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jp's Astro's Playroom (PS5)

[June 27, 2022 03:28:08 PM]

I think that this game was described in its review in Edge magazine as the best Nintendo game not made by Nintendo that you'd assume was made by Nintendo. It's a really fitting description and, as I write this having unlocked all of the trophies for the game, I'm just a bit disappointed that it wasn't longer!

There's quite a bit for me to unpack and unwind from my experience so...

(a) Nostalgia

The game is littered with references, many overt others less so, to the Playstation as a brand and its history. In the game levels it is common to spot little robots recreating moments from famous Playstation games - sometimes with little costumes and all. I enjoyed seeing them, trying to identify some (when I wasn't sure what they were) and so on. The game also has a vault of artifacts you find and collect - and they're all Playstation-related (including PSP and Vita, of course). As I'm playing the game and collecting these I realized how intertwined my personal play experience is connected to the PlayStation. The PS1 was my first console (I had played on earlier ones, but never owned one or had access to in my home) and I've owned every single one since - not in all the different hardware models, but still. That's a lot of consoles (7 in total, including the handhelds) and I'm also pretty familiar with a lot of the games that came out for it. So, this really did feel like a trip down my own personal memory lane of games. I'm sure I missed lots of references, but it was fun to spot some of the more "obscure" ones? (Uncharted is easy, but Patapon less so...) It also made me realize how much I miss some of the important series that haven't seen releases recently - Wipeout being the standout example here. Each of the main areas ends with a level that plays the startup/system song/chime for each of the platforms - it's been years since I'd heard the PS2 and PS1 ones...sigh.

(b) Trophies

This is the first PS5-exclusive game I've played, so as I'm playing I'm also exploring and trying to understand the new menus/operation stuff for the console. So far the most striking novelty for me - and I'm not sure if this was just a Astro's Playroom thing or if other PS5 games will do the same - is the functionality for tracking and getting more information on game trophies! Hidden trophies remain hidden, with no way to track or anything, but for the others you can add them to a "task tracker" of sorts AND, read a short blurb with advice on how to get the trophy and, if you're interested, you can watch a short video of the trophy being obtained! I don't think this is a huge game changer, but it's definitely an interesting evolution in the meta-gaming aspects of trophies and all that stuff. Weirdly I haven't heard people talk too much about them recently - and while general chatter about "gamerscore" was a thing 5-6 years ago (perhaps more?), nowadays I haven't heard much at all. It's almost like trophies/achievements stopped being a thing? Nintendo/Switch does not have them (which I've always found curious, because clearly it's a choice they made to not have them), while the system in Steam is pretty wild west (in terms of inconsistency and so on). At this point I have a pretty respectable "score", but it's mostly from longevity - you sort of get there naturally if you play games and have been playing them consistently on PS3 (when trophies started for PS), PS Vita, PS4 and, now, PS5.

(c) Controller/Feedback

As I'd heard, this game really is a masterclass on haptic feedback - like, wow, really wow. It's not just the feedback - all the different kinds of rumble and so on (lots of really subtle options and uses, just in the game - walking on different surfaces felt brilliantly exectued - I could close my eyes and know it was wood, ice, glass, etc.) BUT, I was most surprised at how the controller can change how it feels to press the buttons - or at least the triggers - adding a little bit of resistance and the like - so the triggers feel smooth, bouncy, clicky, hard to press, etc. The gacha machine and the feeling of popping the capsule (or crushing the can, depending on what you pulled) was super... immersive? Verisimilitudinous? Not sure if that's a real world - but it felt realistic in a way I was not expecting (and I enjoyed playing around with it). I wonder if there's a PS5 devkit with demos for controller haptics? Would be SO GREAT to have in a haptics/game design class...just to show students what can be done!