Astro Bot

Astro Bot's third game is the first without direct connection to a hardware product, and it's going to be the biggest: With Astro Bot, Team Asobi and Sony are bringing back the platformer age, with a hefty dose of PlayStation nostalgia and franchise attachment.

Once upon a PS2 time, Sony has been the place to be for mascot platformers. From Crash over Jak to Ratchet, the PlayStation inhouse studios delivered 3D games with adorable critters in then in a row. Then, the time of mascots ended, and said studios moved on to grittier and more superhero-filled game worlds.

But the spirit of mascot platformers came back to Sony with a PSVR title, of all things: Astro Bot: Rescue Mission wasn’t only a charming new platformer with a lot of endearing cameos of Sony’s own franchises, it was widely renowned as one of the best VR titles on the market at the time. While Rescue Mission sadly has not received a port for PSVR2 or one of the PC VR goggles, the PlayStation 5 delivered another Astro Bot banger, free of charge as a tech demo with the console itself: Astro’s Playroom is a high-class platformer that not only shows off the functions of the DualSense controller, but is in its own right a full game and one of the best modern 3D platformers.

Now, Astro Bot studio Team Asobi, a former part of Sony Japan Studio, delivers the third game in the franchise, and the first without an attached gimmick. Astro Bot, as it is simply called, is a full-scale platformer game that builds on the foundation of the two predecessors, but this time releases as a full price big PS5 game. The game is at once a delightful romp through 3D platformer conventions as well as through Sony’s history: Like Astro’s Playroom before, Astro Bot includes collections of PlayStation hardware and numerous cameos of little Astro Bot characters in Sony attires, from Bloodborne’s Hunter over the Wanderer from thatgamecompany’s Journey to Kratos. The DualSense’s functions again take center stage in the game design, even going so far as to include the controller as Astro’s spaceship in the game. Feeling the drops of rain and the crunching of ice on a player’s hands and using the built-in microphone and speakers for more than just audio logs was one of the best demonstrations of the hardware’s power with Astro’s Playroom. Astro Bot wants to surpass those ideas with new ones, and sorts the thematic ideas into 50 different planets that include several levels each.

Astro Bot releases on 6 September for PlayStation 5.

Conclusion

Astro Bot sees even eye to eye with Mario. One of the best platformers of the modern age returns!