Astro’s Playroom is, in fact, a “full game” but more than that it is a joyous celebration of all things PlayStation past, present and future. I am in a set of levels called Memory Meadow and if I had children I would be playing this with them and pointing out all the references to all the PlayStation stuff that’s being called out every five seconds. Surely that was the intention of the designers of this game, to give their diehard faithful an object to indoctrinate their children into the cult of PlayStation.
It is so slick and nice and pleasant and enjoyable. Every sight and sound from the television screen and every sound and haptic response from the controller are tuned to elicit some feeling that is like a combination of nostalgia and… hopeful optimism? I don’t know it’s a really nice piece of software is what I’m trying to say. This controller can do a lot! Sony should milk this Astro stuff for all it’s worth.
Wise move having a pack in game already installed and even wiser to have it be this game. This really is Sony’s Mario from the visuals and music and overall presentation. But it’s weird because Mario is just Mario but this wouldn’t work without being so self aware and self referential and constantly calling back to previous eras. Can it work long term for them? Will we eventually be seeing Astro remakes on the PS6 Pro? Seems like by then the spell would be broken. Either way this is definitely the first game you want the new PS5 owner to play on the console. It just sets the stage so nicely. It’s the kind of game that makes you remember oh, right this is why I liked video games in the first place.
Also I went with Spider-Man and wishlisted Rise of the Ronin but I’ll probably just get it while it’s still on sale even if I don’t get to it right away.
some quick hits of thoughts on games that are or were ps exclusive
gran turismo 7 - the driving is impeccable. one of the prettiest games i’ve ever seen. everything else basically sucks, tho? like the entire game is pleasant but poorly designed and the macro is horrible compared to the old games. still… that driving engine is goddamn incredible
returnal - fabulous. it’s not a particularly friendly game but it is pitch perfect in mood and has further-refined consistently-excellent housemarque action gameplay.
spider-man - all 3 games are very similar. they’re generally fine. it’s all very well-done but relatively unexciting nonethless unless you just really like marvel/spidey
demon’s souls ps5 - runs good, feels wrong aesthetically. worth playing if you can get past that feeling because all the online stuff works
last of us - boring but competent. haven’t tried the second one
days gone - meh, couldn’t get into it
horizon zero dawn - so-so. it is competent.
horizon forbidden west - it’s very similar to the first game to the point i one time forgot which one i was playing for a minute
rachet and clank rift apart - it’s remarkably pretty and runs really well. still plays like all the other R&C games so you already know what you’re in for
uncharted (like 5 different ones) - it’s uncharted…
knack - i only played it for an hour and don’t recommend it but i still enjoyed it lol. i do not think it is good, tho
humanity - great!!!
gravity rush remastered - great!!! (2 is also good but the online is dead which hurts)
I’ve cleared the PS1 and PS2 sets since I last posted. About to wrap up for the evening so I’ll do the other two tomorrow but, yeah, the new one is definitely on the list now.
Online stuff–is it not all of it?–works in the PS3 version on The Archstones fan server thingy, or at least it did last I tried like a year ago. Not very heavily populated of course.
One month on and I have to say I really, really like the PS5. It’s just a really good system. Really slick and pleasant to use. Returnal is awesome. Astro Bot is awesome. Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart is awesome.
Spider-Man is good but when I started it the first hour or so I was not super impressed with the graphics and then I realized I was playing it on the performance pro mode lol. A lot of these games default to a performance mode. I appreciate high frame rates but at heart I am a graphics fucker so I want to see some graphics that fuck so I switched it to the quality mode (but not the experimental quality mode because I don’t have a TV that does VRR) and boom there’s the good hair. I was thinking Kraven’s vest didn’t look this janky in the trailers did it?
It’s weird but seeing games with real current gen only graphics and hair like AssCreed Shadows, Veilguard and GTA 6 have broken the spell of the previous generation for me. I started God of War Ragnarok and Horizon: Forbidden West and they look quaint and cross gen to me now, well definitely Ragnarok. Forbidden West less so. Which makes sense because they are cross gen but it wasn’t until this year or last year that I started to actually notice a difference between the two. And it’s mainly the hair but probably also the lighting. I don’t want to go back to bad hair.
And the PS+ is really good too. The back catalog is so much better than what Microsoft has on gamepass and it only has the stuff Sony owns the rights to. I had forgotten that Sony put out so much good and/or at least interesting stuff over the years. They got PS1 and PSP games on here that I never got around to checking out back when. I hope they add more but I wouldn’t be surprised if this was it.
It also comes with this Sony movie club thing that you can buy/rent movies from but they also have like 100 movies you can just watch free. They’re all movies like Ghost Rider and Jason and the Argonauts and Short Circuit 2 but free is free and Short Circuit 2 is better than the original anyway.
So I’ll definitely reup for another month or two of that at the least and keep my eye out for a summer sale or something. Buying it by the year makes sense with all the stuff you get access to for it.
So I guess it’s the Sony/Nintendo gen now. I hope they don’t arrogant and screw it up now that Microsoft isn’t real competition anymore but we’ll see.
