The nice tradition of preinstalling games on hardware (Snake on Nokia phones in the 1990 er!) Was Unfortunately a bit out of fashion – and now all of a sudden Sony comes around the corner with Astro’s Playroom, which is preinstalled on all Playstation 5 consoles. The PS5 is officially available in Europe from this Thursday.

You might think that Astro’s Playroom game should only serve the customer to bring the new dualsense controller closer to some extent. The fact that this is the most innovative and in my opinion also the best game of the new generation of consoles so far – that’s a real surprise. Sure, Gears 5, which has been pimped up for the Xbox Series X, or the remasters or remakes of Spider-Man and Demon’s Souls are great games – but they don’t feel like a generation leap, a few more frames and a little ray tracing don’t change anything .

Astro’s Playroom is brimming with lovely details, such as these Playstation flowers .

Astro’s Playroom, on the other hand, is something completely new. This is mainly due to the use of the new controller, because mechanically it is a relatively conventional 3D platformer à la Mario. But the game feels different: every surface you walk over with the character, every object you touch, causes different, characteristic vibration patterns in the controller. In contrast to the rather coarse unbalance motors in previous controllers, a voice coil actuator is now used on each side of the controller. Instead of just rumbling, these voice coils can transmit subtle vibrations to the hands. It always feels different when you run on ice, sand or grass. If it starts to rain in the game, you can feel it on the controller – impressive.

50 of the most popular Playstation accessories can be found in the Astro world, including curiosities such as the PocketStation.

The game is about to burst Creativity The 16 short levels are bursting with creativity. Particularly nice: Since the game world is located within the PS5, “nature” consists of plastic, sheet metal and silicon. The “sea” is cooling liquid, the “flowers” look like the Playstation controller symbols square, triangle, circle and cross. In addition to puzzle pieces, collectibles also 46 of the most popular accessories from Playstation 1 to 5 – including curiosities like the GPS receiver of the PSP or the mouse of the Playstation 1.

Our Playstation 5 test video (Astro’s Playroom is from minute 15: 46 to see). was conceived the astro world from the Asobi team, a division of Sony’s Japan Studio. In an interview with heise online, studio boss Nicolas Doucet reported how much he enjoyed the journey through Playstation history. If he was able to access Sony’s CAD data for 3D images of current accessories, older devices had to be completely remodeled and some of them had to be purchased first: the team bought the PS2 multitap adapter online, while other parts come from Doucet’s private retro games collection .

Of course there are PSVR glasses lying around in the astro world.

Astro’s Playroom is already the fourth game in which the little white robots appear: In the mini-game collection The Playroom they appeared 2013 for the first time on the PS4, in The Playroom VR they 2016 conquered virtual reality. Both games were available for free, the PSVR game Astro Bot Rescue Mission was 2018 the first full-price Astro title. The game has a metascore of 50 and is considered one of the best PSVR titles ever.

At first glance, child’s play The team of Creative Director Nicolas Doucet bought some historical Playstation accessories used to to recreate them for Astro’s Playroom.

In contrast to the extremely challenging Astro Bot Rescue Mission, Astro’s Playroom is – at least at first glance – child’s play. Nicolas Doucet explains that this is intentional, since the goals of the games are very different. Astro Bot is aimed at platforming lovers, the level of difficulty would be based on games of this type. With Astro’s Playroom, on the other hand, they want to reach all PS5 players without exception. It is therefore important that all players really get to see the whole game and not get stuck somewhere. If you leave out the numerous collectibles, you can actually jump through all levels very easily in about four hours – despite the low level of difficulty, it is still not boring, as the game sections are very varied: In one level you fly through them with a jetpack Area, in another you climb around in a monkey costume – and then there are also ice skating levels. Astro’s Playroom becomes more challenging when you want to have all 16 trophies: Until I have the platinum trophy in my pocket nine hours passed.

If Astro’s Playroom is too easy for you, you can try your hand at speedrun competitions.

sublime without a doubt is the visual and audiovisual presentation: As with Astro Bot Rescue Mission, the creators of the world have given the world a very characteristic, toy-like appearance – you want to touch everything. You whistle the soundtrack of Kenneth MC Young days after the game – while you hope that there will be another more extensive Astro title. The potential to get Nintendo’s Mario off the platformer throne is definitely there.

(jkj)