The easy standout of Sony’s latest presentation is a brand new Astro Bot game, which boasts plenty of nods to PlayStation’s history.
While rumours of a new Astro Bot game have circulated since February, the official confirmation came as sweet, colourful relief during Sony’s State Of Play presentation on Thursday.
Developer Team Asobi’s first entry in the series, Astro Bot Rescue Mission, was criminally overlooked back in 2018 because it was trapped on VR. The follow-up Astro’s Playroom meanwhile, while great, was very short and served primarily as an introduction to the PS5 console.
This new game, simply titled Astro Bot, however looks like an expansive reset for what could become one of PlayStation’s major flagship titles.
As seen in the trailer below, it looks like it’s sticking fairly closely to the formula in Astro’s Playroom, albeit with far more creativity on display – between flying levels riding the PS5 DualSense controller, pet dog companions and boss fights against giant cobras.
Like Astro’s Playroom, there’s also plenty of robots dressed as classic PlayStation characters, from Uncharted’s Nathan Drake, PaRappa the Rapper, to Kratos from God Of War.
A PlayStation blog post from the developers hints that these characters will play a bigger role this time around, although it’s unclear if they’ll simply help Astro Bot or if they’ll be playable themselves.
Astro Bot is also described as the biggest game in the franchise to date, with six galaxies to explore and over 80 levels.
There will also be 15 new abilities at your disposal, which will take advantage of the DualSense controller, haptic feedback and adaptive triggers. Some of these abilities are shown in the trailer, like Twin-Frog Gloves which allows you to punch at long range and swing, while a giant sponge lets you suck up water so you can inflate to a massive size.
The developers are promising more enemy variety too, with over 70 new types including ‘massive bosses’ at the end of each galaxy. They also tease ‘die and retry levels to test your reflexes’, which suggests there will be an option for some harder challenges.
We don’t have long to wait either, as Astro Bot is scheduled to be released on PlayStation 5 on September 6, 2024.
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