Astro Botmight just be a 2024 Game of the Year contender. With fun and engaging level design, spectacular visuals, and many cameos and references, this family-friendly game takes you through a light-hearted adventure through the cosmos to save your friends.
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But saving your friends isn’t going to be a walk in the park. In your adventure, you might face off against a formidable foe who’s holding your friends hostage. Each fight challenges you to use what you’ve learned throughout the game to exploit the bosses' weaknesses.
Whether you’re using a power-up or borrowing them from a cameo character, these encounters give you your own David vs. Goliath moment.
While there are about 21 boss fights, and all of them are fun in their way, we’re only ranking the top ten based on how engaging, dynamic, and cinematic they are. We will primarily be looking at the special VIP bosses and the main bosses, as they easily outrank the other 11.
Warning: Spoilers ahead!
10Specter/Albino Antagonist
No More Monkey Business
Apes On The Loose, Gorilla Nebula
Fight Highlight
Predicting his movements to catch him with the Time Net
Mothership Part: Memory
If you’ve played theclassic 1999 gameApe Escapeon the first PlayStation, then you’ll recognize this cameo boss: Specter, though the game names him Albino Antagonist once you capture him.
This is a pretty short and simple fight, as he throws a couple of waves of mobs at you before you can pull out a bomb to blow him out of his levitating chair. Once he’s grounded, he starts zipping around the arena, taunting you right before you can catch him with your Time Net.
This fight is reminiscent of the gameplay you’d see inthe originalApe Escape, and once you beat him, you get to take him back to the Crash Site, where he’ll hang around the northern area with Spike and the many Apes you’ve captured.
So Long, Giant Pig!
Bot of War, Tentacle System
Using your godly might to throw him off the arena
Mothership Part: SSD
Serving as one of the most iconic cameos in recent memory,God of War,makes an appearance and comes with its own level and power-up. At the beginning of Bot of War, you encounter Dad of Boy (Kratos) and Boy (Atreus) camping in front of a massive stone door.
The gruff botgives you his Leviathan Axe, and you get to play with his powers for this level, swinging the mighty axe and freezing your enemies with a powerful throw. Of course, don’t forget tocollect all seven ravens!
Once you reach the top of the frozen water, you encounter a sleeping Nidhög, who looks nothing like the Norse dragon. When you wake him up with Kratos’ Leviathan Axe, Nidhög becomes enraged and starts charging at you.
This fight is essentially a matador simulator, as you avoid his charges and break the metal plates on his backside, eventually exposing a long cable for you to swing and throw him with.
The accompanying music samplesGod of War: Ragnarok’ssoundtrack, combined with the superhuman feats that Astro demonstrates when he gets a taste of Kratos’s godly might.
8Mecha Leon
Bot Got Your Tongue?
Camo Cosmos
Jumping across buzzsaws in stopped time
Voracious Blob (Tupley); Going Loco
Our first entry about a main boss fight is Mecha Leon, and you fight him in a dense rainforest equipped with the Slo-Mo Watch.
Despite being a threatening giant chameleon who can spit out flaming projectiles and shoot homing rockets, this is a relatively easy and goofy boss, since you have the power to slow down time.
While it’s still a fun fight, Mecha Leon is the least dynamic boss fight compared to the other main story boss fights.
Other boss fights, like Lady Venomara and Wako Tako’s, take place in spacious environments, and it feels like there is a sense of progression throughout the world, but Mecha Leon’s fight is confined to the forest. It’s not necessarily bad, but the lack of cinematic moments puts him in this spot.
7Chief Cawah
Run For Your Life, Drake!
Dude Raiding, Serpent Starway
The entire escape sequence
Mothership Part: GPU
Instead of a conventional boss fight where you fight the boss on a platform, you’re chased by Chief Cawah as he fires beams of death and flying skulls.
Your main goal is to shoot down his projectiles and avoid getting disintegrated by his laser by climbing up and down a rope, all the while escaping from an ancient temple.
The fight ends when you finally escape and shoot the sorcerer’s crown, causing the entrance to crumble on top of him.
Combined with dynamic camera angles and a remix of Nathan Drake’s theme, it’s a cinematic encounter that gives you an adrenaline rush, much like theUnchartedgames.
6Blunderjaw
Big Game Hunting
Machine Learning, Feather Cluster
Landing a headshot while high up in the air
Mothership Part: Cooling Fan
The next boss fight on the list is the most cinematic encounter out of the cameo levels. After acquiring Aloy’s bow fromHorizon Zero Dawn,you fight the Blunderjaw, a direct reference toone of the game’s most iconic machines, the Thunderjaw.
This giant, terrifying, mechanized T. Rex chases you as you surf through a red sea on a turtle’s back, firing barrage after barrage of homing missiles for you to shoot down.
The only way to bring him down is to shoot the glowing power cells on his body, weakening him until he blows himself up.
Out of the cameo boss fights, this one is the most cinematic and exciting, as he’s a boss who is constantly chasing and attacking you. Even though the motion controls with Aloy’s bow can be a bit wonky at times, the encounter makes up for it with its intensity.
5Mighty Chewy
No Wonder Everyone Hates The Dentist
Gorilla Nebula
Crashing through glass windows
Monkey Stalker (Spike); Apes on the Loose
Mighty Chewy is a veritable brute who’s been terrorizing a neon cityscape.In this boss fight, you face him withthe Bulldog Dash powerup, dashing across the battlefield and smashing through obstacles.
This is an equally fun and awesome encounter. Even before the fight, he chucks iron beams at you as improvised bridges, toppling the crumbling towers and giving you a sense of urgency.
In the main fight, he tries to swipe you off the platform with walls, and you have to break through their glass windows to avoid getting thrown off. The boss would then whip out a bell and try to use its AOE attacks.
By this point, you’ve faced those bell enemies before, so you know you need to smash into them with the dash attack, sending them flying onto the gorilla’s head, stunning him, and leaving his eyes vulnerable. Talk about fighting dirty.
Mighty Chewy is an exceptionally fun boss to face, as his attacks keep you engaged, and dealing damage to him is satisfying. You land the final blow by knocking his teeth out from the inside, and the city celebrates your heroism.
Astro Bot: All Gorilla Nebula Bot Locations
Start as you mean to go on by collecting every bot in the Gorilla Nebula
4Falcon McFly
What Are You, Chicken?
Feather Cluster
When he panics as you’re approaching his head
Machine Hunter; Machine Learning level
The beginning of this boss fight is hilarious–you use the Samurai Roll ability to launch into a cannonball and smack the oversized bird in the face, intercepting him in midair.
You fight Falcon McFly on his stomach as he soars through a vast canyon. With the Samurai Roll ability, you push back his drill-beak and pellet storm attacks, before you unscrew the covers of his turbines and knock him upside the head.
After hitting him in the head two times, Falcon McFly’s helmet breaks, and a large bruise bulges from his head. Smacking it several times deals the finishing blow to him.
This boss fight is the funniest one that we have seen inAstro Bot, as the game leans into its silliness with its cartoony style. The juxtaposition of these threatening bosses and how they react to getting hit is nothing short of Looney Tunes humor.
3Wako Tako
This Is Nothing LikePunch Out!
Tentacle System
Fight Highlights
Swinging over giant waves at his final stand
Dad of Boy (Kratos); Boy (Atreus); Bot of War
Now we’re at the top three boss fights, with Wako Tako taking third. He’s a big ol' Octopus who tries to pummel you with his four gloved tentacles.
This octopus boss challenges you to a boxing match, and with your Frog Punch gloves, this becomes a more than fair fight.
The mechanics in Wako Tako’s boss fight are engaging, creating opportunities for you to think on the fly. The progression is satisfying - each damage phase hints at a way to disarm him, whether it’s simply to counter his punches, or get his fists stuck in his sticky goo. Each hit against this boss creates a loud bell ring, sending him flying in the distance.
The creativity of this boss fight’s level design is brilliant. To deal some real damage to him, you’d have to slingshot yourself into his face, first with his suction cups, and then his tears.
You might also miss a fun little detail: after shooting a hail of sea urchins in his final stand, he leans in to get a closer look (all for you to damage his eyes), likely because you’ve punched away his prescription goggles.
2Lady Venomara
Her Breath is Corrosively Foul
Serpent Starway
Running on her slithering body as she’s escaping
Raider Dude (Nathan Drake); Dude Raiding
The second main boss fight pits you against the snake-like boss, Lady Venomara. This fight has you using the Chicken Boost ability to deliver painful uppercuts to her bejeweled chin.
She is one of the most threatening bosses, as her poison breath can even melt the stone pillars you use to avoid them.
Her tail attack also requires precise timing to avoid. She’s cocky and relentless, but once you get her down to her last stand, her arrogance melts away, and she tries to run from you.
The transition from a relatively small arena to a chase scene adds to the tension of the fight, showing the desperation of the boss as she hurls everything she has at you.
1Space Bully Nebulax
The Grand Finale
Deja Vu Dimension(note: only appears after you beat the game)
The ability wheel
Mothership Part: CPU Kid; Credits Clash level (Congratulations, you beat the game!)
After chasing Space Bully Nebulax down with your bot buddies in Play Squadron Go!, he pretends to surrender(which is a war crime under the Geneva Convention)and fights you on top of the PS5 Mothership, culminating in a final attempt to save the CPU Kid.
This fight hasthree phases, each giving you an ability and unique mechanic to fight against.In each damage phase, he jealously guards the CPU’s cage, which you’ll have to pry out of his hands.
Occasionally, you might land on the skull portion of the wheel, which causes him to throw a bunch of mob creatures at you.
The Space Bully fight oozes with personality and quirkiness. After beating each of the previous bosses, you’ll see a short cutscene of how Nebulax bullies and terrorizes the CPU Kid, giving you more motivation to give him a taste of his own medicine.
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