168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Astro Bot is a great game. The new 3D platformer that doubles as a monument to all things 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:PlayStation is the purest distillation of fun I’ve encountered this year, in no▨ small part due to its sheer variety. It has a ton of mechanical twists and turns, with new powers introduced in just about every level. Even when they’re reused, Team Asobi finds cool new layers in the powers that weren’t clear the first time out.
Astro Bot Autumn Is Upon Us
But the variety I most love to see is in the themes of the stages you encounter. Ever since 168澳洲幸运♐5开奖网:Mario popped into a painting 28 years ago, we’ve expected 3D platformers to throw new settings at us with each new level. While Astro Bot has tons of great environments, we 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Fall Fans are eating especially good.

Astro Bot Doesn't Need To Be Your GOTY
Astro Bot is the GOTY front runner, but we should enjoy games for ourselves, not worry about award🐻s all the time.
The chameleonic cuboid cutie becomes an autumnal android (and he is an android, assuming we use the loosest possible definition of “looks like a human” which would t🌠hen include our bipedal buddy with a blocky little body) for two levels in Astro Bot, and I inst𒀰antly added them to my mental checklist of levels to play as soon as there’s a slight chill in the air.
Astro Bot is the perfect game for this kind of exercise. Bully has one of my favorite Halloween levels, but I didn’t think to create a save state when I reached the fall season, so I would need to go back and play through several hours of the game to get to that point. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Shado🙈w-cursed Lands in Baldur’s Gate🦩 3 are similarly eerie, but I don’t have a save there anymore (and given how much of an uphill battle I found 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:the end of Act 2, I&rsqu⛎o;m not sure the vibe is enough to lure me back). But with Astro Bot, I can reinstall the game nꦅext Fall, and almost instantly be platforming through two playfully spooky levels.
Ghouls & Bots And Spooky Time Bring The Halloween Haunts
Ghouls & Bots is the first of Astro Bot's haunted levels I encountered (though it’s one of the unlockable Lost Galaxy courses, so others may not find it until they go hunting for platinum). This is the better of the two for pure vibes, set on a series of rickety cobblestone platforms, where Astro is taunted by green ghosts as he passes by wrought iron gates, cauldrons, and gnarled trees. A big haunted-looking castle and a moon with a jack-o-lantern face are in the background at all times and playfully spooky music soundtracks your steps as you reveal invisible platforms with a magical lightbulb.
The other level, Spooky Time, is the more interesting of the two, mechanically speaking. Though the title seems straightforward initially, you quickly realize it’s a play on words — the level centers on a clock backpack powerup 🦩which allows you to slow time to a crawl as you hop along above green marsh waters. That ability allows for some devilish obstacles, like multiple platforms being block🔯ed by big green ghosts who toss knives back and forth at the speed of sound.
The wildest bit hits late in the level. Throughout, you’ve been using your slo-mo abilities to sneak through knives, navigate phantasmal teeter totters, and knock out fire-spewing chameleons. But, the best use of the ability is an obstacle with a big green ghost that vomits a burst❀ of plates and silverware you can jump across by slowing time. This is the first platformer I can recall where projectile vomit was a platform, and I tip my cap to Astro for that.
Though neither of these levels are among the very best the game has to offer, I'll keep returning to them in years to come for a shot of that Halloween spirit.