Astro Bot hands-on preview [SGF] – A celebration of everything PlayStation!

On May 30th, Sony announced the brand new game Astro Bot, featuring an entire game featuring our little robot buddy and some iconic costumes from all over PlayStation’s history. During Summer Game Fest I had the honor to sit down at the PlayStation area and play through four full levels of the new Astro Bot. It’s a delight, to say the least.

Something that was consistent among everyone I was around were the smiles. Everyone loved the cute nature of the levels and Astro Bot themself. Every time we collected a PlayStation legend, people would smile and clap and the Sony representatives behind us would cheer along with us. It’s a celebration of everything PlayStation from top to bottom.

Astro Bot is a 3D platformer, using everything the PlayStation controller has to offer. From the motion controls of the DualSense for piloting the ship, to using every trigger and button for different elements. These are all fluid and easy to pick up. Families are going to love playing Astro Bot together, giving the parents a chance to explain their love for characters like PaRappa the Rapper and Kratos while their child explores the colorful and exciting worlds with them.

My favorite mission was set on a beach with amazing water effects all around. In this mission we got stretchy boxing type gloves. These worked as everything from traversal assistance with swinging from object to object, to combat letting you punch spiky objects, and for beating up on a bosses’ cool goggles and tentacles. It was, again, extremely easy to understand the concepts and have a focus on fun.

Now, if you’re like me and you get hyper focused on beating difficult stages, they’ve added challenge stages which are HARD to say the least. I was able to beat one during my preview time. I almost got through the entirety of the second stage, but died at the end several times and had to end my preview time. They are going to be a lot of fun, and I can already see the speed running community embracing this game quickly to see who can get through these very difficult stages the fastest. They never seem unfair though, which is the best kind of challenge. If I failed, it was because I missed a jump slightly or got ahead of myself. I cannot wait to see more of these when the game launches.

The platforming elements are very exciting, with many different types of puzzles to go through. You also get help from different abilities such as one that allows you to float up higher than you could jump yourself, or a bull rush ability to smash through glass and other objects. These keep the stages fresh and feeling new. Each stage I played felt completely different while still easy enough that I never felt lost.

Your gamer instincts will also be on fire throughout these missions with hidden areas and characters all over the place. You’ll be saving your robot friends from many scary situations like being tied up on a crane, being stuck in goo, or being stuck at the end of a jumping puzzle. Some of these little robot friends will have some familiar looks like I mentioned before, such as Kratos and PaRappa (we saw more, but I don’t want to give the joy of finding them away). These make collecting every item in a level even more important as you don’t want to leave any friend behind.

Astro Bot is a celebration of all things PlayStation. With throwbacks to their legacy games, amazing usage of the full PlayStation 5 controller, and more; I cannot wait for everyone to get to experience the joy that we felt previewing it. You can pre-order Astro Bot now, which releases exclusively on PlayStation 5 on September 6th.

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