The unbridled joy I felt when firing up a game I’d never seen before came flooding back to me. I remembered why games were so important to me growing up and how they shaped my creativity. Naysayers will say that no childhood memory comes from sitting in front of a TV, but that was never true for me. Platformers have so long followed in the footsteps of Mario, with so many titles trying to emulate what the mustachioed plumber has achieved. Astro Bot’s utterly overflowing creativity and ingenuity make it one of the first platformers that feels like it can stand outside the long shadow cast by Mario.
This is one of the only PS5 games that really feels like it was built around the DualSense, and it shows. Plenty of stages require patience, awareness and a high degree of platforming skill, though resets are generous and failure doesn’t cost anything other than your time. Completionists will have a great time with this one — there are so many secret passages and hidden bots to find, most of them cleverly tucked away and easily missed unless you’re actively looking for them. On the flipside, speedrunners should enjoy Astro Bot as well, since it offers planets of platforming challenges with incredibly responsive controls. These are just three examples, but quite literally every level in the game has some kind of unique idea or design.
When the PlayStation 5 mothership is attacked by ASTRO’s long-standing galactic nemesis, scrambling its wires and scattering the crew throughout space, only ASTRO can make things right! Setting off on his biggest mission yet, he needs your help to rescue the stranded crew and rebuild the mothership. These lovely gizmos are realized with a gift for tactility — for creating a toylike world you feel like you can reach out and touch, click, pop, squash, smash, crack, and squeeze — that is second only to Nintendo’s. Some of this stems from Team Asobi’s enthusiastic use of the DualSense’s rumble, haptic triggers, and speaker. Some is rendered by Team Asobi’s astonishing, virtuosic command of the PlayStation 5 itself; Astro Bot is a tech marvel, perhaps the best-looking PS5 game to date. The sheen of the surfaces, slosh of the liquids, scale of the levels, and smoothness of the frame rate are stunning.
These additions enrich the gameplay while further establishing Astro as a character. Seeing Astro take out and play his PS One or being frightened to death in a horror-themed stage adds to his charm in classic mascot character fashion. Team Asobi’s success with creating a game to showcase new PlayStation technology led to its next game, The Playroom VR. Similar to its predecessor, The Playroom VR was a free launch game for the PlayStation VR that functioned as a showcase for Sony’s venture into the world of virtual reality.
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Speaking of the use of DualSense, the game uses all of the controller’s features to the max. It adds so much to the in-game experience that this game might actually be the perfect demo to showcase what a PS5 and DualSense can do. The use of adaptive triggers, haptic feedback, and gyro controls makes the game perfect for the console. The amount of collectibles and secrets there are to discover is also staggering; it’s enough to keep you playing for hours on end and keeps achievement hunters busy. Lastly, the game even has a ton of gameplay callbacks to their older IPs which pulls the nostalgia strings perfectly. Astro Bot is, without a shadow of a doubt, this year’s best platforming game.
Astro Bot puts it in the final treat that you only get to even play if you beat every other level, including all the secret ones (and boy, are there a lot of secret ones). Astro Bot Rescue Mission is a 3D platformer where players control Astro Bot, a small robot navigating various levels using a DualShock 4 controller. The game is designed for VR, so players experience the game world from a first-person perspective, essentially becoming a giant robot that interacts with the environment. This includes actions like smashing walls with head-butts, dodging attacks, and using the headset’s microphone to blow petals around.
What Are All Special Bots In Astro Bot? Mudokon Minion
Although some mechanics are reused a little more than I’d like, when such powers are recycled in later levels they’re thankfully recontextualised and given slightly new uses. 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. Bursting to the seams with charm, Astro Bot is an inventive, nostalgia-fuelled platformer of the highest order. 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.
What Are All Special Bots In Astro Bot? Snowboarder – Board Member
I went into it with high expectations thanks to Astro Bot Rescue Mission and Astro’s Playroom, and it not only met my expectations, but completely exceeded them. It’s the best 3D platformer since Super Mario Odyssey hit the scene in 2017 and will be remembered as an all-time classic of the genre. Everyone with a PS5 should get their hands on this game ASAP, and hopefully, Team Asobi gets to continue making masterpieces. A new batch of five levels were added in July 2025, adding five new cameo bots including a couple of Final Fantasy characters. 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.
Astro Bot begins with a PS5-shaped spaceship traveling the stars when its crew of 300 Bots suddenly encounters a mischievous alien who breaks the ship and scatters its pieces and crew across multiple galaxies. As players take control of Astro, they’ll work to repair the ship and rescue their crewmates. TD88 CLUB is a platformer adventure game released on September 6, 2024, for the PS5, serving as a sequel to Team Asobi’s Astro’s Playroom from 2020 and the third game in the series. Players take on the role of the lovable Astro Bot, embarking on a space-faring adventure through diverse environments, including waves of sandy beaches, lush jungles, and fiery volcanoes. Along the way, Astro gains new powers and transformations to aid in the journey. Released in celebration of PlayStation’s 30th anniversary, the game pays homage to the brand’s legacy by allowing players to find and reunite with over 150 iconic PlayStation characters.
This 100% Ghouls and Bots Walkthrough guides you to every bot and puzzle piece in this Astro Bot level. But then I remembered that communication between player and developer is not only what to do but also what to feel. And suddenly, it felt like they were hovering just over my shoulder, holding back their laughter as a dear friend would while they waited for me to get a joke. They’d intentionally held back an explanation because they wanted me to experience the feeling of figuring it out for myself.
As part of Update 1.016, the game has added a new level called Armored Hardcore, which focuses on Astro Bot’s Iron Suit ability. In addition to the new platform-heavy level, players will have a new cameo bot to rescue and can earn a new Trophy called Rolling Rescue to fill out their collection. “For Astro’s Playroom, there have mainly been two types of audiences,” says Doucet. They’re mostly the type who crave more colorful games and want to go back to 3D platformers. These players are also happy to see how we treat the PlayStation heritage. Hardcore PlayStation fans will likely be both pleasantly surprised and disappointed to uncover what characters are included and how much love their franchises receive in Astro Bot.