And then everyone who buys a PS5 gets a free digital copy of Astro’s Playroom, a short game that lasts between three and five hours, depending on how many of the collectibles you want to get. In Astro’s Playroom, the Puzzle Pieces found throughout will piece together murals in the PlayStation Labo. In Astro Bot, however, they’ll still put together a picture, but once it’s complete, it’ll spawn a new place to explore and others to customize both yourself, your Dual Speeder and the saved Bots around you. For example, you can get a Changing Room that keeps all the Outfits you get from the Gacha Machine for you to choose from.
Platformers used to be this bold and seemed to shed that personality in favour of retreading safe old ground. But despite being a museum to Sony’s past, Astro Bot is more concerned with looking forward, not backwards. Astro Bot makes incredible use of the PS5’s DualSense Controller, with clever implementation of haptic feedback and adaptive triggers. If you have even the slightest interest in the platformer genre, Astro Bot is a must-play game.
Astro Bot just received its latest free update, adding five more levels and new bot cameos to Team Asobi’s Game of the Year-winning platformer. 77ball net that seem simple at first, but soon unfurl themselves to reveal tantalising depths and secrets. Most are fairly linear, but some go the extra mile and are enjoyably knotty, providing sandbox-like areas to hunt for collectibles in. There’s never the openness found in the large-by-comparison Mario Odyssey levels, but enough nooks and crannies to get stuck into nonetheless.
The Journey To Excellence
The developers at Team Asobi didn’t reinvent the platforming wheel here, but like any good platformer, it’s the unique ways the powers are used that make them special. Instead of water, that F.L.U.D.D. power-up sucks up a green goo it then spits out to create platforms of grass. I giggled like a toddler using it to defeat a special enemy by literally sucking its green, goopy brains out. Pulling together tips and tricks for a game that is so welcoming to all types of players feels a bit odd. But, because Astro is a silent protagonist and a lot is inferred rather than explained outright, some of the game’s elements left to the player to decipher may not be all that obvious to all.
Tie-in With Astro’s Playroom
Like its predecessor, Astro Bot is filled to the brim with PlayStation references and cameos. The most visible ones come in the form of the Special Bots — bots dressed up as famous and obscure PlayStation family characters. Out of the 300 bots you can collect in the game, 173 are such Special Bots.
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.
Even before picking up any cool new toys, Astro has a laser-propelled hover ability that lets him destroy enemies while jumping over them, plus a standard punch and a chargeable spin move. These three abilities, plus whatever tool he picks up, are the entirety of Astro’s arsenal. This mechanical focus allowed Team Asobi to perfect each move and then apply them all in a thousand different ways, and the result is a rewarding and robust platformer. Astro Bot’s best moments take inspiration from some of PlayStation’s biggest games while adding a unique twist. Astro Bot packs a ton of variety into its level design, both visually and mechanically. Team Asobi cements itself as an essential PlayStation studio with an imaginative platformer for the ages.
If you want to collect these yourself in your own game, check out our guide to all bot locations, or the 100% walkthrough. If you’re curious about some of the most obscure characters, we have a guide to 21 of the more tricky ones, with details on where you’ve seen them before. The DualSense also produces some unique audio if it isn’t hooked up to headphones, so try to play without any if you can for a more immersive experience. See why critics are calling ASTRO BOT the most innovative platformer of the generation. Feel every moment through the DualSense controller with advanced haptic feedback, adaptive triggers, and motion controls.
Each level presents new challenges, from navigating tricky terrain to overcoming environmental hazards. As galaxies are explored and Bots are rescued, Astro Bot’s hub world stations begin to unlock, including a closet with outfits for Astro and a claw machine that gives players a place to spend all their collected coins. The machine dispenses new Astro costumes, cosmetic options for the PS5 controller spaceship, and joy for the rescued PS-themed Bots.
When you rescue them, they can give you that character’s power and take you to a special level modeled on a game like Horizon Zero Dawn or Uncharted, so detailed that they’ll even include side quests from the original. And I defy you to feel something other than the warmest nostalgia during the final boss fight and credits sequence — I didn’t know just how much emotion a PlayStation Move controller could make me feel. Besides many of Astro Bot’s creative and exciting boss battles, nostalgia fuels much of Astro Bot’s most thrilling moments, especially with the few stages specifically themed after PlayStation’s most beloved properties. However, those experiences risk feeling hollow for those who haven’t played the games that Astro Bot seems desperate to reference.