In another that sees Astro shrink to the size of a mouse, the miniature world reveals new woodsy and backyard-like scenery that regular-sized Astro couldn’t taysentoto reach. Some levels even drastically change the art style, as seen in a series of voxel-art levels I was glad to discover each time, or some others I dare not spoil. Releasing alongside the game is this limited-edition Astro Bot-themed PS5 dualsense controller.
Oh, and special mention must be made for the soundtrack, which is just excellent throughout. There are some levels in here that almost had me pulling my hair out (in the best sort of way). But regardless of the difficulty scale, you feel so cool when you figure out the latest mechanics or platforming puzzle.
A sequel, Astro’s Playroom, was released for the PlayStation 5 as a launch title that is pre-installed on every console and serves as a tech demo for the new DualSense controller. Because the in-game gallery of characters uses pseudonyms for each of them, we’ve labeled them with their proper names and mentioned which series they belong to. Whether you’re still tracking down all of the secret characters in Astro Bot or you just want to see if your favorite character made it into the game, here’s a roundup of all the secret bots we’ve found so far. 200 Bots are required to clear the main story, as the final locked level, Falcon Mcfly, requires 200 Bots to access.
Psychonauts
Although the biggest influence here is Super Mario Galaxy and Odyssey. Use the whistle (Triangle) to all call bots, then use Camera Mode (D-Pad Up) and move the camera around until you’ve found both explorers. You can try taking a picture as you may get lucky and they’re already close together, but if not walk over to either one and punch and kick them in the direction of the other. Once the two characters are near each other, snap a picture in Photo Mode (not the built-in PS5 screen capture) and unlock the Thick As Thieves trophy. To unlock this trophy, you need to find all three Golden Egg “artifacts” on the Dude Raiding world of Serpent Starway. The Dude Raiding level unlocks after you defeat the final boss of Serpent Starway, Lady Venomara.
You can be sure that a game awarded this score has the highest quality presentation and expertly honed gameplay, but also breaks boundaries and pushes the industry forward in a meaningful manner. You say one game might appeal to one person but not the other and then start making blanket statements about what reviewers should be scoring games. Platform games obviously don’t appeal to you…that doesn’t mean that they can’t appeal to other people. When someone scores a game they have to score it for its own merits and take it for what it is, not compare it to every game that has ever existed. BG3 is exceptional and I couldn’t agree more it’s a 10 but it’s not comparable to Astro Bot in the same way it would be dumb to compare Gran Turismo 7 and Alan Wake 2.
The PlayStation first party studio got its start in 2013 with The Playroom, an augmented reality tech demo coinciding with the release of the PS4. The Playroom was comprised of a collection of mini games intended to demonstrate the PlayStation camera and DualShock 4. Although at the time, the bot we would one day be gushing over, looked slightly different.
Will be playing this next week after getting through the Blops 6 beta this weekend. Also need to do all the extra stuff that was added to the playroom before starting. People can call me crazy, I don’t care, Astro’s Playroom is still one of my top 5 favorite games on PS5 and I had very high expectations for this.
However, I admit these crashes came at the end of my long 11-hour session with the game on my first day with it, so maybe it was an issue Team Asobi will address. Still, the hard crash backpedaling on my saved data was strange and somewhat soured what was a marathon of smiles for about 10 hours of that day. In this way, Astro Bot gates a small but not insignificant portion of its best material behind a skill check that some of its audience won’t pass. Its best attribute, a rumble feature more nuanced than what other controllers provide, is also simpler than all of the DualSense’s high-end abilities that sometimes come off as gimmicky. Astro Bot also did away with some of them from Astro’s Playroom, such as using the center touchpad to unzip some blockades. Instead, this is done with the joystick, suggesting Team Asobi found it best to keep players’ hands off the somewhat clunky touchpad this time around.
But maybe the PlayStation didn’t need an answer to Nintendo and Sega’s beloved mascots. Games were entering an era in which more realistic human characters like Cloud Strife, Solid Snake and Lara Croft were becoming the new industry icons. As this more mature stream of gaming culture evolved, cutesy mascot characters and the 3D platformers they called home became less and less common.
