What’s On The Shelf | Games, Music & Culture

In what should have been nothing more than an expensive tech demo masquerading as a full-priced game, Astro Bot somehow became one of the best platformers of the last decade.

Released in 2024 to celebrate PlayStation’s 30th anniversary—a sentence that physically ages me every time I read it—you play as the adorable Astro Bot. Life is good. You’re cruising through space aboard your giant PlayStation 5-shaped mothership with your robot buddies when disaster strikes. The universe’s newest menace, a gigantic space slime named Nebulax, ambushes your ship, scatters its parts across the galaxy, kidnaps your crew, and leaves you stranded on a lonely desert planet.

Not exactly the relaxing space vacation Astro had planned.

Thankfully, your little DualSense-shaped companion ship survives the crash, helping you activate a satellite to locate your missing crew. From there, your mission is simple enough: rescue your robot friends, rebuild the mothership, punch Nebulax squarely in his slimy face, and save the universe. Standard Tuesday afternoon stuff.

The adventure is split across five main galaxies, a secret sixth “Lost Galaxy,” and your crash-landed hub world. Each galaxy contains several required stages leading toward a boss battle, along with optional challenge levels that range from “pleasant afternoon platforming” to “who at Team Asobi hurt you?” Fortunately, the hardest stages are completely optional, though your pride will probably convince you otherwise.

From the moment Astro lands on the first level, it’s immediately obvious how polished everything feels. Your move set is incredibly simple: punch, charged spin attack, jump, hover, and that’s about it.

That’s the entire point.

Astro Bot is a perfect example of quality over quantity. Instead of giving you thirty mechanics you’ll barely use, it takes a handful of basic moves and polishes them until they shine brighter than a freshly waxed bowling ball. Every jump feels responsive, every punch lands with satisfying impact, and boosting over enemies to destroy them never gets old. The controls disappear almost immediately, leaving you to focus entirely on the joy of moving through each level.

As expected, enemies gradually introduce mechanics that require different approaches. Some need to be punched, others dodged, others defeated using whatever ridiculous gadget the current stage decides to hand you. It’s standard platforming design, but it’s executed with an attention to detail that keeps everything feeling fresh.

Where Astro Bot separates itself from the pack is its collectathon DNA.

Every level hides several missing Astro Bots waiting to be rescued. Some are generic members of your robotic crew, while others are lovingly recreated versions of famous PlayStation characters. You’ll naturally run into icons like Crash Bandicoot, Ratchet & Clank, and Spyro, but Team Asobi digs surprisingly deep into PlayStation history. One minute you’re rescuing the Hunter from Bloodborne, and the next you’re wondering why anyone remembered Mr. Mosquito from uhhh… Mr. Mosquito. It’s the kind of fan service that feels less like corporate nostalgia bait and more like developers genuinely celebrating three decades of PlayStation history.

Those rescued bots return to your hub world, gradually transforming an empty wasteland into a bustling little playground filled with references, animations, and secrets.

On top of that, every stage contains puzzle pieces used to construct attractions back at the hub. Completing these puzzles unlocks everything from a giant gacha machine to cosmetic upgrades for your speeder and costumes for your rescued bots. None of it is essential, but it constantly gives you another excuse to check every corner of every level.

Then there are the special character stages.

After defeating each galaxy’s boss, you unlock an entirely unique level inspired by one of PlayStation’s classic franchises. The first one is based on Ape Escape, complete with the iconic monkey-catching net, and it immediately becomes one of the biggest highlights of the game. I’ll avoid spoiling the others because discovering them is half the fun, but they’re consistently creative love letters to PlayStation’s history.

Likewise, nearly every level introduces its own temporary power-up. Maybe Astro gains extendable boxing gloves capable of punching distant switches. Maybe another stage hands him an entirely different toy. The important part is that these mechanics never overstay their welcome. Each gadget exists for a single level, explores every interesting idea it has, then politely leaves before it can become repetitive. It’s an old Nintendo design philosophy executed almost perfectly.

Going into Astro Bot, I honestly assumed the universal praise was just another case of console warriors convincing themselves their exclusive game cured seasonal depression and paid off their mortgage. Every new PlayStation exclusive seems to receive that treatment online.

Turns out, this one actually deserved it.

Once I stopped rolling my eyes and let the game win me over, I realized I was playing something genuinely special. Astro Bot belongs in the same conversation as Super Mario Odyssey, and I don’t say that lightly. Every stage introduces a new mechanic, a clever twist, or another surprise that kept me smiling from beginning to end.

More importantly, it made me want to do absolutely everything.

I hunted every hidden bot, every puzzle piece, every secret exit, every Lost Galaxy level, every collectible hidden behind suspicious-looking walls, and every prize inside the gacha machine. It wasn’t because the game demanded completion. It was because I simply didn’t want it to end. And that’s why Astro Bot gets the Top Shelf Game Award.

Those are rare games.

The best games don’t just entertain you—they make you curious. They make you excited to see what’s around the next corner. Astro Bot managed to do that for nearly every minute of its runtime.

I love when a game surprises me, especially in a genre I don’t naturally gravitate toward.

Astro Bot didn’t just surprise me.

It reminded me why platformers became beloved in the first place.