5/5 ★ – jdraco's review of Astro’s Playroom.

Astro’s Playroom is one of the nicest experiences from beginning to end This whole entire game is like this beautiful theme park ride that just takes you throughout the PlayStation’s entire history, and it’s amazing And it’s a short game as well, only taking around 4 hours to complete entirely Which, for people with extremely short attention spans like me, is perfect This type of game is what I like to call “A Masterpiece for the Mind” But now 2 people reading this might be asking, what is this game exactly? What is it about? What do you do in it? What is an astro? What is a playroom? What is the meaning of life? What is the meaning of death? How can I help build up my credit score? Well, just relax because I’m going to answer a few of those questions… Also, you can build up your credit score by paying your loans on time, not getting too close to your credit limit, having a long credit history, and then also making sure your credit report doesn't have any errors I digress, though, so this game is a 3D platformer that comes built in with the PlayStation 5 to essentially serve as a tech demo to show what the PlayStation 5 can do, what the controller can do, and then also, like I said earlier, take you throughout the PlayStation's history with 4 tightly designed platforming levels centered around each console, a final boss stage at the end, and then there are a shit ton of PlayStation collectibles and references to a bunch of PlayStation exclusive titles And those last 2 that I just mentioned, with the collectibles and the references, might be my favorite part of the entire game Just going throughout each level and finding multiple of these cute references to old PlayStation games that are all reenacted by the little robots just fills my heart with so much joy And I know that sounds kind of corny to say, but it really does I mean, just seeing Ape Escape mentioned at all is enough to restore my faith in humanity again And there are some obscure-ass references in here as well Like at one point they reference the game Jumping Flash And who the fuck remembers Jumping Flash I’m probably one of the 4 people who actually remembers that game, and even I don’t fucking remember that game And that being said, again, there are a lot more obscure games like that referenced as well, and they’re all cute to see in the game And then the collectibles that I mentioned earlier are also great Throughout each of the 4 levels and in the main hub area, you can collect these “artifacts,” which can range from real-life PlayStation accessories to the actual PlayStation consoles to alternate versions of the consoles as well Like, for example, you could collect an artifact that might be the slim PlayStation 2 model or another artifact that could be the PlayStation 1 mouse Or maybe you might even collect the PlayStation Move, which was the biggest piece of shit of all time, but it’s still in the game despite it being a piece of shit And that’s something I love about Astro’s Playroom: it absolutely embraces everything about the PlayStation’s history No matter how shitty something PlayStation Move might’ve been, they still included it, because it’s still a piece of history; it’s part of what this line of consoles is, and, again, this game embraces it with open arms And what I also love about the artifacts in this game is that they’re all displayed beautifully in the central hub area, and you can interact with almost every single one of them Like, for example, you can punch the slim PlayStation 2 in order to open up the disk drive, you can go inside the PlayStation 5’s VR headset and watch gameplay of Astro’s Playroom, and you can punch the PlayStation Move just because it’s a piece of shit And that's barely just scratching the surface, because you can interact with pretty much every single thing in this hub area, and it’s amazing Plus there’s even this little claw machine in the hub area that you can spend coins on in order to get more artifacts, as well as some puzzle pieces, and then also these little miniature displays of the robots And these are all great rewards to get. I already talked about the artifacts and how much I like them, but I also really like the little displays as well, and the more of them you get, the more robots start to show up in the hub area, making it even more populated And then the puzzle pieces are also great because they all combine to create this beautiful tapestry in the hub area, which also shows and displays the PlayStation's history in a very stylish way Moving on from the collectibles, though, now I want to talk about the levels in this game, which are all amazing Like I said, there are only 4 levels in this entire game, and they put a lot into them And for starters, each level looks absolutely beautiful They all have their own unique look; they’re all vibrant; almost every location is beautiful and is filled with colors that literally shoot out of the TV screen at you, creating one of the most visually interesting games that the console has to offer Especially with the level SSD Speedway, which is my favorite level in the game, and if you want further clarification of what I’m talking about with the graphics, then just take one glance at this level and you'll know exactly what I'm talking about; it's beautiful And another thing that's beautiful is all the little PlayStation details hidden within each level For example, throughout pretty much every location, you can see the buttons on the PlayStation controller in almost anything Like, there are plants that have the buttons on them; they can be a pattern on the floor; they might be in the sky, in the background, just literally anywhere you can think of; the buttons will be there And there are also other little details as well, like the tight ropes, for example, which are just the connecting cords for the old PlayStation 1 controllers It’s beautiful, and there are probably a million more little details like that that I’m forgetting to mention Another thing about the levels that I also really like, though, is how full of life all of them are Like each level is filled to the brim with the robots, with all of them just vibing and dancing and just doing their own thing And this really gives each level this beautiful sense of life and energy and makes every level feel like a fucking party, and that truly does immensely add to the experience of playing each and every level in the game And then finding all the references to the old PlayStation games is just the cherry on top to make every level as fun and memorable of an experience as possible Also, while I’m on the topic of the references again, probably my favorite reference in the entire game is a subtle one that happens at the end of CPU Jungle And it’s at the last area of the level when you climb the mountain and get to the snowy section, and when you’re there, you see these little rabbits hopping around Which doesn’t seem like a reference at all; they’re just rabbits But then in that same snowy area you get a bow & arrow, which is pretty much completely useless in that area, because there are no faraway targets to shoot, no enemies, nothing Except for the rabbits, which, if you blast them with the bow & arrow, you get coins And I didn’t pick this up at first and didn’t understand why they would put the bow & arrow up there until I realized after I shot one of the rabbits that it definitely had to have been a subtle-ass Last of Us reference And once I realized that, I just had the biggest, shittiest smile on my face, and I really do wonder how many more subtle references like that are in this game that I might’ve missed Regardless, though, the last thing that I want to touch on for the levels are each level's unique transformations/upgrades that you get to use Specifically the monkey, the frog, the ball, and the rocket ship And these are all pretty fun to use; I mean, they’re not the most fluid thing in the entire world, and their gameplay can be overall pretty slow, and it’s definitely a process to get used to how they control, especially considering that you have to use PS5 motion controls for all of them But once you do get used to controlling them, it can be pretty fun and satisfying to use these upgrades I especially like the ball sections and how they’re pretty much just a slightly better controlling version of the ball sections from Super Mario Galaxy And then I also like the rocket ship sections as well, mainly just cause controlling it is much less of a slog compared to controlling the monkey and the frog Which neither of them are bad, but their sections can be pretty slow Either way, though, again, I like these sections, and they do make good use of pretty much everything that you can do with the PS5 controller And overall, so does this entire game Like I said at the beginning, this whole game is really just a tech demo to show you what the PS5 can do and what its controller can do, and it absolutely more than delivers on this I mean, this game was teaching me shit I could do with the PS5 controller that I didn’t even know about Like apparently you can fucking blow on the controller and it’ll have a reaction in-game… Like, what the fuck? Why would anyone ever think to do that? Why is that even a feature of the controller? I thought we left that shit behind way back in the DS era, but no, blowing on the controller is still going strong, and I kind of love that it’s a feature because it really just has no reason to be And then the game just utilizes everything else about the controller as well It'll make you swipe your finger on the touchpad, obviously, like I said; it makes you blow on the controller; it relays in-game audio to the controller; it vibrates; and it syncs up to the gameplay every single time that it needs to Again, it just utilizes every single thing about the console and the controller, and I love it And overall, I love this whole entire game as well It’s just a beautiful, short, tight 3D platformer with a shit ton of memorable moments and just an endless amount of charm And this game should be the absolute standard of how to make a tech demo, because not only is it fun as hell and insanely polished But it also genuinely does its job and shows off everything that this console has to offer So yeah, this game is absolutely amazing And now I’m excited as hell to play Astro Bot at some point, because apparently that’s just this game cranked up to 1000, which sounds incredible So expect that review sometime in the future But scoring Astro’s Playroom as it stands I’m giving this game a 5/5 It more than deserves it… Mainly just because it acknowledged Ape Escape