I’ve played Astro Bot on and off since its release in September, and every time I get into the game, I always feel a little bit more relaxed. Beyond the obvious play on nostalgia, Astro Bot is also a very refined, very fun platformer that deserves all of the awards it received.

At The Game Awards 2024 this morning, Team Asobi’s Astro Bot walked away with a plethora of accolades. These include Best Family Game, Best Game Direction, Best Action/Adventure Game, and of course, the coveted Game of the Year award. If you’re looking to pick up any game ahead of the holiday season, you should definitely consider Astro Bot.

As an avid PlayStation fan, Astro Bot is a walk down memory lane on almost every stage I play through. There are a total of 300 bots to be rescued in the different levels of the game, and half of them (150) are “VIP” bots that are based on iconic PlayStation characters. It’s a pleasant surprise whenever I come across any of the VIP bots.

Nostalgia aside, Astro Bot’s gameplay is also very well done. Controls, for example, feel great, which is particularly important for a platformer. Timing my jumps and hovers to get from one platform to another feel fair, and if I do fall, it is completely my own fault. It doesn’t feel like I’m being held back by the game’s controls, basically.

I also love the gameplay mechanics of Astro Bot, such as the different power-ups that are obtained on different levels. From a friendly dog that allows Astro to dash through objects or a pair of extendable boxing gloves, these abilities add sophistication to the gameplay experience.

And that is a good segue to the difficulty curve of Astro Bot, which is not that steep! Well, kind of. Overall, I would consider it a rather accessible game that even my wife – who doesn’t spend as much time gaming as I do – can easily enjoy, though there are challenge levels that ramp up the difficulty quite a bit for players who want to test their platforming skills.

Graphically, Astro Bot is a gorgeous game that is easy on the eyes. The different levels have nice, bright colours with beautifully rendered environments, and I’d even go as far as to say the stunning graphics make it fun to just roam around stages to look for secret areas. I’ll be honest, I find it tiresome to spend time searching for hidden stuff in most games, but with Astro Bot, I don’t get this feeling quite as much.

And then there are the different ways Astro Bot takes advantage of the DualSense controller’s features to the fullest extent. Even simple actions like walking on different surfaces can be felt with the DualSense’s refined haptic feedback vibration and speaker. The controller’s adaptive triggers also add an extra layer of immersion as I interact with the different stage mechanics; I won’t elaborate too much on this to avoid spoiling some of the surprises.

While some may think that Astro Bot won The Game Awards 2024’s Game of the Year title because there aren’t high-profile AAA titles to compete against it, I disagree. It’s easily one of the best platformers to be released in recent times, especially in a genre that is mostly dominated by Nintendo.

Hopefully, Astro Bot marks a shift in PlayStation’s platforming strategies, and I’m personally excited to see what Team Asobi – a first-party studio for Sony Interactive Entertainment – will do in the future. Someone has to bring the fight to Nintendo in the platforming genre, and who better to do it than PlayStation?