In Spring-LoadedRun, you will strap on your twin frog boxing gloves and traverse a sunken city ruins. Punch rolling barrels, swing over daring gaps, and pummel your way to the top of the tower to rescue the special bots. Astro Bot has received a number of special challenge stage updates since launch, and it’s no surprise Team Asobi was able to give it that extra love given how well-received the game has been. It sold 1.5 million units in just its first two months, and earned a 9/10 from us. “A fantastically inventive platformer in its own right, Astro Bot is particularly special for anyone with a place in their heart for PlayStation,” our reviewer wrote. The first of these levels allows Astro to borrow the Leviathan Axe from God of War’s Kratos.

Grab the snowball from them and roll it around until it gets nice and big. Then look for a wall that has two little blocks on the side and an open spot in the middle. Once you land in the final room, where the normal exit appears on top of the lamp, turn around and climb up the stone wall behind you. At the top, break the pot and you’ll notice that the shards appear to float ahead of you. Walk out onto the invisible platform and look down at the sand below you. You’ll see the stone platforms many feet under Astro will start to glow while you’re above them.

It’s Super Mario Bros. for a new generation of video game fanatics, at once an introduction to common mechanics and also a significant challenge for seasoned players. If this, alongside new titles like Lego Horizon Adventures, signals a new and less stuffy direction for Sony, then I’m excited to see what the future holds. For now though, you’ll find me trying to 100-percent Astro Bot, cursing and laughing the whole way through. Plenty of stages require patience, awareness and a high degree of platforming skill, though resets are generous and failure doesn’t cost anything other than your time.

The boss fights deliver on visual spectacle, have a nice challenge to them, and above all, are fun to conquer. Besides the main bosses, mini-bosses pop up in other levels unexpectedly, and they are also a lot of fun to fight. Like Team Asobi’s previous games, Astro Bot revolves around a community of tiny white robots. Following the events of Astro’s Playroom, they are attacked by the evil green alien that served as the final boss of Rescue Mission, destroying their PS5 spaceship and scattering them across the cosmos.

What Are All Special Bots In Astro Bot? Samanosuke Akechi – Demon Swordsman

Every power is interesting, has a meaningful impact on the level it’s a part of, and feels like it unlocks a new way to play. While some return from previous Astro outings and others are quite standard, there is a unique flair to how they feed into the level design here. Sony proves with Astro Bot that the company can still put out charming action platformers, but the love letter to PlayStation fans fails to include features that made previous games of the genre so fun to replay. Even within a level, an ability is used in several different and creative ways, but always stemming from its singular mechanic featured in that level.

Hit the snake with your ship and it’ll release the puzzle piece ahead of you. The final bot is near the exit, so proceed forward until you boost into the upper part of the level. If you stand on top, you’ll see a bird flying around with the final bot in its clutches. Wait for it to get close and then jump off and hit the bot mid-air.

At some point during your playthrough, I recommend muting your TV and leaving your controller audio on. You’ll immediately feel and hear just how much Team Asobi uses the controller to sell its visuals. While “toy” has become a derogatory term when talking about video games, Team Asobi sees no shame in embracing it. I can see that when I find a cardboard standee in a construction site level. I poke my head through it, only to summon a flock of pooping pigeons. There’s no tangible reward for doing it as it’s not a tracked collectible; it’s just a purely entertaining moment that gets an honest laugh out of me.

However, I have to say that the delight, the sense of pure joy, and the wholesomeness I got out of playing Astro Bot was truly unmatched and unforgettable. The secret exit in Djinny of the Lamp is at the very end of the level, after you defeat the Djinny. Punch the ladybug trampoline so it’s as close to the pot as possible, then jump on it and activate your power-up mid-air.

Astro’s Next Big Adventure!

Your job as Astro is to go around to all the planets and collect your friends. The games have lots of fun platforming to execute, with grappling hooks and hover-jumps and all kinds of fun things. There are also plenty of alien and robotic enemies and bosses to take on.

Platform

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.

Japan Studio was sadly dissolved in 2021, with many of its staff folded into Team Asobi to make Astro Bot. Its wild characters and artful, innovative games are particularly favored in Astro Bot’s directory of PlayStation history. It takes you through deserts, across volcanos, inside dojos, to outer space, up mountains, down rivers, and both visually and mechanically, offers something new every time that always hits the mark. Bosses appear at the end of each cluster of levels and randomly in the middle, always with a new way of attacking that forces you to use powers in new ways, think differently, and experience the level in a fresh light. Platformers used to be this bold and seemed to shed that personality in favour of retreading safe old ground.

The dioramas are especially fun, as they turn all your collected bots into animated statues, like one that shows Nathan Drake playing a game called Dude Raider on his couch. Even the most serious of characters are turned into caricatures, like a scene you can create in which The Last of Us’ Joel goes to throw a brick, but it slips out of his hand and bonks him on the head. All of the 169 cameo bots fill in the would-be barren desert sands like a virtual shelf of Funko Pops. My favorite aspect of the game is how it seems to read my mind. Every time I’d divert off the main path in search of a secret or reward, I would find one.

If you have even the slightest interest in the platformer genre, Astro Bot is a must-play game. Following the release of the first set of speedrun-style DLC levels, many fans were wondering if Team Asobi had anything else planned for the popular game. After releasing a full-sized holiday level and teasing an unreleased level at the PlayStation XP Tournament Final in London, Team Asobi officially confirmed a second wave of DLC levels for Astro Bot. Unlike the first DLC, these levels would focus more on platforming and offer a time attack version with online leaderboards once completed for the first time. If you replay levels, you can buy a satellite at the start for coins that marks the collectible locations. However, you need 15,000 coins to buy 150 gatcha items for the Money Well Spent trophy, so it’s best to not spend coins on the satellites.