For a pack-in game on the PS5, this is an incredibly fun, albeit short, game that despite being a tech demo to showcase the DualSense's capabilities makes it a very enjoyable and light-hearted experience. While PlayStation isn't well known for these kinds of games specifically, whenever they do put out something fun and light-hearted like this it's really fun.

It's a very fun platformer that really puts the DualSense controller's capabilities to excellent use and it was a consistent joy to play the whole way through. The artifacts you can collect and the environments as a whole were a massive love letter to PlayStation's long history in the gaming world, and collecting them all was not only fun but a great trip down memory lane looking at the many fun and memorable experiences PlayStation has delivered over the years through its various consoles and games, many of which were given nice shout-outs in some form or another.

If you ever do get a PS5, this game will be installed in it from the get-go, and absolutely do not skip it. It's really worth playing and is just one little joyful experience from beginning to end that makes the most of the DualSense's features in great ways.

Enjoyment - 6/10
Difficulty - 2/10

The PlayStation 5 demo experience.

Astro's Playroom is a little world living in your PlayStation 5. A nice guided tour covering the video game history of PlayStation.
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A pack in title that is a not at all veiled product advertisement should not be nearly as fun to complete as this.

The Music Bangs, The Mechanics Jam, The Vibe is Fun.

Its worth it as a play. if you have a ps5 its free so you arent really losing anything but time if you hate it.

Completed this as hundreds of gigabytes were loaded onto my new PlayStation 5's hard drive, filling it just as soon as I got it.

Smartly, this game came preinstalled and was a genuinely fun little adventure filled with references to Sony's past products! A lot of the features on the controller were super impressive, making the Switch's HD Rumble feel like god damn Standard Def Rumble, and the trigger pushback with the speaker was really cool. I hope some of these PlayStation 5 games I have now take advantage of this awesome controller.

Breaking News: Oh damn. The PlayStation 6 just came out and is slamming off the shelves like hot pancakes. Damn. guess I'll throw this one out.

Because my family always owned XBoxes (my brother started with the original XBox when it came out) and I never liked the old Playstation controllers (but love the XBox one), there wasn't any thought I needed to waste on which console to get, when I picked up my first.

Since then, however I've been looking for story games, and a lot of friends have convinced me that I needed to try out a couple of titles that where all Playstation exclusives (The Last of Us, Horizon, God of War, Death Stranding, etc.), so I decided to get one, once the next console gets released - that was the Playstation 5, and when it came out I was still busy playing the Assassin's Creed games, so I decided to get a PS5 when it was on sale... however that never happened, as it was scarce and only got more and more expensive.

But this Easter there was an sale, where I got the new version of the Playstation 5 for ~100€ cheaper, so I had to buy it.

Only having one game (Syndicate) I was delighted to find, that there was already something pre-installed, and I thought that it was just a simple game with not much to offer (similar to those VR games), but turns out, I was totally mistaken.

Astro's Playroom is "mostly" a 3D platformer, where you control this sweet little robot in a "robotic" world, through different "hardware themed" rooms that consists of 4 levels to pass through. Each of these levels features slightly different play styles, sometimes the game turns into a 2D game, sometimes you need to fly through an area, sometimes it becomes a jump and run game. Each of these play styles comes with its own set of controls, utilizing the full potential of the controller; including the integrated mic, the gyroscope, the different triggers (with and without resistance), and even the touch pad.

And I have to say, this controller is actually quite impressive, to the point that it's a shame that most games will probably never utilize 80% of its capabilities (at least all those games that will strive to be cross-platform).

Besides that, the game is really fun, you get to hunt for a lot of cleverly hidden collectables that will keep you engaged, it is full of cute little ideas that are fun to explore, and (last but not least), it is full of references throughout the history of Playstation and gaming. I - being someone that was never really involved with the Playstation - recognized some artifacts and games, and had a lot of fun, identifying and remembering them. I cannot start to imagine how much fun and nostalgia this is for someone who was playing with this platform for decades.

It took me about 4 hours to play through the "main story", and additional 3 hours to find all the gimmicks and gadgets and do all the races once, etc., which again is quite impressive for a game that is completely free to play, and basically a tech demo. And to not get bored, there are 10 races you can do afterwards, where you can try to improve your performance for yourself, or compared to the rest of the world in speed-running some of the passages that you already played in the game (I scored every race around place 200.000; with the top players needing half to a quarter of the time I needed).

Who would have thought, that a free and basically tech-demo game could be so much fun? And who would have thought that a company making money with selling a console (for which they don't even really need any marketing anymore), would put so much love and energy in something that is basically a tech-demo? Heck even the credits where fun! How could I give anything else than 5 Stars? I've paid money for worse!