“Join ASTRO in a brand-new, supersized space adventure across more than 50 planets!“

I’ll say it up front: If you want a game that will make you smile, then you’ll want Astro Bot.

Not only is it a fantastic and charming platformer, but it is also a love letter to PlayStation’s history. Astro’s Playroom was a free delightful little package that I was hooked on collecting everything in. It was reminiscent of collecting trophies in Super Smash Bros., this time being every console and refresh from the PS1 to the PS4 that would make the console start-up noises when you interacted with them. How cool is that?

Astro Bot took Playroom and made it a whole game, full of collectibles and secrets. Instead of consoles, you can find over 300 bots each resembling Playstation characters of the past. In addition, you can also unlock costumes for Astro and colors for the controller he flies around on. If you know me, you know how much I enjoy unlocking stuff.

The gameplay is as solid as ever, with Astro gaining some new power-ups. These include rockets, boxing gloves, becoming a balloon, etc. All of them are fun, except the monkey arms. That requires the most gyro motion (yes I did not know you could turn that off until after I beat the game), and it was annoying after a bit. Every single level feels so unique, there was one where you shrink down to the size of a mouse and I really did go “Oh wow now that’s cool!”. The bosses are also completely different from each other and offer engaging fights.

We also cannot forget the levels strictly based on certain franchises. The God of War one was sweet, and considering I beat 2018 earlier this year it was cool to see the franchise bot-ified. The Uncharted level really pulled at my heartstrings – I need to replay 2 or 3 sometime soon. In the end, I think there were maybe 4 levels total that gave me trouble but otherwise everything is well balanced

5 speedrun levels were added as free DLC, they can all be completed within 2 minutes so nothing special there but nice to see Team Asobi open to additional content. I would buy DLC galaxies if that ends up happening. If you haven’t bought this game yet, go get it now!