A fantastically colourful and creative romp through a huge variety of settings, it’ll have your thumbsticks clicking, your heart racing, and even your lips blowing – yep, that’s a mechanic in the game. Each level across five main galaxies and one unlockable one features a swarm of bots (many based on beloved PS characters) to rescue, as well as jigsaw pieces and some secret black holes too. Here, you’ll find your one-stop shop for every single collectible in the game, and the Trophies too, arranged into each zone Astro blasts off into. Astro Bot is technically the fifth entry in the Astro universe, though it’s the series’ first fully fledged — and fully priced — installment. Astro Bot takes ideas from these earlier titles and compiles them into a focused 3D platformer with dozens of main worlds, a bevy of additional unlockable planets and a wide range of satisfying mechanics.
Once the PS5 ship has crashed, Astro Bot will explore the space around the crash site. This is the hub world that allows you to unlock more of the galaxy map. You’ll track down a satellite-centric bot and it will ping the next destination. These are structured in a certain order, so you’ll need to beat each level to unlock the boss battle, something that requires a set number of bots to have been unlocked. Thankfully, should you return to a previously completed level, you can pay a small amount of PlayStation coin currency to have an assist bot show you where the remaining bots and puzzle pieces are.
Normally, a game like this would be quite a chore for players seeking to polish off all of its optional items to 100% completion, but Astro Bot offers a special tool that makes this process much faster and more enjoyable. Each world also has a series of bonus levels, challenges, and more, filling out a fairly brief adventure that can easily be pushed through over the course of a weekend. While the bulk of time will be spent hunting down every collectible and bot, as there are 304 of them at the time of this review, Astro Bot is roughly around 10 hours in length for a standard playthrough. Personally, that length worked well to not overstay its welcome or feel padded, especially as additional content like time trials is set to release for free.
It became one of the highest-rated VR games, so naturally, the franchise did not stop there. Astro’s Playroom would launch in 2020 pre-installed on every PS5, and once again served as a tech demo for the studio’s latest controller. Then, in 2024, players were treated to the full-length critically acclaimed platformer Astro Bot. Some platformers are really safe in their level design/movesets so you bet I’m critical. Besides n 188 of Astro Bot’s creative and exciting boss battles, nostalgia fuels much of Astro Bot’s most thrilling moments, especially with the few stages specifically themed after PlayStation’s most beloved properties. However, those experiences risk feeling hollow for those who haven’t played the games that Astro Bot seems desperate to reference.
What Are All Special Bots In Astro Bot? Helldiver 3 – Super Earth Diplomat
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. Astro Bot has proven to be not only one of Sony’s most successful games but one of the most successful games of all time, at least critically speaking. There are three puzzle pieces in “Trapped In Time.” The first is before the level starts, the second is before you go inside, and the third is before you go back outside. Astro Bot may feature a simple tale, yet it is a gleeful game that absolutely nailed all the aspects of a platformer. It became the highest-rated standalone game of 2024 for a reason, right?
Guides(
A true audiovisual tour-de-force, Astro Bot makes full use of the PS5’s DualSense controller, utilizing it in ingenious, but also somehow obvious, ways to maximize enjoyment. And “enjoyment” is certainly an apt descriptor, as few modern games are capable of evoking the sense of childlike joy that Astro Bot excels at, regardless of player age. Strong and varied platforming mechanics are other building blocks of Astro’s gameplay, allowing for exhilarating and unexpected interactive opportunities. All of this is to say that Astro Bot’s four Game Awards victories, including the coveted Game of the Year Award, are more than deserved.
Over 150 of them in fact, as characters from PlayStation’s vast library of games have made their way into Astro’s world in the form of other bots. There are the ones you’d expect like Lombaxes, tomb raiders, and a certain rapping dog but, delightfully, some are plucked from the more obscure end of the scale. It’s light touches of irony and slapstick humour like this that keep Astro’s playful tone going throughout. It really is just a delight from start to finish in this regard.
It’s the type of game that you’re likely to return to as well, simply because of its feel-good nature. To play Astro Bot is to love Astro Bot, it’s as simple as that. It’s a heartwarming and flawless experience, and a 3D platforming masterpiece. Players guide Astro Bot through dynamic environments filled with moving platforms, enemies, and interactive objects. The game encourages exploration, rewarding players for finding hidden collectibles and secret areas.
Astro’s Playroom, a game bundled in with every PS5 is approximately 3 hours long, and many spent double or triple in that world just exploring and attempting to beat other player’s times at each level. Given the robust nature of what Astro Bot offers here, I could see many spending dozens of hours once that time trial mode is released. Astro Bot’s not the largest game in the world — you’ll perhaps see the credits roll in hours or so. Those aiming to rescue every robot, complete every challenge, find every jigsaw piece and unlock every trophy, however, will probably end up playing for around 20 hours or more.
Winter Wonder is a DLC level that unlocks after clearing the main game. It’s a special, festive-themed level full of Special Bots and other goodies to find. In this Astro Bot guide, we have a full walkthrough of the game, pointing out where to find all the collectibles in every level. This includes the locations of all Bots, all Puzzle Pieces, and all Lost Galaxy Warp Portals.
Astro Bot revels in showing the player something new around almost every corner. Few ideas are even revisited, making some moments feel memorable and unique. While it can border on not allowing some of those ideas to creatively breathe, given how quickly they can be cast aside in favor of something new, I never felt robbed of my time with any moment, or spectacle. Every stage in Astro Bot provides its own challenges, forcing players to think outside the box or make use of unique power-ups.
There is both depth and breadth to most levels, and frequent checkpoints mean you’ll rarely be punished for exploration or missing a jump. Levels take only five to 10 minutes in most cases, but are overflowing with personality. Robot animals climb trees along the periphery or jump out of the ocean far beneath the levitating worlds you explore.
The greatest tribute I can pay to Astro Bot is that you forget about all of the PlayStation stuff going on while you’re playing it. Sure, it’s cool to see some forgotten classics in there (Wild Arms made the cut!), but you could take out the Kratos costumes and the game would be as brilliant as it is now. Though the nostalgia or PlayStation love in will eke up the excitement for some fans (and even put some off), it’s not a pillar of Astro Bot, nor is it going to be the reason fans keep replaying this for years to come. Unlike all of the other Astro Bot DLC stages, Winter Wonder is accessed via the Galaxy Select screen.…