Astro Bot launched on PlayStation 5 this week and the review response is exceptional. The game currently sits at 94 on Metacritic, making it the highest-rated PS5 exclusive and one of the highest-rated games on the platform since launch.
The response is notable because Astro Bot is, in genre terms, a 3D platformer: a category that the industry spent most of the last decade treating as commercially marginal. Team Asobi have built a game that takes PlayStation’s hardware mascot and turns him into a vehicle for one of the most joyful, imaginatively designed platformers in years.
The PS5’s DualSense controller is central to the design in a way that Astro’s Playroom (the free pack-in title it extends from) established but this fully realises. Levels use haptic feedback, adaptive triggers, and the speaker in the controller to create tactile interactions that the DualSense was clearly designed to support.
“Astro Bot is the best argument for why the DualSense’s features matter,” one major outlet wrote. “Other developers have treated them as gimmicks. Team Asobi has built a game entirely around them.”
The PlayStation celebration elements, levels and costumes themed around the company’s history and characters, risk feeling like corporate nostalgia but generally land as genuine affection rather than marketing. Whether you have context for the references or not, the levels themselves work.
There is a broader point here about what this success means for 3D platformers. If Astro Bot’s performance is strong commercially, and early sales data suggests it is, it makes a case that the genre has an audience that simply needed the right game.
We have more time with the full game before the review is done. Current impressions are strongly positive.
