Astro Bot isn’t just for kids. Team Asobi designed it for players of all skill levels, including kids and beginners, but at its core, Astro Bot feels like it was made for video game fans. The game is a skill-focused celebration of everything that makes the gaming form so memorable and fun, while also being a great introduction to the language of gaming. With precise, responsive controls, lovable characters, and an exciting variety of mechanics and environments, Astro Bot is one of the best games Sony has ever produced.
Astro Bot is technically the fifth installment in the Astro universe, but it’s the first fully-fledged (and full-priced) entry in the series. It follows The Playroom (a 2013 collection of mini-games for PS4), The Playroom VR (2016’s PlayStation VR Jam), Astro Bot Rescue Mission (a 2018 PS VR platform game starring only robots), and Astro’s Playroom (a 2020 DualSense demo that comes preloaded on every PS5). Astro Bot takes the ideas from these earlier titles and wraps them up into a focused 3D platform game with dozens of main worlds, a ton of extra unlockable planets, and a variety of satisfying mechanics. On top of this, the robot protagonist is super cute in any situation. The fact that some of Astro Bot’s characters and settings are recognizable from popular video games makes the whole thing even more adorable.
Sony Interactive Entertainment
Players are on a mission to rescue all 300 of their robot friends after their spaceship, a supercharged PS5, is commandeered by aliens and scattered across six dangerous galaxies. Sitting atop a single DualSense, Astro must comb 50 total planets, punching and kicking other robots to collect them (in a friendly way, of course), then store them within the touchpad of the on-screen controller and launch everyone off to safety in their own world. At the same time, Astro is searching for missing parts of the PS5 spaceship, which are guarded by bosses from each galaxy.
The hub world, home to the spaceship and rescued robots, features a customization portal for DualSense and Astro, a Gacha machine with items to bring your robots to life, a Safari Zone where you can take photos with animals you find, and smaller regions where you solve additional puzzles for Astro and his friends. Outside of the hub planet, the basic game loop is to collect coins, puzzle pieces, and robots by completing platform challenges and surviving enemies like Bowser, but new dangers and more tricky environments appear around every corner.
Sony Interactive Entertainment
Many of the planets Astro lands on introduce new mechanics, such as spring-loaded boxing gloves like a frog’s face, an octopus that inflates Astro like a balloon, a mouse backpack that shrinks Astro at will, a penguin-propelled swimming booster, and a stopwatch that stops time for a short while. Levels are designed around these unique mechanics, and the variety on display is impressive, from a spooky castle filled with poisonous green ghosts and invisible platforms, to a deconstructed space station in a fascinating space setting, to an entire planet made of giant neon-lit casino props.
Even before he gets his cool new toys, Astro has the laser-propelled hover ability, allowing him to destroy enemies as he leaps over them. He also has a standard punch and a chargeable spin move. These three abilities, along with the gadget he picks up, make up Astro’s arsenal. This mechanical focus allowed Team Asobi to perfect each move and apply them in a thousand different ways, resulting in a challenging and robust platforming game. All the cuteness is just a bonus.
Sony Interactive Entertainment
Astro Bot isn’t demanding, but it’s not easy either. Many stages require patience, attention, and advanced platforming skills, but resets are generous and failure doesn’t cost you anything but time. Completionists will have a lot of fun with this game, with a ton of secret passages and hidden bots, most of which are cleverly hidden and easy to miss unless you actively look for them. On the other hand, speedrunners will also enjoy Astro Bot, as it offers planets of platforming challenges with very responsive controls.
There are 300 different bots to find, many of which are drawn from the gaming world. Many of the branded bots come from outside of Sony, with big names like Capcom, Konami, and Sega well represented. A few of them had my partner screaming in excitement, but were adorable in their own right. Some of the more memorable levels come from popular Sony series like God of War, with Astro swinging Kratos’ axe on one planet. Team Asobi has dug through Sony’s vaults, going far beyond simple Crash Bandicoot callbacks to weird and wonderful games like LocoRoco and Vib-Ribbon.
Sony Interactive Entertainment
Now, let me really wow you here. Astro Bot is beautiful. And I don’t just mean cartoonishly beautiful. The scenery is crisp and lively, full of interactive detail, and every pixel seems polished to perfection. But it’s the game’s physics that really bring it to life. When Astro lands on a giant, inflated daisy, the material flexes under his tiny feet, denting with every step and sway, making the whole scene seem as if it’s being clenched in its grasp.
Skating on a snowy stage, Astro picks up speed and changes direction instantly, and the DualSense responds with sounds and vibrations like a sharp knife slicing through thick ice. (As an aside, I think it would be fun to play an entire game just about ice skating… as long as it wasn’t called Astro Glide). Tactile objects like sprinkles, dice, skulls, and glass stars are scattered throughout the stage, and running through them is not only ASMR-satisfying, but sometimes reveals new secrets. When rain hits Astro’s transparent umbrella hat, the sound is perfectly reflected on the DualSense, and you can feel the raindrops hitting your grip. Each stage has a background music with a catchy hook, ranging from funky to big band and synth-like. Astro Bot’s sound effects, haptics, graphics, and physics work perfectly together to turn any surface into a playground. It’s like magic.
Sony Interactive Entertainment
On the cuteness front, Astro reacts to his environment with adorable animations, shivering from cold, trembling from fear, or stomping his little metal feet in excitement, and his bot friends are similarly expressive. When Astro bangs his head on an impassable ceiling, he does a very cute flinch; the bots turn around and wag their tails at Astro, just before he punches them into the DualSense. During the pause screen, you can flick all of your collected bots out of the digital controller, and they’ll flop around in the air before landing safely on the touchpad. Nearly all of the bots’ actions are endearing.
Astro Bot emphasizes the importance of play. It’s Super Mario Bros. for a new generation of video game enthusiasts, an introduction to common mechanics while also being a great challenge for seasoned players. In both cases, Astro Bot radiates fun. If this signals a new, less rigid direction for Sony, along with new titles like Lego Horizon Adventures, I’m excited to see what the future holds. But for now, I’m playing Astro Bot 100%, swearing and laughing my way through it.
Tip: Astro Bot has now joined the hallowed ranks of our favorite PS5 games guides. You can see our picks, 21 at the time of writing, in Best PS5 Games of 2024.
