PlayStation 5; Team Asobi/Sony Fun-packed and brimming with personality, this full-length Astro Bot outing pays tribute to PlayStation history while pushing the console’s capabilities When I say that Astro Bot reminds me of Super Mario Galaxy, I could pay it no higher compliment. It’s not that it’s derivative: indeed it’s the very abundance of new ideas that places it up there with Nintendo’s best 3D platformers. It has taken me around its own small galaxy of planetoid-style levels, from bathhouses to diorama-sized jungle temples to rainy islands, each host to a brilliant one-shot idea, such as a pair of frog boxing gloves or a backpack monkey or a time-stopping watch that lets you freeze giant zooming darts in place so you can jump on them. It is splendid to witness this development team’s creativity let loose. Team Asobi has previously made a couple of short-form Astro Bot games – one for the PSVR, Rescue Mission, and another that came packaged with the PS5 at launch, Astro’s Playroom – but this one is full-length, complete with challenging bonus levels that play out like electrified skill-check gauntlets for the generation raised on 3D platformers. It is supremely funny and characterful, thanks to the titular chibi blue-and-white robot and his crowd of friends, many of whom are dressed up as characters from the most obscure crevices of PlayStation history. The attention paid to these bots – their animation, their mannerisms, their dance moves and little cries for help when they’re stuck up a tree being menaced by malevolent octopuses – fills them to the brim with personality. Continue reading...

This queer emancipation story is set in a cosy pixellated art world but all is not what it seems. You’ll tend your flock, pick some flowers – and also have to dethrone God The realm of Hus is a rural idyll, where happy villagers wander the marketplace and young shepherdess Ren tends to her flock while her partner, Tyra, fixes up their cottage. It’s almost as though they are all living in a cosy farming simulator, created by a benevolent game developer. But are they? Or is it just an illusion cast by an evil deity, trapping them in a horrifying pixellated facade? This is the delightfully “meta” setup to Quantum Witch, a pixel art platformer by lone developer Nikki Jay. Heavily inspired by old LucasArts adventures and the legendary Dizzy series on the ZX Spectrum, it’s a comedy game with a serious autobiographical heart. Jay grew up in a right wing religious sect based in the north-east of England with an incredibly enclosed perspective. “They were obsessed with the end of the world,” she says. “They believed it could happen at anytime and that all the wicked people would be destroyed: so I had to be good. It was extremely oppressive.” Continue reading...

Having abandoned them entirely in a fit of fury in the late 90s, I recently made a return to platform games. How long before the rage takes over? There are only two video games my wife has ever enjoyed: Mario Kart, in which she has gleefully brought up the rear for the entirety of our family life; and Crash Bandicoot, of which she was, at one stage, the greatest player in the world. She completed every molecule of every Crash game in the 90s. I swear I saw her get 105% on one of them, but this being the 90s, I have filed that memory under “things I may have hallucinated in an altered state”, along with Gary McAllister missing that penalty at Wembley, and the band Menswear. Continue reading...