ASTRO BOT

After delighting new PS5 owners as an opening act to showcase the console’s unique features, Astro Bot was finally ready for prime time as Team Asobi made a fully fledged 3D platformer with polished production values channeling Nintendo magic and PlayStation history

- Alan Wen

THE BACKGROUND

You don’t really get mascot characters in games anymore. Sure, PlayStation has its share of beloved and iconic characters but these are from more mature and realistic stories, not what you might find turned into a plushy or big cuddly suit on a convention floor. Except for Astro Bot, who kind of stumbled into the role accidentally.

A creation of PlayStation Studios’ Tokyo-based Team Asobi, Astro’s first proper ‘wow’ moment was the 2018 PSVR1 platformer Astro Bot: Rescue Mission, which garnered acclaim as the best exclusive on Sony’s headset. His next outing was in Astro’s Playroom, a 3D platformer preinstalled with every PlayStation 5 console. Despite being a fairly small game designed primarily to show off the DualSense controller’s features, from its immersive audio and haptics to blowing into the built-in mic, it was a hit with critics who were placing it in their end-of-year lists and even comparing it favourably with Mario’s 3D games. But would they have said the same if it had been a feature-length game that wasn’t a freebie? Its standalone self-titled entry unveiled at State Of Play in May 2024 was then something of a surprise, all the more so after Sony had stated that there would be no new first-party releases that year. Could this throwback platformer made by a team of around 65 people fill the blockbuster void in the calendar and give us a modern mascot hero we all needed?

THE GAME