Platinumming Astro's Playroom

Hello Everyone, I recently platinummed Astro's Playroom and wanted to comment on the experience.

I would classify the game has having basically 4 sets of trophies:

-Mandatory "Story" Ones you get by completing major levels. e.g "Greatness Awaits! -Cleared GPU Jungle." Nothing much to say about these ones.

 

-Find the Collectibles. e.g "Such a Big Fan!- Got all artefacts in Cooling Springs". Even without a guide, most of these were pretty straightforward to find if you played a lot of collect-a-thons. A lot of "hidden corners" and spots house the artifacts and puzzle pieces for the trophy. These were pretty fun because there were only a couple collectibles per level, levels themselves weren't too long and it was quick to access previously completed levels.

 -"Easter Eggs/Interactables" is the 3rd kind. These include trophies like "Disc Swap!- Opened the lid of The PlayStation console in PlayStation Labo",   " Jason! - Sheltered from the heavy rain in Memory Meadow. ". These operate a lot like the collectibles where you need to find the specific thing or reference and figure out how to interact with them. Normally, the last part is easy as you often just have to hit or stand by them but finding them without the trophy menu itself can be a bit tricky.

Finally we have the challenge trophies. These ones require you to complete a particular gameplay challenge. These include stuff like "Adequate, Boy…Hit all rabbits with arrows at the mountain peak of GPU Jungle.", "Keepy Uppies - Juggled a ball 5 times with the Frog Suit", and "No No No Noooooo!
Fell 30 meters and caught yourself in the monkey suit in GPU Jungle." These aren't very hard to do and at most, require a few retries. The challenges themselves were quite reasonable. My favourite was the one for completing all the speedrunning levels with a total time under 7 minutes because the mechanics and movements were surprisingly fun.

 

Overall, I enjoyed my time trophy hunting in this game. Because of how brief the game is, it wasn't tedious searching every nook and cranny. If anything it was always enjoyable because every Easter Egg/Reference to other PlayStation games always brought a smile to my face. If you wanted to introduce someone to the world of trophy hunting, Astro's Playroom is a good if not the best starting point.

While I'm here I might as well do a review on the game itself.

Astro's Playroom is a 2020 Game that comes bundled with PlayStation 5 consoles with the intention of showing off the features of the new platform. When I first booted up the game, I was expecting it to be like Welcome Park on the PS VITA. A series of short quick minigames/mechanics you can get through in an afternoon designed to show off the system's features. A distraction in between the "real games". But to my surprise, Astro's Playroom was one of those Real Games.

The game plays like that of a standard 3D platformer. You play as an Astro Bot. One of PlayStation's new Mascots since 2013. This Astro Bot is pretty fun and responsive to move around. The little guy can run, jump, glide with lasers for a short while that also damage enemies, punch and do a charged spinning attack. The mechanics themselves are pretty solid and levels often build on concepts introduced earlier so there's some progression. I especially liked the bonus speedrun stages as they highlight this with how you can skip certain sections and move Astro in interesting ways. Granted, it's not a very difficult game but pretty short and sweet during its runtime.

The game is divided into 4 main level areas each based on an "aspect" of the PS5 such as the "SSD Speedway (represented as this futuristic neon light highway)", The Cooling Springs (represented as this beach and icy area), GPU Jungle (based on this tropical jungle area) etc. The designs of each of these areas are quite distinct and fun to traverse. Every area also has 2 levels based on a "gimmick" that uses some of the Dualsense's features. For example, GPU Jungle has areas where Astro needs to put on a monkey suit and climb up a wall. You need to tilt the controller left and right to control where Monkey Astro will move and aim, swing the controller to make Astro swing, and press R2 with varying amounts of pressure to grab certain handholds, and release R2 while swinging to make Monkey Astro go soaring. SSD Speedway has 2 gimmicks. One where you use the motion control to aim Astro in a giant Slingshot and the touchpad to launch him. This makes him use a paraglider to glide for a while. And another one where you have to control this little space ship by tilting your controller and pressing L2 or R2 for thrust in specific directions. You can press both L2 and R2 for extra speed. Cooling Springs has a Sping Suit where you have to tilt the controller and vary the amount of pressure on R2 to launch said spring. And finally, Memory Meadows has a ball suit you control by swiping on the touchpad.

 

I wouldn't be surprised if most people either disliked or tolerated these sections. After all, they are pretty rare forms of gameplay on PlayStation systems. Unless you played Tearaway Unfolded, or owned a PSVITA, 3DS or Wii, you likely haven't had to play many motion based games. But I kinda enjoyed these sections in Astro's Playroom. I found the motion controls to be quite responsive so performing tricky jumps or movements was quite feasible. Plus, since these sections are quite brief, they never went on long enough to become annoying. To me, they functioned as decent minigames to vary the experience.

Anyway, beating the 4 major levels unlocks a bonus level where you fight the T-Rex from the PS1 demo as the final boss. I'm really upset that The T-Rex was chosen as the final boss instead of Polygon Man 😤. Imagine getting roasted by a floating spikey purple head whenever you die to him!

To become serious again, now to talk about one of Astro's Playroom's biggest appeals, its nostalgia and celebration of the history of PlayStation. This was one of the things that made exploration so cool in this game. Levels have so many references, either in the form of other Astros tucked away in corners or out in the open re-enacting sequences from PlayStation games, or collectibles in the form of old controllers, systems and attachments.

To the discuss the former, it brought a smile to my face seeing stuff like these cute little robots cosplaying as Cole McGreath sliding on electrical wire, or one with pointy ears and a little Rabbit, or one playing with a Spyro doll that breaths fire when you punch it, or 2 of then hiding from a bot with mushrooms on its head, or cave paintings of bots fighting a giant monster in a rhythm. It seems like almost every franchise from PlayStation's past, no matter how small gets some representation here. It really enticed me to keep looking and trying to guess the reference. Add in that some of them even award a trophy for interacting with them and it was quite fun.

Levels also contain collectibles in the form of PlayStation artifacts. You can find all kinds of things from alternate versions of prior consoles like the 2 different PS3 Slims. To obscure stuff like the PS3 Buzz Controller, the PSP GPS and Camera and more. It's a shame that the game doesn't include wires. I would have liked to see more stuff like the PSP to AV adapter. It was fun collecting these because they show up in your PlayStation Labo museum and seeing these massive recreations of these objects was quite cool. It was fascinating to see this history. The game really feels like a massive tribute to and celebration of PlayStation's history. Even its design as a 3D Platformer feels like a throwback since such kinds of games have only recently made a bit of a comeback after being quite popular around the time of the PS1.

Finally, I want to talk about another major selling point/appeal of the game: the Haptic Feedback. I was quite skeptical when this was announced. Like, Was this just "fancy rumble? The Switch had this for years earlier". But I feel quite won over by Astro's Playroom's implementation. Almost every floor, move and scenario has a "vibration profile" associated with. Walking on a wooden bridge causes the controller to vibrate in a specific way that corresponds with how Astro's moving on it. Him taking a step with his left foot causes the controller's left side to vibrate in such a way to mimic walking on wooden bridge. And it's a different profile for walking on metal surfaces. When it's raining, the controller provides feedback of all those little rain droplets.

I really like this feature. Aside from being immersive, it also helps with accessibility and providing additional information. I remember a section when I muted my TV but with just the visuals and haptic feedback, was able to "experience" the section just fine.  As I often play with the sound of my games muted so I can listen to podcasts, I like that haptic feedback can somewhat "compensate" for the lack of sound. I'd love to see a Splinter Cell Chaos Theory port use this feature. Imagine actually sneaking across surfaces and "feeling" the sound you're making. You probably wouldn't even need to keep a constant eye on your sound meter to be able to tell how much noise you're making and that's cool.

But to be more cynical for a second, I don't think the DualSense's features are going to get much attention in the future, even from Sony. I expect we might see the adaptive Triggers and some Haptic Feedback used here and there in major Sony Exclusives, but the Touchpad is likely going to get almost 0 use. And Third Parties will make minimal use of the adaptive triggers and haptic feedback. Because that's kinda been the story with the PS4's DualShock 4. That thing has both a touchpad and some decent Gyro Controls. But those barely get any use. Hell, you'll find PC games using Steam Input allow you to use Gyro Aiming using the DualShock 4 than games Sony themselves made for the DualShock 4.

And I can see why. To most 3rd parties, it doesn't make much sense spending valuable time and resources adding super specific features to one platform when platform parity is pretty important. Plus, unlike Switch owners, PlayStation owners haven't been very vocal about these features so they're unlikely to even get Gyro Aiming. So it's going to lead to some odd situations. I remember in Watch Dogs 2, in order to switch radio stations on PS4, you had to hold down the Touch Pad and move the Right Stick left or right. Instead of what GTA V did and let you switch radio stations by just swiping on the touchpad. I feel that unless Sony releases some kind of equivalent to Steam Input on the PS5 where players could create custom and share custom profiles for games where you can bind specific inputs to touchpad swipes or Gyro Motion,  I don't see many 3rd Party games being any different on a PS5 controller compared to if you could play them on a PS1 controller.

 

In addition games like Call of Duty, which rely on super fast reflexes and reactions, would be discouraged from using some of these features because the vibration and triggers may put some players at a disadvantage. Taking a second longer to press R2 could mean death. I can relate. I played Borderlands 2 on PS4 with the controls swapped so R1 is to shoot so I could actually rapid fire.

Which means I wouldn't be surprised if in 5-9 years when we look back at the PS5's history, Astro's Playroom remains the only game to make the most out of the DualSense. And in a sad way, it's oddly fitting that a game about PlayStation's odd history, itself becomes a historical showcase for features that never were.