Astros Playroom - Review

Astros Playroom is the default game that comes already installed on your brand new PS5. I found this really good because while I was downloading my other games back onto the system, I still had something to play.

The first thing that I will say about Astros Playroom is how quirky it is and I absolutely loved it. Astros playroom is a platformer where you go through different worlds and complete different tasks and collect a load of PlayStation memorabilia. It kind of ends up as a big party and showcase in the main hub area of the history of PlayStation right from PSOne to PS5, and there were some accessories that it showcases that I completely forgot about or didn’t even know existed such as the screen that you could attach to the PSOne and also the Playstation Mouse!

Another part that I liked when I played through the levels was the nods to the different Sony IPs. All the little bots were dressed up as icons like Jin from Ghost of Tsushima, there are nods to Crash Bandicoot, God of War, Uncharted, and many many more, and I have to be honest, this kept me looking around every nook and cranny of the levels to see all the different bots and see what they were doing or who they related to. Brilliant work.

I loved how the levels were designed, bright and vibrant and for me excellent use of colours. I’m not much of a platformer kind of guy, but I found this game incredibly fun, even to the point that it was my first (or second, can't remember) platinum of the year. The switch from 2D to 3D levels was brilliantly done and kept the game fresh. Each of the levels was designed after parts of the PS5, you have GPU Jungle, which was designed as a jungle level…. Funnily enough, Cooling Springs which was a waterfront level, SSD Speedway which as the name suggests it was a racing type/highway and rocket level and finally Memory Meadow was based up in the cloud. So each section had something symbolic based on the PS5.

There was another section of the game that acted more like the main hub, which showcased your PlayStation collectibles and the best part was that you could interact and play around with the items on display! While playing Astros Playroom, you collected little jigsaw pieces and these went on the walls of the main hub and showed murals to PS1 right through to PS4, and it was amazing seeing these come to life piece by piece.

The best part though was how the game was designed to show off the features of the new Dualsense controller. From the rumble to the haptic feedback, this was a fantastic way to showcase how your new controller worked and the new bells and whistles it had to show. I thought the way the haptic feedback was shown off to be incredible, from using a bow and being able to feel the stress of pulling the string back, to climbing up the waterfalls in one of the levels and using the motion with it to swing and grab onto the ledge. The feeling when you’ve lost your grip on a ledge and the trigger button just becomes loose gave that extra level of immersion, and also it helped my brain to trigger and know that something wasn’t right to I could react that little bit quicker, excellent use of the new technology.

I had an absolute blast playing Astros Playroom and for those who have been lucky enough to get hold of a PS5, I highly recommend it.