Astro Bot is here and it is everything that many of us could’ve wanted. Not only is it an incredible 3D platformer, but it’s also stuffed with cameos from characters across PlayStation’s history. As you collect them over the course of the game, every character that you find is returned to Astro Bot’s central hub, a crash site, that gets slowly populated. Once they’re there, you can interact with them even more, but first you’ve got to give them a little smack.
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Yeah, you read that correctly. Every single one of the characters you collect in Astro Bot has a hidden interaction that’s some kind of cute Easter egg for their respective series or game, but first you’ve got to knock some sense into them. Once you rescue a character, they’re sent back to the crash site where they idle in the sand around the central PS5 spaceship that you’re trying to repair. The basic robots that aren’t themed after PlayStation characters start trying to repair the ship, but the rest stand around it waiting for you to interact with them.
If you visit a cameo character at the crash site, they’ll likely have a floating symbol over them that suggests they need their signature prop. These can be found in the gacha machine, which returns from Astro’s Playroom. A pull on the gacha machine will cost you 100 coins and it’s well worth it to unlock most of the items, which include all manner of hallmarks from the various franchises, such as a certain weapon or some kind of iconic set dressing. Once they have these, hit them over the head.
In return, you will get the most adorable call backs in the world, such as these.
There’s literally hundreds more like this across franchises like God of War, Metal Gear Solid, and Horizon. A bot of Jin from Ghost of Tsushima is literally butt naked in a hot spring, but if you hit it, it’ll dart towards Jin’s armor, put it on, and start swinging its sword. Afterwards, it’ll strip again and go back to its warm bath. My favorite—since Bloodborne is my favorite game ever—features the Yharnam Hunter. Upon hitting them, they’ll actually fire their gun, mimicking Bloodborne’s parry mechanic and sound, which would then be followed up by a visceral attack.
You can even trick characters into interacting with one another, and some of them are key to unlocking the game’s trophies. Considering what an easy platinum Astro Bot is, you may as well go for all of the interactions you possibly can. Even ones from characters and properties I have no knowledge of managed to bring a smile to my face. This unspoken part of the game is one of its most obviously joyous, and shows a lot of reverence from Team Asobi for PlayStation’s massively influential catalog. So the next time you’re mindlessly dashing around the crash site, remember to give your favorite character a smack on the back and see what they’re hiding up their sleeves, or in Kiryu’s case, in his deep pockets.
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