A revolution of gaming right in your hands. Astro’s Playroom introduces you to the new world of the PlayStation 5 in a spectacular way. Astro’s Playroom is developed by SIE Japan Studio’s ASOBI Team! and it’s a free game installed on your Playstation 5 right out of the box.
Introduction
At the beginning of the game, they really let you experience the controller by showing and feeling you how the controller works, its really hard to explain, but the sounds, the small taps on your hands, its something you really need to experience to get a good grasp of how revolutionary this controller is. This game is a perfect introduction to everything the controller can do.
Gameplay
Like I said in the introduction, this game is all about the controller, so the gameplay is kinda catered to that but also in some ways not so much. The best I can compare this game to is Mario Odyssey, it has platforming, some cool gimmicks per world, and some enemy types to defeat.
The world gimmicks and really cool, every gimmick shows off a different feature of the controller. In the 1st world, you get to feel how the haptic feedback works, how it pushes back, and how pushback can be applied in games to make it a little more immersive.
In the main hub worlds is also a lot to do. There is some kind of Gatcha machine that lets you trade in coins for cool PlayStation memorabilia that you can view in that world. In this world is 25+ years of PlayStation history slammed in a big room. These “artifacts” can also be found in the levels, every level has a few puzzle pieces and artifacts that you can collect. Every world focuses on a different mainline PlayStation console (Sorry handheld lovers, no world of collectibles specific for that). But in those areas, you can also find the handhelds that came out of that generation.
Graphics/Sound
The visuals in this game are astonishing. The colors are so alive and vibrant and every world just feels real. that all gets put together with some amazing sounds that are so good that you barely notice them because they blend in so well. All the visuals feel like they fit together so well even if they shouldn’t.
Replayability
Sadly there isn’t much replayability in the game other than getting the collectibles and to try and get the fastest times on the leaderboards on the speedrun mode. The speedrun mode is pretty cool, there are 2 leaderboards, 1 of your friends and a general one. I tried to get the fastest time on my friends list but failed badly and was confused by how they got it so fast. I did manage to get about 8 seconds faster than the (now) 2nd place on my friends ln the one with the ball rolling level. The speedrun mode is super fun but there are only 6 levels for it.
Story
sadly there wasn’t much of a story in the game, I wish there was because it would be pretty cool to have some type of story that would connect the playstation games together with all the easter eggs they showed. It kinda felt like you missed the reason to do all the things you did in the game and just ran around like a chicken without his head doing some random stuff and that you just stumbled on some boss at the end of the game.
Side content
the side-content is just exploring the easter eggs the game has to offer, it’s not much but there are just so many so it’s cool to try and find them all, or just to go on a quest to find your favorite ones (i for sure got hyped when I saw infamous). The other side content is the Gatcha machine I said earlier, those give you some extra easter eggs and interactive things for in your hub. I guess the speedrunning is also kinda side content, you can do it from the start but there isn’t really a reason to do them other than the trophy if you don’t care about speedrunning.
Summary
The game is an amazing showcase to introduce the PlayStation 5 and all its capabilities and the revolutionary controller. There is no reason to try it out, the platinum takes about 6 hours and it’s completely free. I just had a blast playing it and was sad that there wasn’t more, It’s a fun game for almost all ages and gives you a great view of what comes next for PlayStation.
Astro's Playroom
pre-installed on a PlayStation 5
Pros
- Tons of cool Easter Eggs
- Beautiful visuals
- Fun worlds
Cons
- Kinda short
- No real story
