Astro’s Playroom
PS5
It’s fitting for a game starring a robot that we’re reminded of Clarke’s third law, because this really is magical stuff
Developer/publisher SIE (Japan
Studio, Asobi Team) Format PS5 Release Out now
The next generation of PlayStation is finally here, and Astro is clearly eager to get going. The first thing you hear is the excitable chirps of Japan Studio’s diminutive mascot from the DualSense’s speakers, as if he’s been trapped inside your controller and is now desperate to be let out. You soon realise why, though it’s not the wonderfully crisp environments that demonstrate the new-gen difference so much as the fidelity of the haptic feedback in your hands. As you scamper around a plaza hub, Astro’s footsteps feel tangibly different when he walks across a metallic PlayStation logo, and again as he scurries across a glass dome; the accompanying sounds from the controller sell the illusion even more. Later, you hear the skritch of blade on ice and feel a gentle friction that somehow conveys the sensation of skating, while when the heavens open as you negotiate cloudy platforms, you feel the pitter-patter of raindrops in your fingers and thumbs. It’s fitting for a game starring a robot that we’re reminded of Clarke’s third law, because this really is magical stuff.
You soon realise you’re wandering around inside the PS5, an imaginarium that cutely treats its various features – cooling fans, GPU, SSD and memory – as portals to new worlds. The speed at which you’re whisked to each of them is quietly thrilling in its own way: the environments within are by no means compact nor lacking in detail, yet a couple of seconds is all it takes before you touch down. Familiar water, ice and jungle biomes are playfully augmented by hardware features; you uproot a range of objects attached to wires that poke out from the ground, while triggers and thumbsticks are used as platforms and controller cables double as tightropes. But the references go much further. Stepping out into the final area of Cooling Springs, we’re instantly transported back a decade or so by the sound of an orchestra tuning up; looking around, we see the skybox now has its very own XMB.
Yes, for a game designed to usher in a new hardware generation, Astro’s Playroom spends a good deal of time looking back. Some will say this is the best showcase of a controller since the Wii – which is a little cruel on the oft-overlooked NintendoLand in our book – though in its celebration of PlayStation’s past this is effectively Sony’s Wii Sports and its Smash Bros. In one world alone, you see other bots cosplaying characters and scenes from Monster Hunter, Metal Gear Solid, Horizon Zero Dawn, Bloodborne, The Last Of Us, Shadow Of The Colossus, Tekken and many more. There are some deep cuts, too, not least with the two Artifacts you find in each area – and these really are treated as precious relics from a distant time. Alongside the consoles and handhelds, you find everything from the original PlayStation memory card to the PSP’s GPS receiver, all recreated in the kind of near-fetishistic detail that will doubtless have our friends at Digital Foundry in raptures. Collect these and they take up residence in a room within the hub, surrounded by a mural that pays tribute to 25 years of PlayStation hardware: a fine incentive to probe these stages more thoroughly to find all the jigsaw pieces tucked away within them.
The fan service is non-stop, in other words, and we can’t pretend we’re entirely immune to its charm – even if nods to Fat Princess, Pain and Infamous will do rather more for some players than others. That said, while bots pretending to be Lara Croft, Dante and Alucard are cute, they’re ultimately just set dressing. You never feel quite the same connection with them as in Astro Bot: Rescue Mission; nor with Astro himself, whose fourth-wall-breaking waves don’t fit quite so well in a game where we’ve no physical presence. And having him don a PSVR headset or pull out a PS Vita when left idle is a slightly uncomfortable reminder of two devices Sony has all but left behind.
While its platforming stages borrow some of their best ideas from the VR game, they’re put together with energy, wit and no little invention. The stages designed to showcase the DualSense’s other features (which you access by zipping Astro into various suits by swiping up on the touchpad) are more mixed in quality. You can hear and feel the stretch of a springy suit that you aim by tilting the controller before squeezing the adaptive triggers to hop in that direction. Climbing sheer cliff faces in a monkey suit uses a similar setup as you twist left and right to reach for handholds – although you need to apply less pressure with your index fingers when grabbing fragile rocks. Charming as these sequences are, they hardly feel new, and in the case of a touchpad-controlled ball-rolling stage and the odd interlude where we’re invited to blow on the DualSense to activate fans, this celebration of PlayStation occasionally feels like a tribute to Nintendo, too. Not that we imagine Japan Studio would bridle at such comparisons – though anyone expecting a game of the standard of Rescue Mission, let alone any of the 3D Marios, would do well to temper their expectations.
Nevertheless, for a freebie, this isn’t just a generous welcome to PS5 (particularly with most launch titles costing £70 a pop) but a promising glimpse of things to come and a fine, if occasionally gimmicky, platformer in its own right. And while we wonder whether the novelty of haptic feedback and adjustable trigger tension will wear off quickly – will we notice this stuff when every game is doing it? – for the time being it offers the rare and unmistakable thrill of the new. Not that Astro seems too concerned about any of that. As he trots past two of his kind dressed as Tekken’s Jin and Heihachi, he simply seems happy to get the PlayStation party started. So, for the most part, will you.