Astro Bot is one of the greatest PlayStation games of all time

Astro Bot might be the most perfect distillation of the word “joy” that I have ever seen in a game.

From the incredibly tight platforming controls and gorgeously rendered environments to the staggering variety of inventive gameplay mechanics and infectiously charming love letter to decades of gaming history, I had a smile on my face practically every moment I was playing the PS5 exclusive.

While I had no doubt Astro Bot would be great, given developer Team Asobi’s work on its predecessor, the free PS5 pack-in Astro’s Playroom, as well as a highly promising Summer Game Fest preview, I certainly wasn’t expecting something this good. In fact, I’d even go so far as to say it’s one of the greatest — and, moreover, most important — games that PlayStation has ever released.

First, that boils down to Astro Bot‘s unique status as a platformer. In recent years, I’ll confess some disappointment over how Sony, following the PS3 era, seemingly stopped releasing such creatively interesting and experimental games as PaRappa the Rapper, Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, Warhawk, LittleBigPlanet, Journey and ModNation Racers (RIP, Vancouver-based United Front). Now, most of what we get from PlayStation are big-budget third-person action-adventure games. While I love many of these and certainly don’t ascribe to the reductive “they’re all the same” critique, I do miss the variety of PlayStation’s output in years past.

Astro Bot, rather graciously, is a direct response to, and celebration of, that storied PlayStation catalogue. After your PS5 spaceship is attacked by a fiendish alien, your litany of Astro Bot crewmembers (consisting of a mix of original designs and familiar faces from first- and third-party PlayStation games) are scattered around the galaxy as you crash land on a mysterious desert planet. It’s up to you, then, to sail the cosmos on your DualSense controller to rescue your fellow Astro Bots and recover the components of your broken PS5.

In pretty much any other situation, this would feel like a glorified ad for all things PlayStation, but Team Asobi reverently uses that setup to add so much personality and wit. For one, the loving cameos from established characters are never named, with Asobi instead having a lot of fun making clever references to them. Take Uncharted‘s Nathan Drake, who can at one point be seen playing “Dude Raider” on an original PlayStation, which refers both to comments people have made about his action-adventure series being similar to Lara Croft’s and a standout scene from Uncharted 4. Other winking nods include “nanomachines, son!” in the bio for Metal Gear‘s Raiden or a description for The Last of Us‘ Joel saying he’s known for telling the “occasional white lie.”

That level of care and reverence applies to the assortment of 150 characters from across the gaming space, be it those Sony owns (like Horizon‘s Aloy, The Last of Us‘ Ellie and Shadow of the Colossus‘ Wander and Agro) to third-party faces (such as Street Fighter‘s Ryu, Metal Gear‘s Snake and even the titular character from OctoDad). Suffice it to say that barring a few glaring omissions (presumably due to licensing issues), it’s an incredibly well-rounded list of characters, both famous and lesser-known.

In the main ‘Crash Site’ hub area, you can also interact with each character in delightfully cute ways, like God of War‘s Kratos angrily freezing you with his Leviathan Axe, Devil May Cry‘s Dante showing you how he juggles an enemy with a classic sword-and-gun combo or The Prince from Katamari Damacy accidentally catching you in his über-adhesive ball. You can even whistle groups of them to form human bot ladders and lift platforms for you to unlock otherwise unreachable Crash Site paths. Seeing Kratos, an Ape from Ape Escape, PaRappa the Rapper, the Bloodborne Hunter and Metal Gear‘s Psycho Mantis dash towards me to give me a helping hand never ceased to make me laugh.

The fact that each of these characters have their own unique animations and visual quirks that all wonderfully call back to their original games speaks to the labour of love that is Astro Bot as a whole. That even extends to the hardware itself; a surprisingly relaxing series of minigames in the Crash Site has you repairing the different parts of the PS5 upon reclaiming them, which offers even more variety while also being a clever way to highlight the technology that goes into such a complex machine, especially for younger audiences.

If Astro Bot relied solely on the charms of its fan service, it would be a worthwhile game, but Team Asobi is far too talented to solely rely on that. No, the team took the roughly three-to-five-hour Astro’s Playroom experience and blew it up to include over 15 hours of brand-new content spanning 80 stunningly diverse levels that you’ll traverse with the same oh-so-satisfying jump, spin and hover abilities. All told, this is the closest PlayStation has ever come to matching the vibrant and immaculate craft of a 3D Mario game. In some ways, I’d say Astro Bot even exceeds the Italian plumber’s industry-leading highs.

Part of that boils down to how masterfully Team Asobi marries exceptional level design, beautiful aesthetics and unique gameplay gimmicks (as enhanced once again by the DualSense controller’s haptic feedback and adaptive triggers) at every turn. In one jazzy casino level, you have to use a PS VR headset to slow down time and hop between poker chips and playing cards that are being hurtled towards you to cross gaps between towering slot machines. Meanwhile, a dense jungle stage has you donning monkey arms and swinging the DualSense left and right while alternating adaptive trigger pushes to clamber between crumbling cliffside handles. For something more atmospheric, a a Luigi’s Mansion-esque haunted castle features lightbulb items that reveal hidden platforms and ghostly foes. Some levels even play with perspective in nifty ways, like a towering cheese-themed robotic treehouse in which you must shrink to a mouse size to navigate small corridors and make your ascent.

There’s simply so much variety here, and I was constantly in awe of how infrequently mechanics were reused. In fact, the few times they do return is simply to introduce new utility for them, like Inspector Gadget-style extendable arms that you alternate with the triggers first to punch enemies and then, in a later stage, swing from platforms like a robotic Spider-Man. The sense of discovery in coming across a creative new gameplay or level gimmick, which also contain more of those delightful grin-inducing cameos, is maintained throughout the entire experience.

Then there are a handful of stages that combine all of that to offer entire playable montages of PlayStation games. I can’t tell you how ecstatic I was to play through a level based on God of War Ragnarök (a game that means more to me than most others) as I was wielding Kratos’ Leviathan Axe to a swinging remix of Bear McCreary’s commanding God of War theme. I won’t spoil the other ones, but I also have to tease that there’s an Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune homage that had me legitimately misty-eyed up at how beautifully nostalgic it was.

If that weren’t enough, Astro Bot features dozens of optional mini-stages that are decidedly more challenging than the main fare, including everything from obstacle course-filled races through crumbling galactic platforms, retro-themed, voxel-based enemy brawls and gauntlets to rescue PlayStation heroes like Jak (Jak and Daxter) and The Traveler (Journey) from UFOs.

That said, I do wish some of this optional content gelled together better. When you’re exploring main stages, you can find (often exceptionally well-hidden) portals to “Lost Galaxies” that immediately pull you into secret stages. This means that you’ll eventually have to restart the level you were just doing. Stages are well-paced enough that they don’t feel overly long even upon your return, but it’s still an inelegant solution to unlocking these bonus levels. (Surely we could have been given an option to visit the Lost Galaxies after we’ve finished what we were doing?)

But honestly, even in saying that I feel like I’m grasping at straws to find something negative to say with my “critic” hat on. That’s how utterly fantastic Astro Bot is across the board. As someone whose first console was the original PlayStation, it celebrates my favourite hardware brand in such glorious ways, especially through one of the coolest final levels of any game that I’ve ever played. And beyond that, it’s a genuinely Mario-level platformer that never ceases to delight and wow you while also adding meaningful diversity to PlayStation’s roster of exclusives.

Above all else, Astro Bot is a repudiation of the gaming industry’s seemingly corporate mandated 100-hour open-world single-player experiences and grind-heavy live services — a true testament to the old “quality over quantity adage” if there ever was one. (It also couldn’t be better timed, coming the same week as PlayStation’s disastrous failure with Concord.)

Yes, Astro Bot “only” takes 15-20 hours to reach 100 percent, but when every minute of that experience feels so lovingly crafted — so artfully bespoke — then that truly doesn’t matter. Indeed, Astro Bot is not only one of PlayStation’s greatest games ever made, but one of the finest platformers ever made, and it’s something that should inspire the whole industry to — in the words of my man Kratos — “be better.”

Astro Bot launches exclusively on PS5 on September 6th.

Image credit: PlayStation