GAME CLEAR No. 10 -- Astro's Playroom

Astro’s Playroom (2020, PS5)

Developer: SIE Japan Studio (Asobi Team)
Publisher: Sony Interactive Entertainment
Clear Date: 12/25/2020

This was the game that convinced me to go ahead and early-adopt the PlayStation 5, so I’m pleased to report it was very good!

Astro’s second adventure (but the first most people will be exposed to, given that the first was a PSVR exclusive) is a celebration of PlayStation’s history in the games industry and the many characters and IPs that are strongly associated with the PlayStation brand. As someone born in 1993, the “old guard” of gaming in my head was always Nintendo, SEGA, and Atari. Sony entered the space after I was born, which meant in my mental model they could never be considered “old.” But it’s 2020, and Sony released the PlayStation in Japan over 25 years ago! VERY generously speaking, Nintendo released their first video game in 1977. I got my first Nintendo system (either a Game Boy Color or a Nintendo 64, not sure which) in probably 1998, meaning Nintendo had been in the market for less time than Sony has now. And the NES was only about 13 years old at the time. By any metric, any kid entering the Sony ecosystem with the PlayStation 5 would be right to think of them as “old guard” these days. But I don’t know. If your first console was capable of 3D graphics, you’ll never be old to me. 🙂

But I digress. My point is that Sony is well within their rights to release a nostalgia bomb game like this at this point in their career, and I had a lot of fun playing through it. Character cameos abound throughout the game without ever feeling annoying. As someone whose PlayStation acquisition order was (PS1 (199X) -> PSP (2005) -> PSVita (2013) -> PS3 (2014) -> PS4 (2016) -> PS2 (2020) -> PS5 (2020)), even I found myself smiling at entertainment references to things I’ve experienced almost entirely as an adult. I supposed that speaks to the great charm of Astro’s Playroom. Beyond nostalgia, though, each of the game’s four worlds is also forward-looking and loosely ties into the PlayStation 5’s “next-gen” components, such its Solid State Drive in SSD Speedway or its cutting-edge graphics in GPU Jungle. Fun!

But gameplay is king, right? Fortunately, Astro delivers here too. Controlling Astro is a breeze, as he can only do a few things: punch, jump, and do a short hover boost. That’s it! But its simplicity works and never frustrates. The level design gets a lot of mileage out of such a gimmick-free protagonist too. Having said that, about half of the game is played with Astro in suits that do embue him with navigational gimmicks. These are designed to show off the DualSense controller and do so fairly effectively. One of them kind of annoyed me, but the other three were effective demonstrations of cool things that can be done with DualSense’s touchpad, adaptive triggers, and gyro controls. I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to figure out which of the suit stages didn’t particularly impress me.

Aside from simply clearing stages, though, Astro is charged with collecting two different kinds of trinkets: artifacts and puzzle pieces. The former consist of PlayStation consoles and accessories, and the latter collectively paint a mural visually depicting the history of PlayStation hardware. These are all optional, but as a fan of the halcyon days of N64 collectathons, I was right at home seeking all these things out. Even if he beelines straight to the end of each world, Astro will at least be rewarded with the world’s corresponding previous-gen console, PlayStations 1-4. Small spoiler, but retrieving the PlayStation 1 from atop a mountain of CRTs playing the PS1 startup sound was a great delight to me.

But perhaps the thing most worth highlighting re: the collecting aspect of the game is that retreading old ground to find something you missed is a BREEZE with PlayStation’s SSD. You can select any level of any world and be there in seconds. So nice! Cleaning up final trophies wasn’t the hassle we’re used to. PC gamers, of course, are laughing. I’ve had an SSD in my PC since I built it in 2013, for example, but it’s still nice for them to be hitting consoles, where I prefer to play.

Overall, Astro’s Playroom succeeds as a tech demo, a nostalgia trip, and a fine platformer in its own right. I very sincerely hope SIE brings us a full retail sequel. I know I’d have a blast with it. For that matter, this is one more nudge toward me picking up a PSVR. Great game.