AstroBot review: The most 'Super Mario Galaxy' game that isn’t actually 'Super Mario Galaxy'

You mean to tell me PlayStation could’ve been making games like this the entire time instead of 9,000 photorealistic sad dad simulators? Astro Bot, which is the third platformer starring Sony’s new unofficial robot mascot — but somehow the first one to be a regular full-priced non-VR game — is a breath of fresh air compared to most of the last decade of PlayStation. It’s not a competent prestige TV knock-off like God of War, or misanthropic edgelord misery like The Last of Us, or a bloated open-world mess like Horizon. Rather, this is a colorful, whimsical, mechanically tight, and overall delightful 3D platformer that’s also packed full of references to PlayStation history. While Astro Bot’s reverence for the PlayStation brand occasionally feels forced, and probably can’t sustain itself beyond this game, it’s such a goddamn thrill for the 10 or so hours it takes to finish that I think it’s a must-play for any PS5 owner. Astro Bot premise What's up, Ratchet? You good? Credit: PlayStation Astro Bot, from the developers at Team Asobi, isn’t really a game about plot. A PS5-shaped mothership full of little robots encounters some trouble in outer space — and it’s up to one heroic Astro Bot to rebuild the mothership and save all the bots. While narrative isn’t really something that moves the needle in Astro Bot, it does feed into the game’s main aesthetic gimmick: constant references to PlayStation. Many of the hundreds of stranded bots you need to collect throughout the game’s levels to progress through the game are dressed like classic PlayStation characters, which is carried on from a similar idea in Astro’s Playroom. When you collect a referential bot, they go back to your hub world and hang out doing little animations related to whatever game they’re from. It’s cute! I got a big kick out of seeing Kazuma Kiryu from Yakuza and Teddie from Persona 4 in there. However, turning references into necessary collectibles for progress does drive home the point that this is the