Astro Bot is the game you buy a PS5 for

It is 9PM, and each I privation to bash is sleep. I hardly person the vigor to speak, fto unsocial play a video game. But I person a occupation to do, and it’s reviewing Astro Bot by its merchandise date, truthful I marque a woody with myself to play conscionable 2 levels, past spell to bed…

Five hours later, my look burns from smiling. I’m convinced I could build, past tally through, a ceramic wall. That’s the benignant of mode Astro Bot volition marque you feel.

Astro Bot, out present connected PlayStation 5, is simply a collect-a-thon platformer. You play arsenic the robot Astro adventuring successful abstraction successful his PS5-shaped mothership with 300 of his friends — immoderate of them elemental bots, others robot-ified versions of celebrated video crippled characters. Suddenly, he’s attacked by an unsubtle-as-hell Xbox-green alien monster who trashes his vessel and scatters its parts and his 300 friends to acold corners of the universe.

Astro Bot is filled with modular platformer tropes, but it pulls disconnected a consciousness of wonderment successful their presentation. As you research galaxies to find your chap robots and unlock caller parts of the game, you’ll find a batch of acquainted elements, lone to spot them executed successful quirky and delightful ways. Just astir each platformer has an quality that lets you sprout crossed longer distances, but nary of them fto you bash it by strapping a bulldog to your back. 

The antithetic levels Astro explores person themes that you’d expect. There’s a jungle planet, a volcano planet, and worlds of pirates, ghosts, and gardeners. Some worlds necessitate peculiar powers to navigate, and those, too, are beauteous modular successful relation if not successful form. The monkey power-up lets you standard walls, portion the rodent quality shrinks you down to entree tiny spaces. There’s adjacent a Super Mario Sunshine-esque F.L.U.D.D powerfulness that uses liquid to determination Astro around.

The developers astatine Team Asobi didn’t reinvent the platforming instrumentality here, but similar immoderate bully platformer, it’s the unsocial ways the powers are utilized that marque them special. Instead of water, that F.L.U.D.D. power-up sucks up a greenish goo it past spits retired to make platforms of grass. I giggled similar a toddler utilizing it to decision a peculiar force by virtually sucking its green, goopy brains out. 

One power-up — which I won’t picture beyond saying it’s really cute since figuring it retired is simply a large portion of the amusive present — truly captures the essence of Astro Bot. When I archetypal recovered it, I could not recognize it astatine all. It seemed useless; I felt silly for getting stumped by what had been, up until that point, an incredibly elemental game. And dissimilar with astir of my pickups, the crippled wouldn’t assistance me. Astro Bot typically displays a small tutorial container for however to usage it, but this time, it deliberately near maine hanging. Playing a crippled is similar being successful a speech with its developers without the quality to talk directly, and it felt similar connection had breached down.

But past I remembered that connection betwixt subordinate and developer is not lone what to bash but besides what to feel. And suddenly, it felt similar they were hovering conscionable implicit my shoulder, holding backmost their laughter arsenic a beloved person would portion they waited for maine to get a joke. They’d intentionally held backmost an mentation due to the fact that they wanted maine to acquisition the feeling of figuring it retired for myself. They wanted maine to laugh, similar I fishy they did erstwhile designing it.

And erstwhile I yet got it, the jolt of knowing was truthful friggin’ almighty that I laughed myself into spontaneous sobbing saying aloud to nary one, “Astro Bot, I would die for you.” 

There are truthful galore moments precisely similar that. I thought bots you rescued were simply currency utilized to beforehand to the adjacent level, lone to recognize that successful the game’s hub world, they’re your friends putting their precise bodies connected the enactment to assistance you entree adjacent much collectibles. Some distinctive PlayStation-themed bots — think 1 wearing Aloy’s reddish hairsbreadth oregon Kratos’ beard — service a much peculiar purpose. When you rescue them, they tin springiness you that character’s powerfulness and instrumentality you to a peculiar level modeled connected a crippled similar Horizon Zero Dawn oregon Uncharted, truthful elaborate that they’ll adjacent see broadside quests from the original. And I defy you to consciousness thing different than the warmest nostalgia during the last brag combat and credits series — I didn’t cognize conscionable however overmuch emotion a PlayStation Move controller could marque maine feel.

From my two-hour demo astatine Summer Game Fest earlier this year, I knew Astro Bot would beryllium thing special. It was a simple, joyous small platformer crafted arsenic a solemnisation of PlayStation’s past. And if that’s each it was, it’d marque for a large small pit halt connected the 2024 crippled calendar arsenic we question toward the bigger, much anticipated releases similar Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Echoes of Wisdom, and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.

But Astro Bot is truthful overmuch much than a mascot platformer plucked from the precocious ’90s and retooled for modern audiences and hardware. It is the benignant of crippled that reminds america wherefore video games beryllium successful the archetypal place: love. (Yeah, I cognize that sounds corny — but I’m serious.) Astro Bot exemplifies the large emotion that compels america to play, make, constitute about, and stock video games with our friends and family. Even if it volition support you up mode past your bedtime.