I’d forgotten just how incredible the DualSense controller is – then I played Astro Bot.
Team Asobi’s Astro Bot is rightly taking the gaming world by storm right now. A full-priced PlayStation Studios platformer is something we haven’t seen since, well, the release of Sackboy: A Big Adventure back in 2020. But even then, the genre’s been a rarity for Sony since the halcyon days of the PlayStation 2 and 3 and series like Jak & Daxter, Sly Cooper, and LittleBigPlanet.
But that dormancy could be over now; Astro Bot has been released to critical acclaim and is currently enjoying its place as one of the highest-rated games of the year on review aggregator sites. The game isn’t just a slick and charming platformer though, as it makes exceptional use of the PS5’s DualSense wireless controller.
This, for me, is what elevates Astro Bot from simply being a great platformer. The game’s wonderful level design and cute PlayStation cameos are huge plus points, but it’s the clever use of the DualSense’s bespoke feature set that makes Astro Bot stand out from the crowd – even among other first-party PlayStation Studios titles. It also serves as a reminder that when it comes to the best PS5 controllers, the DualSense is still the cream of the crop.
