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.

In one, you hit switches that change the level between night and day, changing the entire layout at the same time. In another, you shrink into a tiny mouse, seeing things from a whole new perspective and opening up wild new solutions to puzzles. Past that, another level has you growing flowers to make your way up an ascending staircase of giant pots. There are musicals to play through, obstacle courses, giant robots to resurrect, and more. I could go on and on about every unique level, but the wonder of Astro Bot lies in discovery itself. Many of the PlayStation characters appear as short, charming cameos, but a handful play fully-fledged supporting roles.

But what I really love about Astro Bot is that it’s also just filled with bits and pieces. Stuff to roll around in, stuff that forms little piles that can be kicked about. I’ll open a chest and there will be lumps of gold rolling around at the bottom. In one completely dazzling level I was given a magnet, and soon I was vacuuming up metal bars by the dozen and spray cans by the hundreds, all ready to form a bait ball I could fling at a distant target.

There’s so much, in fact, that it took me another nine hours (so, 18 in total) to 100% Astro Bot and acquire the platinum trophy that comes with it. While I’d never say any of its main worlds ever approach being truly “difficult” in the pursuit of that 100% completion goal, some enemies or obstacles did take a few tries. Thankfully, checkpoints are often generously and frequently located, meaning you’re only ever moments away from the spot of your previous demise. These five new levels, available to ASTRO BOT players at no additional cost, will truly test your jumping skills. Each one comes with a brand-new Special Bot to rescue and, once that’s done, can be replayed in Time Attack mode with online rankings.

The game provides a complete experience with all content available through gameplay. From incredible Astro Bot speedrun records to creative gameplay challenges, our community continues to discover new ways to enjoy this beloved platformer. Journey through inventive levels filled with surprises, from sticky-tongued frog gloves to mouse-sized adventures. Each stage brings new abilities and challenges, making every moment a delight.

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 takes you through deserts, across volcanos, inside dojos, to outer space, up mountains, down rivers, and both visually and mechanically, offers something new every time that always hits the mark. Bosses appear at the end of each cluster of levels and randomly in the middle, always with a new way of attacking that forces you to use powers in new ways, think differently, and experience the level in a fresh light.

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. LINK TD88 -growing install base of the PS5 has allowed many players around the world to enjoy Astro’s Playroom. Filled with references to hardware throughout PlayStation’s history and boasting an abundance of cameo appearances from popular characters, Astro’s Playroom celebrated PlayStation’s history in a unique way. This made Astro not just the new kid on the block, but established the bot as a character integral to the PlayStation brand.

Puzzle pieces help reveal new features in your base at the crash site, like costumes. Saving bots brings them to your base, but having more bots also lets you solve puzzles around the crash site. But what’s really interesting is that roughly 160 of the game’s 300 bots are themed on past PlayStation games, wearing adorable little costumes. At your base, you can also use coins in a vending machine to unlock items for these themed bots, giving them little motifs that you can interact with. If you missed it when it first launched in September, Astro Bot is a charming adventure game that mixes beautifully designed levels with fun platforming gameplay.

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.

Every Astro Bot Cameo Collectable

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.

Astro Bot’s Awards

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.

Feather Cluster Vip Bots

It’s a game that oozes creativity, consistently delighting and surprising the player with new mechanics, gameplay twists, smart boss battles, and jaw-dropping set-piece moments. But past that, it’s also a grand celebration of PlayStation and video game history as a whole — the only game that’s been able to rival Super Smash Bros. in that regard. Astro Bot is easily the best game on the PS5 to date and a platformer that can proudly stand shoulder-to-shoulder with anything Mario has done.

If you have a seminal PS1 game in your mind or a semi-obscure PS2 horror game, there’s a good chance it’s represented here. 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. Astro Bot is an action and platformer game for the PlayStation 5 which features Astro. Jump on your Dual Speeder and explore tons of planets, and meet up with iconic PlayStation characters across the game. Astro’s adventure takes him to various galaxies full of planets to explore as he tracks down his scattered crew.

If you don’t want to replay levels, the most efficient method is to collect everything on the first run. Following the release of the first set of speedrun-style DLC levels, many fans were wondering if Team Asobi had anything else planned for the popular game. After releasing a full-sized holiday level and teasing an unreleased level at the PlayStation XP Tournament Final in London, Team Asobi officially confirmed a second wave of DLC levels for Astro Bot. Unlike the first DLC, these levels would focus more on platforming and offer a time attack version with online leaderboards once completed for the first time.