I won’t spoil them, but they all achieve a surprisingly deep synthesis of their inspiration (often a more mature-styled game) with Astro Bot’s tactile world, adorable characters, and toothsome gameplay. It’s a mark of how confident the game is that its personality shines so clearly through the costumes it dons. This tribute is never more touching and joyful than in the case of Ape Escape. [newline]This Japan Studio series, about a boy who catches naughty monkeys in his net, is one of many faltering attempts by Sony to create a family game franchise to rival Nintendo’s, and like most of them, it didn’t really stick. Astro Bot is very much its inheritor, even down to the hardware connection — the first Ape Escape was intended as a showpiece for the original DualShock analog controller. After defeating the first galaxy’s end boss in Astro Bot, a level is unlocked that fully and faithfully recreates Ape Escape’s anarchic chase gameplay within Astro Bot’s world. It’s a wonderful touch; for one level, a near-forgotten series is brought back to glorious life in a modern context, and Team Asobi honors the memory of the ceaselessly inventive studio it used to call home.

Astro Bot Review – A Wildly Generous Delight

Customers enjoy the game’s challenge levels, with puzzles being a key feature, and one customer noting that they are just the right amount of difficulty. Preview some of the 50+ planets Astro will visit on his grand rescue mission. Astro recovers the CPU, but when he and his crew defeat Nebulax by blowing up the spaceship he is attached to, it creates a black hole that begins to suck Nebulax in. Nebulax grabs Astro to try to take him down with him, but the crew take hold of Astro to try to pull him back. Refusing to let the crew sacrifice themselves for him, Astro lets go of them and falls into the black hole, which explodes into a supernova. The two bots in question are Cloud and Sephiroth, both from Final Fantasy 7.

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.

Gyro can be disabled as an accessibility feature if players prefer. Matthew Adler has written for IGN since 2019 covering all things gaming, tech, tabletop games, and more. You can follow him on the site formerly known as Twitter @MatthewAdler and watch him stream on Twitch. If you’re looking for even more savings this season, check out the entire PlayStation’s 2025 Black Friday sale for deals on games, consoles, and more. To unlock the levels in “Lost Galaxy” you must find the 10 Secret Level Exits (‘Lost Galaxies’) in the other Nebulas.

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.

Psycho Mantis – Metal Gear Solid

Completionists will have a great time with this one — there are so many secret passages and hidden bots to find, most of them cleverly tucked away and easily missed unless you’re actively looking for them. On the flipside, speedrunners should enjoy Astro Bot as well, since it offers planets of platforming challenges with incredibly responsive controls. These are just three examples, but quite literally every level in the game has some kind of unique idea or design. There are some repeats in terms of power-ups that Astro Bot is given, little devices or creatures that give them new moves. For example, the dog power-up lets you charge straight ahead and smash through walls, the clock lets you slow down time, a penguin gives you a quick dash through water, and a monkey holds cymbals that let out a massive shockwave. Even though these power-ups appear across multiple levels, they’re always used in tandem with that level’s unique design, making them feel fresh.

Team up with iconic PlayStation heroes to save the galaxy and experience the game’s immersive world through the DualSense wireless controller. ASTRO BOT is a platformer video game developed by Team ASOBI and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment. If Astro Bot has a failing – and that is an if – it may be in the enemy design.

Join The Playstation Celebration

But when they do, you are driven to continue Astro’s journey in hopes you’ll run across another like it. 789win has created a game that not only celebrates the history of PlayStation, but also the very existence of the fans. Astro Bot is a platformer that, despite always following the same thread, manages to constantly surprise the player and awaken a multitude of different emotions. The game even features some collectibles that are locked behind blowing into the mic on the controller, an act that is not compatible with the PlayStation Access controller.

You’re really overthinking the number at the end of the review. Read the review, research what the game is, decide if you want to play it or not. The number at the end is , like any review, someone’s opinion and TBH borderline irrelevant. Sometimes a game is just what people need in a specific timeframe and that’s enough. However by your comments because I questioned this, you feel that you are justified to make various comments above.

The fact that Team Asobi’s games have the potential to become someone’s first game is something that Doucet takes seriously. “Team Asobi’s studio is just across the street from our building, so they were always the first to prototype with our hardware,” says Senior Principal Product Manager Toshi Aoki, product director for the DualSense controller. It could be said that the combination of futurism with cuteness perfectly embodies the identity of the Japanese roots of the PlayStation brand that Kutaragi started.