3.5/5 ★ – TNGLiam's review of The Playroom VR.

Platform: PS4 Time Played: 3.43 hours Status: Completed I first played The Playroom VR several years ago with my cousin when he brought over his PS VR for a weekend, and honestly I don’t remember a whole lot about that experience, besides the fact that he’s always vouched that the game is fantastic. Years later in preparation to play game of the year winner Astro Bot I decided to play the game that the little hero originated from, and I had a great time with it! I didn’t realize at first that this game was so multiplayer focused, with one player wearing the VR headset (duh) and other players joining in by playing on the TV, either with or without a controller, which made me really appreciate the games that made it so that you didn’t have to use a second controller, or only one! It does make me wish that there were more single-player options, but part of the magic here is the party aspect. One mode that really allowed me to appreciate this setup was Wanted! The TV player looks at wanted posters of a criminal bot in the bar, while the VR player has to find and shoot them with a plunger gun based on the TV player’s instructions. I loved having my friend shout out all of features to best describe the culprit while frantically looking for them myself, especially on the higher or endless difficulties, such a great mode. Ghost House was yet another great mode, where only the player looking at the TV can see where the ghosts are, but only if the VR player shines light directly on them, so you’ve really gotta work together to nab all of the ghosts in a good time. This one ramps up in difficulty and becomes a great challenge, heavy Luigi’s Mansion vibes here. So much fun. In Monster Escape, the VR player acts as a kaiju-like monster attacking a city, moving your head around to knock yourself into buildings, causing debris to fall onto the TV players below, running around saving civilians from the attack, with a battle between the heroes and monster capping off the game. No difficulties here or any other levels or courses, just one quick run through this mode. Its alright, and definitely nothing to write home about. Cat and Mouse is pretty fun. The VR player acts as the cat, hiding behind a set of curtains, only able to make out the silhouettes of the TV players who are acting as mice trying to steal all of the cheese off of the floor. The VR player’s goal is to catch all of the mice while they’re moving in order to win the round, but if the mice aren’t moving when the cat comes out, the mice are safe. If the mice get all of the cheese, the VR player loses. Not to mention the dog who constantly gets in the way. A pretty fun mode with not a whole lot to it, but still fun regardless. Next is Robot Rescue, the debut of our beloved Astro, on a brief little mission to save twenty of his little buddies who have been scattered across of level. For a brief little demo of this concept, a 3D platformer whose camera is controlled using a VR headset is pretty neat but isn’t really all that groundbreaking or fun to get through. There are just simply too many bots to find, some of which you can’t even get to if you don’t have a second player assisting you via the TV and another controller, and even if you do miss a bot, there is really no practical way to go backward through the level, because walking in backward through the level causes the VR camera to ever so slowly crawl backward through the stage, and holy shit, if I kept my eyes open while that crawl happened I would become so nauseous. There has to have been a better way around this setup. Anyway, this mode still controls pretty well, but never wowed me a whole lot. Still a sweet little introduction to Astro, and I’m glad that they didn’t give up on this concept and expanded it into a full game. Mini Bots is just simply a gacha machine mode where you use tokens collected from the game’s other modes towards getting little figures of bots doing shit from said other modes. Just a cute little time waster. Not all too interesting or engaging. There was one piece of free DLC, that being Toy Wars, where the VR player arms a cannon, shooting balls out at blocky enemies that come out of one of three little caves. It's up to you and whoever else joins in on the fight with you to defeat all of the enemies and ultimately the mothership that they come from in order to save all of your little bot buddies behind you. Overall, The Playroom VR is yet another great time waster, but unlike its predecessor, it's a lot more engaging, a lot more fun, and can be a blast with the right people and the right modes. Wanted! is a mode that I could see myself returning to time and time again, with Ghost House not being too far behind. The next game in the “Playroom” series wouldn’t be seen until the launch of the PS5, but that didn’t stop Astro from getting yet another game of his own in the meantime.