puzzle that relies on feeling out which brick in a wall is loose, and the distinction between bricks is more subtle than just more intensity in the controller’s vibration.
When we talk about the game being a system showcase, that’s more literal than one might think. As with Astro’s Playroom, Astro and his friends ride through the cosmos on a ship made out of a PS5. His adventure begins after an alien called Nebulax snatches the CPU out of the ship, causing the ship to explode and scatter bots and parts all over the galaxy. The mission is to retrieve the parts, of course, and once retrieved, players get to rebuild the PS5/ship by hand, in a quirky little minigame involving a hilariously clumsy set of robot arms. But beyond that, rescuing the bots winds up being a tour de force through PlayStation history.
Half the missing bots cosplay as characters from across 30 years of PlayStation, ranging from heavy hitters like Kratos and Atreus, Aloy, Joel and Ellie, and Dante from Devil May Cry, to obscure, forgotten gems like Dart from Legend of Dragoon, Unjammer Lammy, and the rabbit from Vib Ribbon. It’d be cute if they were just dressed like the characters, but nearly all the VIP bots are interactive, and the sheer number of tiny animations and well-played references is both endlessly endearing and logistically staggering. And that’s not even getting into the dedicated stages with gleeful recreations of worlds from God of War, Ape Escape, and Uncharted.
Just like with the other Astro Bot games, all it takes is five minutes for the game to endear itself to players. There’s plenty of smartly executed nostalgia at play here, but the game does more than appeal to our fondness for past delights. Throughout, it uses its various characters to memorably tell tiny stories within the space, and every square inch of the galaxy is an invitation to explore, mess around, marvel, and laugh. Even while it offers its share of challenges, it’s designed in such a way to allow for fast, repeated tries instead of punishments. Astro Bot’s galaxy is alive, and vibrant, and welcoming. It’s a place to genuinely and truly play.
Sony Interactive Entertainment did not respond to our request for review code. This game was reviewed using a retail copy purchased by the reviewer.
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It was a fun game. The best PS exclusive I’ve played in awhile. It is too short and there’s nothing original about it, but it’s fun. A 8 out of 10.