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

The first console I ever got at launch was the TurboGrafx 16. At ten years old, I was already knee deep in the hobby, getting news from magazines or rumors from friends that had read magazines (or made crap up). I can’t rightly remember where I got wind of the TG16 (likely the newly launched GamePro) but I knew I wanted one and the day after it launched (which happened to be on my birthday) I convinced my parents to bring me to Toys R’ Us and let me spend all the money I had saved (with I’m sure a healthy kick in from my parents) on this new video game machine. The TG16 purchase, in hindsight, was not the best decision and roughly a year later I traded that in to Funcoland (again in hindsight not a great decision) to help pay for a Sega Genesis. Anyway, all that is to say I’m old and have been playing games a long time. When I got my NES, TG16, and Genesis, pack-in games were the norm. But aside from the Wii with Wii Sports, I can’t remember a recent machine in the last few generations to actually do that. However, the Playstation 5 has one and it is Astro’s Playroom. The dialog I had heard around Astro’s Playroom was that it was a tech demo for the new DualSense controller and that isn’t untrue but it is also not the full story. Yes, Astro’s Playroom is an excellent way to show off the new features and uses of the DualSense. Smarter people than me are going to be able to tell you about how cool and advanced the controller is. What I can tell you is that the DualSense is a nice controller, a very nice controller. But it’s still just a controller. What I can also tell you is that Astro’s Playroom is a nice game, a very nice game. Astro’s Playroom is a colorful, bright happy looking 3D platformer where you tour through Playstation history as the little cute robot, Astro. There is a whimsical and carefree tone to it that gave me the same uplifting feeling that Mario games do. Level design is well done and Astro controls great, even in the unconventional levels that rely on controller gimmicks. But what really struck me was the lovely tour through Playstation history. Astro’s Playroom has four core worlds, each with four levels. These four worlds are themed around the previous four generations of the Playstation. There is no right or wrong way to approach the different worlds although my approach of going reverse order ended up delivering a more impactful nostalgia trip. While I enjoyed the Playstation 3 and 4, the original Playstation and PS2 are more meaningful to me as they were my primary game machines at the time and going through levels designed around that time period for the consoles (complete with era themed collectibles) really hit home. It’s just such a wonderful experience, filled with subtle and not so subtle references to both the games and the hardware that helped make the Playstation brand successful for Sony. And while the base game is short (roughly three hours start to finish for me), there is also a good amount of content to explore and re-explore once completed, including time trials with leaderboards (of which I have not taken part of but plan to). From top to bottom here, Sony hit it out of the park with Astro’s Playroom and this should be viewed as the standard bearer for console pack-ins going forward. Speaking of which, console pack-ins need to become standard again. We’re dropping hundreds of dollars on these boxes, the least they can do is include something we can play and explore the system with before we get to the big budget, big hype games.