When Astro Bot was released in September, critics agreed on a lot: Astro Bot rules, and it’s Sony’s first real answer to Nintendo’s iconic platformers. Nintendo’s entries to the genre come up a lot when talking about Astro Bot; it’s near impossible to ignore the publisher’s clear influence on the Sony platformer. Yes, Astro Bot is an homage to Sony’s PlayStation legacy, but it also honors and iterates on the best platformers to create something truly spectacular and wholly its own.

The phrase “good artists copy, great artists steal” has been attributed to both Pablo Picasso and Steve Jobs, and it’s a variation on T.S. Eliot’s “immature poets imitate, mature poets steal” quote, but regardless of who said it, it’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot while playing Astro Bot. There may not be many more entirely new ideas left in life, but there are plenty of........

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