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Astro Bot Review Sony’s Greatest Hits Collection Is Its Best Game In Years

The game currently holds a 4.89 out of 5 stars with over 31,000 ratings on the PSN Store. 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.

There’s nothing beyond familiar forms and frameworks, yet it still manages to bring a smile to our faces. There’s not much to say about Astro Bot’s plot; it serves as a simple introduction, giving the player a reason to rescue bots in need and search for console-ship components to continue the journey through the vast cosmos. What truly sets Astro Bot apart from the competition, however, is the gameplay. In 2024, Astro Bot not only comes to Sony’s rescue but also in a big way reminds us why we play video games at all. None of that affects Astro Bot’s quality as a game but it does limit its successfulness as a nostalgia piece.

All these features enhance the sensory experience of the game and showcase the power of ninth-generation technology. Astro Bot levels challenge players to collect all the stranded bots, but there are other things players will want to keep an eye out for as well, like coins and puzzle pieces. Everything players collect goes to Astro Bot’s hub world, the Crash Site. Here, hundreds of rescued bots congregate and can be used within the hub to rescue even more bots.

Originally announced during Sony’s June 2025 State of Play, the update adds a new galaxy, the Vicious Void, for players to explore. Four of the levels are titled Twin-Frog Trouble, Suck It Up, Handhold Havoc, High Inflation, with Team Asobi keeping the name of the fifth as a surprise. The addition of the new levels brings Astro Bot’s total level count to over 90. “A must-play for anyone who loves creative platformers. The worlds are beautifully crafted.” Astro Bot[a] is a series[1] of augmented reality and platform games developed by Team Asobi, originally a group within Japan Studio, and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment.

Did you know you can use your Twin-Frog Gloves Power Up to beat up two Wormys at once? Yep, while exploring the Wormy Passage world, be sure to keep an eye out for a pair of two or more Wormys (green worm enemies). Press both your left and right trigger (L2 and R2) to punch your left and right Twin-Frog Glove into the mouths of the Wormys. Did you know you can catch the bugs in Apes On The Loose with your net? You can find the Golden Butterfly at the very back of the Apes On The Loose level, in a bush to the right of the sky bridge where you find Sky-Walking Ape Special Bot.

You tend to start writing lines in your head when compiling a review, and one that stuck with me early was to call Astro Bot ‘the best platformer since Super Mario Odyssey’. Then I played a little more and started to think ‘maybe it’s better’. All I know is Astro Bot is a contender for the all-time crown in a genre that has felt a little neglected (especially by Sony, who once nurtured it to greatness) in recent years. It’s so much more than a PlayStation history lesson, and in climbing above those expectations, becomes a piece of PlayStation history in its own right – with Astro Bot, the PS5 may finally have arrived. It’s not that the powers are cool, that it’s fun to blow into your controller, or that you get to meet Aloy. It’s that every inch of Astro Bot is designed to offer a fresh experience.

Thanks to its simple, clean design and effective anti-aliasing, the game’s image quality is really never an issue and it holds up well without any ghosting reconstruction or other image stability issues. It presents very cleanly, which is so important for legibility in a platform game – and Team Asobi got it right. The irony that Astro Bot is launching on the same day that Concord is being shut down will not be lost on anyone, even though that is essentially a coincidence. But in actuality Astro Bot isn’t a very good celebration of PlayStation’s history. It is, however, one of the best 3D platformers ever made and an absolute joy from beginning to end. We’ve discussed that in a separate boxout, because none of that affects the game, but it is all very odd – and gives the distinct impression it was shoehorned in halfway through development.

Some are on the linear side, testing your platforming skills, but others are more open, giving you some freedom as to how to achieve your goal. n188 might find yourself equipped with gloves that allow you to pummel enemies at range, for example, or a bulldog strapped to your back with which you can charge into heavy items and send them flying. As previously mentioned, anyone that has played Astro’s Playroom will have a good idea of what to expect here.

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I only hope my friend is ready to collect some well-deserved trophies of his own. Astro Bot succeeds in so much of what it does that it feels traditional in both the best and worst ways. Back during the era of the platformer, when everyone was taking a swing at things, this was a point in gaming that hadn’t yet approached making certain aspects of its design built around accessibility.

Astro Bot’s Next Adventure May Be Stuck Between A Rock And A Hard Place

Platformers have so long followed in the footsteps of Mario, with so many titles trying to emulate what the mustachioed plumber has achieved. Astro Bot’s utterly overflowing creativity and ingenuity make it one of the first platformers that feels like it can stand outside the long shadow cast by Mario. It’s a grand celebration of PlayStation’s legacy and a sign of what its future can become. As you’d expect from a 3D platformer, Astro Bot contains hundreds of collectibles for you to find. In this part of our Astro Bot guide, we have checklists for where to find every collectible in the game, including all Bots, Puzzle Pieces, Lost Galaxy Warp Portals, and more in your quest for 100%. To put that in another way, for many people, video games become a community hub, a place of belonging and socializing that they may not have outside of their computer or console.

However, the way it presents itself and the way it integrates its older titles into the game make it a unique experience. That overall format is deceptively simple for one of the most creative games I’ve ever played in my entire life — and Astro Bot makes that abundantly clear in just a handful of hours. There are more than 80 levels in Astro Bot, and what’s remarkable to me is that I can’t think of a single one that felt too similar to another or was a disappointment in any way.

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To talk around Astro Bot’s most entertaining of these surprises, I’ll mention that it will occasionally rethink its mechanics as a whole, nearly swapping genres at times, in ways that pay homage to PlayStation’s illustrious past. These special levels arrive toward the end of each galaxy’s main mission path and bestow to you a bundle of themed bots as well as yet another cool new mechanic not to be seen ever again in the game. Its soundtrack–already an array of bubbly earworms–reimagines familiar overtures from other games. In doing all of this for these most-special one-offs, the promise of its world comes into full view. Astro Bot swarms the player with bright ideas, sparking almost endless joy.

This is a game that celebrates the entire history of video games and one of the few 3D platform games I’ve played that truly goes toe to toe with the best Nintendo has to offer. One of the biggest announcements during last week’s PlayStation State of Play livestream was Astro Bot, the full-fledged sequel to the excellent Astro’s Playroom that comes preinstalled on PS5. Just like Astro’s Playroom, Astro Bot is a 3D puzzle-platformer that pays homage to PlayStation history and makes heavy use of the PS5 DualSense controller’s many unique features like haptic feedback and dynamic triggers.