Originally introduced as a tech demo character, Astro Bot has grown into PlayStation’s definitive platforming hero. Astro is the main character of the Astro Bot series and serves as the captain of his ship’s bot crew. A brave and adventurous robot, Astro will stop at nothing to rescue his crew and bring them safely back. In this PS5 platformer, you need to explore every level in search of Astro’s crew mates. As part of our Astro Bot guide, we’re going to show you where to find every Bot in the game. That’s not to say that Astro Bot — a lavishly produced, classic platform game starring Asobi’s robot mascot — shirks its promotional duties, or cuts the ties between its irrepressible lead character and the hardware he lives on.

For what it is, though, Astro Bot is incredible, and that is worth celebrating here and now. I just can’t help walking away from the experience with a bittersweet taste in my mouth and a hope that someday soon, we don’t have to look to gaming’s past for the best bits of it all. This review of Astro Bot was facilitated with a code provided by the game’s publisher. As of now, Sony does not have a PlayStation 6 on the horizon, nor does it seem to have any other major new hardware coming soon. Because of that, Astro does not have anything new that he can try to repair across multiple galaxies.

I hate the level design, totally unbalenced when compared to the rest of the game. Essentially, here, key mechanics from the most recent God of War are put to use – specifically the axe where you can throw, freeze and retrieve the axe. This puts a completely different spin on platforming and combat. But they go even further to the point of referencing those narrow passages you often see in big AAA cinematic titles where the camera pulls in and your character slowly makes their way through it. The game is constantly toying with expectations, introducing ideas and concepts you might never have expected – it’s overflowing with fun. On top of all this, Astro Bot is basically a tribute to PlayStation’s history and, in fact, in some ways, the medium as a whole.

Astro Bot (ps – Review

Microsoft’s purchase of Rare, a studio that had created platformers with mascot-like characters for Nintendo, almost seemed like an afterthought. While today PlayStation’s headquarters may be located in San Mateo, California, the history of Sony’s beloved video game console brand started in the early 1990s in Tokyo, Japan. Ken Kutaragi – who would later become known as the father of PlayStation – had been working together with Nintendo on a CD-ROM add-on for the Super Nintendo. When this got canceled, Kutaragi went to Norio Ohga (Sony’s CEO at the time) with the proposal of making Sony’s own console.

And two of the new bots are from a series that had previously gone unrepresented in the game, despite being beloved by PlayStation fans. Astro Bot is a platformer featuring 6 galaxies and over 80 levels in search of Astro’s scattered crew, featuring cameo appearances from characters that span the entirety of PlayStation’s history. This gameplay covers the first level of the game played on a PlayStation 5. For context, each galaxy has a boss you will face at the end in order to obtain an item used to progress the story. The first galaxy, Gorilla Nebula, has you facing off with a giant mechanical gorilla named Mighty Chewy. It is in the last level before the boss fight, titled Construction Derby, that the player has their first encounter with the beast.

But it’s the temporary abilities that come with each level that make things truly exciting. The Twin Frog gloves are a particular favourite, with their sticky tongues flinging out to provide a grapple swing option. They’re also spring-loaded, meaning any incoming projectiles can be sent back from whence they came, exploding in an enemy’s face. I also very much enjoyed the mouse mechanic, which reduces you down to a super small size, effectively turning on a “Toy Story” mode that lets you clamber up oversized shelves and leaves in search of secrets. For 30 years, Sony has given us a vast library of top-quality PlayStation games, but there has never been a mascot platformer among them to rival the heights that Nintendo’s Mario regularly reaches. Packed with dozens of colourful levels and experimental abilities, Astro’s latest outing thrusts him onto centre stage, joined by a supporting cast of PlayStation’s past heroes to provide hours of pure joy.

It’s not just movement though, as the creak of Aloy’s bow and arrow, while aiming in the Horizon level, is insanely satisfying and much better than in the actual game it’s based on. Bafflingly though, none of the characters are ever named – not the first party Sony ones or the third party ones. Instead, Ratchet, for example, is referred to merely as Tooled-Up Mechanic and Jill Valentine simply as Alpha Female. There’ SC88 called Pro Skater, which we assume is Tony Hawk, but perhaps it’s one of Sony’s forgotten extreme sports games – it’s impossible to tell.

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The hub world also continues to grow as you progress through the game. As you rescue more bots, they will make their own little spaces out and about, all in the area around the ship. You’ll track down puzzle pieces across each stage as well, with these working towards unlocking a habitat that grants you additional collectibles such as skins for Astro Bot or the controller you fly around on. The puzzle pieces unlock these areas in order, so you’ll have these locations granted to you in the same order as everyone else.

That includes the Lovestruck Lyricist, an homage to PaRappa the Rapper, the Yharnam Hunter, an homage to Bloodborne, and many more. It was a long night, but the 2024 The Game Awards ceremony is finally over. This year was an amazing one, and while the big 6 games of this event were impressive, only one had the opportunity to walk away with the biggest recognition of the night.

Here Astrobot has the talent & the polish but are the mechanics/moveset actually as good as the forgotten platformers nope. Splatoon 2 was good to me early this year, grapple/other details were simple but great QOL over 1 & the guns as grapples, etc. were fair & the level design was great. People can call me crazy, I don’t care, Astro’s Playroom is still one of my top 5 favorite games on PS5 and I had very high expectations for this. Have to play it to find out for sure but I’m very encouraged by these reviews as it’s grading ahead of even some of Nintendo’s best. Would not be surprised of this gets the highest overall rating for a game this year.

The game is soaked through with PlayStation branding and fan service, almost to a fault. Four of the bots at the Crash Site will only appear once players have rescued them in Astro’s Playroom. The Great Master Challenge can only be accessed once players have found every Puzzle Piece in the game and rescued 300 Bots. Astro Bot’s win for Best Family Game is probably the least surprising of the bunch. Put simply, just about anyone can appreciate Astro Bot’s strengths, not just seasoned gamers or astute, wizened audiences.

It’s hard to say what cute, robotic PlayStation characters could possibly top the twin Spider-Man bots from the Christmas level, but I’m excited to find out. The reason we hesitate over the score is that in terms of the actual platforming the game is rather basic. Astro has far less moves than Mario, which reduces the options in terms of level design.

That’s why many studios try to compensate by pouring money into those other areas. These games are a celebration of gaming – specifically PlayStation gaming. @Darude84 I would say, regardless of age, if you have any interest in 3D platformers at all, I can’t recommend this highly enough. As usual, happy to answer any questions about the game and the review Thank you for reading. If you want to collect these yourself in your own game, check out our guide to all bot locations, or the 100% walkthrough.

If I have one complaint about the game it is that the record keeping system that keeps track of the bots collected, does not break down who the special bots are and the game(s) they are from. Making your way through one star system after another, you might find your progress blocked unless you scour every level for the robots lost within them. There are 300 to find overall, with many of them depicting classic videogame characters. In that regard, Astro Bot can be seen as a celebration of not only Sony’s hardware and impressive catalogue of software over the years, but also video games in general. It’s fun putting them to work when revisiting the crash site, too, calling upon them to help lift heavy objects and create structures like human bridges to help you continue your adventure and rescue yet more robots. I can’t recall the last time I had so much fun jumping on platforms.