Astro Bot

Platform: PS5

Remember booting up your PS5 for the first time and being greeted by the pre-installed Astro’s Playroom? The glorified tech demo, designed primarily to showcase the new features of the advanced DualSense controller, immediately became one of the best launch games for Sony’s fifth console – an incredibly charming affair that was at once a love letter to PlayStation history and a brilliant little platformer in its own right.

The only problem? It was indeed "little" – a mere 16 levels over four worlds; practically blink-and-you'll-miss-it territory. Thankfully, Sony listened to the gushing praise for Astro's bite-sized outing, and tasked developer Team Asobi with building the mini-mascot his biggest game yet. The result? One of the most joyful gaming experiences of the year, a meticulously crafted and vastly expanded 3D platformer that's accessible for newcomers but challenging enough for veterans who've been around since the PS1 days.

Like the best of the genre, controls are deceptively simple – at their most basic, a jump and a punch – but applied with clever effect. For instance, a second tap of jump mid-air activates Astro's boot jets, allowing him to make longer leaps, but also zapping enemies underfoot or destroying fragile flooring. Holding down the punch button charges up Astro's spin attack, not only useful for dispatching swarms of foes but also necessary for activating certain switches. All simple stuff to begin with, but soon Team Asobi has players thinking seven moves ahead in how they'll use those skills to reach that area or solve this environmental puzzle.

Yet beyond these smart applications of basic moves, it's the DualSense controller that remains the star of the show. Blow into its mic, and you'll power up fans in the game world. Pay attention to its haptic feedback as you run Astro along a wall and you'll feel which panel might be a secret switch. Even the passive features – the tap tap tap of Astro's feet emanating from the pad's inbuilt speaker, the motion controls steering the in-game "DualSpeeder" hovercraft, the occasional pushback of the resistant triggers – help pull the player more materially into the game.

As with its predecessor, Astro Bot sees Astro navigating colourful worlds to rescue his robo-pals, while also rebuilding their PS5-shaped spaceship, its components scattered about the cosmos after a run-in with a passing UFO. Setting off from the Crash Site hub world, Astro soars between solar systems, hunting down his allies and gearing up for thrilling battles against set-piece bosses. With the added space afforded by a "full size" game, Team Asobi is able to get increasingly inventive with its level design, not only with the deceptively fiendish ways in which it hides those imperilled androids but also in how it mixes up gameplay by gifting Astro temporary upgrades.

For such an innocent-looking game, it's demanding enough to evoke some foul language.

One level sees the diminutive hero outfitted with monkey arms, allowing Astro to swing between banana-handgrips, while others allow him to freeze time, equip a booster rocket for sky-high jumps through vertiginous areas, or gain spring-loaded boxing gloves to pummel enemies and slingshot around with. One that transforms Astro into a walking sponge, able to absorb water to grow into a scenery-stomping kaiju or squeezing out the fluid to drown enemies, is especially fun. There's something of a Super Mario Odyssey vibe to all these transformations, each shift adding to and expanding on the core experience and ensuring every step of the journey across the game's 80+ levels feels fresh and exciting.

Despite its cutesy aesthetic though, Astro Bot doesn't shy away from testing players' pure platforming prowess. Not only do regular levels have some surprisingly tricky puzzles to solve, sometimes leading to alternate exits that unlock whole other 'story' levels, but there are clusters of immensely challenging bonus levels to hunt down too. These task players with making it through veritable assault courses that chain together some of the game's toughest elements, where the slightest mistake will cast Astro right back to the start of each maddeningly difficult track – for such an innocent-looking game, it's demanding enough to evoke some foul language.

What truly sets Astro Bot apart from the crowd though is just how celebratory it is. If Astro's Playroom was a love letter to gaming, this is an ode, a sonnet, a paean. Around half of the 300+ bots to be rescued are cosplaying characters drawn from a vast library of video game classics, and while plenty are taken from Sony's own lengthy history – including plenty of deep-cut nods to ancient Japan-only mascot characters or long-forgotten PS1 games – there are just as many bots masquerading as the likes of Street Fighter's Ryu and Ken, Metal Gear Solid's Snake and Psycho Mantis, or Persona 5's Joker. Better still, these can be outfitted with collectibles from the virtual gashapon machine (how better to spend the coins you'll be collecting in each level?), adding lovingly animated in-jokes when you interact with them in the hub area. For those who've been gaming for years, it's infectiously joyous – and that's before you get to the weaponised nostalgia of themed levels that cap off each region, which recreate the likes of Ape Escape or God of War: Ragnarök in adorable mini-bot form.

As close to platforming perfection as it's possible to get, Astro Bot is a gorgeously animated treat of a game from start to finish – and thanks to its integral use of the DualSense, one that could only exist on PS5.