Collecting the various cameo bots in Astro Bot is kind of the point. Apart from you searching for the hero-components of a broken PS5 that were introduced in Astro’s Playroom, finding the little automatons all cosplayed up, is sheer joy. And then I bumped into one that turned out to be a wolf with a giant burning disc on her back and… I choked up a bit. Which is weird on the surface of it. This is just Amaterasu from Capcom’s Ōkami. Nothing else is going on here.

Her inclusion made me realise how grateful I was for Amaterasu to be part of the cosplay party, to be downright acknowledged as a worthy video game character. IP inclusivity. Probably the lowest stakes available on the planet currently, but stakes nonetheless. And hit home they did.

Does that make Astro Bot the game of the year? Well, personally speaking, that might just be enough. The sheer joy of collecting bots also drips down into the game itself. It’s been a weird series and though most people think its reference for the PlayStation brand is maybe a bit overkill, it’s perfectly on brand for Astro Bot itself.

This is the series that started teaching you how the PlayStation Camera and DualShock 4 controller worked in The Playroom. Its sequel The Playroom VR did the same for the PSVR headset. It’s always been about putting the hardware front and center. In that respect, the first proper game — Astro Bot Rescue Mission — is almost too normal a video game, even though it genuinely surprised everyone in being an incredible platformer that made great use of its virtual reality trappings. “Why isn’t their a non-VR version of this?”, “This is Sony’s new mascot!”, and similar mutterings started right there.

Astro’s Playroom was a genuine shock as a result. It merged Rescue Mission’s gameplay with Playroom’s instructions and sprinkled it liberally with a tiny history lesson about the brand. And wat started as a fun little trip down memory lane, turned out to hit people right in the kokoro. I can’t be the only one that literally cried out of the sheer surprise that was its final boss, even though everything was building up to it anyway.

And so Sony, or rather Team Asobi, stumbled upon their own Smash Bros. A combination of excellent gameplay and nostalgic whimsy. Such a perfect combination that its launch smack in the middle of Concord’s release/decommissioning and the PS5 Pro announcement make it feel like a bizarre anomaly. Here’s the company doing its darnedest to evoke the hubris of their PS3-era, tooting its own horn with a genuine and earned sentiment of nostalgia. Even if you weren’t associating yourself as a gamer, if you’ve played and recognised enough games referenced in Astro Bot, you might just want to get a AOXD-symbols tattoo by the end of it.

Sony seems almost oblivious to this though. Instead it complains about a lack of IP in development, while a few days later Astro Bot basically drowns you in IP and shows how to update certain properties to the new era. After completing the first ‘world’ of levels, one does start to wonder why there hasn’t been a full-fledged Ape Escape game in forever…

Not only is Sony chasing the live-service dragon, it also seems to have forgotten its roots. Whereas Nintendo consoles was established and safe, the PlayStation had an aura of punk, off-beat, almost artistic qualities. After the PS3 this was eroded away. Naughty Dog’s cinematic template defined an era of video games and with it, PlayStation’s soul dwindled to that of the default blockbuster experience. Japan Studio got cut down, the UK studios were dismantled, Sony’s remaining studios reconfigured into making more of the same.

And even then, for a company focussing on so many remasters and remakes, it’s genuinely disconcerting to see them ignoring games like Bloodborne, in favour of yet another version of The Last of Us. From an outside point of view, it feels like Sony Pictures is dictating what should happen at Sony Interactive Entertainment. But that’s getting into highly speculative territory.

All to say, Astro Bot makes you feel stuff, man. It’s a genuine love letter to PlayStation, its games, and its players that stuck around over the years. The game is a greatest hits of fun and working 3D-platforming mechanics, and it’s a celebration of that other side of video games that doesn’t wear the branding of that Kyoto card company. But most of all, it also feels like a capstone. A sad farewell to an era of gaming that may not return. The last round before we close up shop and let the battle passes in to take over the pub.

And thus seeing Amaterasu’s bot pop up while producing her trademark howl… It not only made me choke up, it also made me think: “Yeah, me too, Amaterasu. Me too.”