On the flip side, this leads to a nitpick regarding the enemies. Besides the bosses, none of the enemies have names or identities. This robs the enemies of the kind of simple but memorable personalities that even the most generic Bots have. Nebulas is the main antagonist of the series, a space bully who loves causing trouble for Astro and his friends. He’s a green-skinned alien with a massive mouth, always looking for ways to make life difficult for the crew. You’ll dash, swing, and rocket-punch through diverse areas like volcanoes and jungles, unlocking 15 new abilities, including using Barkster, the Bulldog Booster, to air-dash and smash enemies.
Obviously it depends on how much exploring you do and how much you’re bothered about collecting everything — it’s a very meaty 3D platformer in my opinion and a really nice length. Astro Bot is a showcase of a developer working at the top of its game, but most importantly a developer that keeps fun and playfulness at the forefront of everything it does. Finally though I want to highlight the fantastic score, because like its levels, it bounces around genres, delivering consistently catchy head bobbers, on top of slightly remixed versions of iconic Sony soundtracks. I know this OST is going to be in my regular rotation once it finally drops on Spotify, because it’s simply too good to leave locked within this game.
Another lets you transform into an ultra-heavy version of Samus Aran’s morph ball thingy, and has brilliant stuff for you to do once you have. These levels feel so Nintendo-like because they get everything out of their ideas. If you’re small but you can become big, can you blow stuff up from inside?
Eventually, you’ll find a platform that has a separate spiral platform to the right, a goop monster above, and a sand waterfall that’s covering a caged bot. To get in there and save the little guy, boost up, kill the blob monster, pull the lever it was sitting on, and jump down to rescue the bot. Like its predecessor, Astro Bot is filled to the brim with PlayStation references and cameos. The most visible ones come in the form of the Special Bots — bots dressed up as famous and obscure PlayStation family characters. Out of the 300 bots you can collect in the game, 173 are such Special Bots. ASTRO BOT is a platformer video game developed by Team ASOBI and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment.
Three years later, the idea would be expanded with The Playroom VR, which did the exact same thing for the PSVR. Players seemed to love it so much that it warranted a fully-fledged game, so Team Asobi did just that in 2018. However, those future Astro Bot games may be in a bit of a tough spot. As of now, the direction Team Asobi has in mind for this franchise is not entirely clear. This game served as a celebration of the brand and was built around repairing a PlayStation 5. While the studio could just do that again, it would risk coming off as repetitive.
Getting bigger is great, but shrinking down leads to some better creativity in the level’s design. From hopping around tiny mushrooms to grinding on clotheslines, Downsize Surprise overall is a delightful level thanks to the Mouse power-up and unfortunately, Astro Bot doesn’t feature it as much as it should. The ball form in Astro Bot is sort of like the ball form in the Metroid series with Samus.
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They fit in perfectly with the game’s vibe and atmosphere, which is really hard to find a fault as it even uses the DualSense speakers impeccably. It’s been quite a rough few weeks for Sony and PlayStation fans out there, and it’s great to know that it’s not all doom and gloom as Astro Bot is here to save the day. As a casual fan of platformers, Astro Bot blew me away and reminded me of the nostalgia and fun that is to be had with the genre. The last time to do this was Nintendo’s Super Mario Odyssey, which is a very high standard to beat or match in recent years.
What Are All Special Bots In Astro Bot? Cheeky Ape
Not overhyped, not over exaggerated, just a bug free, well made bit of fun. They are used to seeing the PS5 struggle with unreal engine 5 games, so a platform game that renders low quality cartoon textures at a fast rate but only occasional dips below 60 was a surprise. I am playing now with my daughter and I find something that team Asobi are geniuses.
Like its predecessor, Astro Bot is a love letter to PlayStation–not just its current make-up, either, but its illustrious history. From first-party icons like Kratos and Ellie to third-party heroes tied to the hip with Sony’s gaming past, such as Lara Croft and Leon S. Kennedy. There are 195 hidden cameo characters in Astro Bot’s dozens of levels, and part of the fun is tracking them all down. They, like in Robots Rescue and Astro Bot Rescue Mission, are scattered across the game’s levels and have to be rescued by their captain. In the story of the game, the Alien returns (now named Space Bully Nebulax), and scatters the Bots across the galaxy by stealing their ship’s CPU, causing the ship to break down and eject the Bots from it.
Astro Bot begins with a PS5-shaped spaceship traveling the stars when its crew of 300 Bots suddenly encounters a mischievous alien who breaks the ship and scatters its pieces and crew across multiple galaxies. As players take control of Astro, they’ll work to repair the ship and rescue their crewmates. Environmental puzzles and exciting set pieces await players in Astro Bot’s dozens of stages that can take anywhere from a couple minutes to a quarter of an hour to complete. Fans of PlayStation history will be very tempted to spend more time on each stage thanks to the many nods to past franchises and moments.
If you have any lingering questions about the game, this section of our Astro Bot guide should have you covered. GameSpot may receive revenue from affiliate and advertising partnerships for sharing this content and from purchases through links. All I hope now is that Team Asobo is given quite literally anything it wants to make its next game because I’m already there for it. Finding every bot and motif is an absolute joy in Astro Bot, really digging into PlayStation’s rich history. Microsoft’s Xbox console sales are getting squeezed, and the company is signaling it may not care in the way fans expect. CNBC points to Microsoft’s fiscal 2026 first-quarter earnings, where overall gaming revenue fell 2% year over year and Xbox hardware revenue dropped 29%.
I arrived at the end credits after nine hours but had only collected 206 out of a possible 301 bots on my journey. There’s plenty to do after the main levels are done, including finding the remainder of the crew, building out the rest of the hub base, and unearthing new secrets among the stars. There’s so much, in fact, that it took me another nine hours (so, 18 in total) to 100% Astro Bot and acquire the platinum trophy that comes with it. While I’d never say any of its main worlds ever approach being truly “difficult” in the pursuit of that 100% completion goal, some enemies or obstacles did take a few tries. Thankfully, checkpoints are often generously and frequently located, meaning you’re only ever moments away from the spot of your previous demise. The Sponge appears in the Bathhouse Battle stage of Astro Bot and has similar powers to the Elephant.
Naturally, the story is not the focus here, and yet I was so immersed in the 15-hour game that I beat it in two long sittings. gg88 may be 2024’s most immersive game, and it achieves that without a line of dialogue. Instead, each level tells a story, clear as day, about where you ought to go next and what you should do there. Bots make another appearance in Astro’s Playroom, now residing with Astro Bot in the PlayStation 5. Unlike the last game, they do not need to be saved and serve as simple NPCs throughout the CPU Plaza and its worlds.