We’re at the end of the year and I find myself looking back on the gaming hardware I spend most of my time on. PC is about writing sick takes about video games, not playing them, so I frequently spend evenings cuddled up on my sofa with DualSense in hand, ready to play the endless list of exclusive experiences Sony has ensured remain on its PS5 platform.
What’s that you say? There’s only been a couple this year? And games like 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Final Fantasy 16 and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Spider-Man 2 are bound to receive PC ports in the future too? Say it ain’t so! I know the Xbox isn’t faring much better, and Nintendo has been cooling its exclusive ambitions ahead of a Switch successor rumoured to come in 2024, but goodness me, it has been slim pickings for my fellow Sony pon🎀ies and I this year. So much so that exclusives have lost all meaning.
Exclusives have been losing importance for a long time. For years now, Xbox has thrown that away with the debut of Xbox 💛Game Pass and Play Anywhere, more confident in its own ecosystem tha🐻n the games contained therein, although that is still some part of the appeal.
Sony though, is all about hot and juicy exclusives you can’t find anywhere else. Except, for the past few years and since the launch of PlayStation 5, it very much isn’t. I can count the exclusive games on the plไatform (that are worth playing) on one hand, with fewer announced for the future than ever before. Games are more expensive and take longer to make than ever, so much so that Sony performing the same song and dance in 2023 feels dishonest. Besides, the best game on PS5 is still one that came pre-installed absolutely free.
Astro’s Playroom is designed as a technical showcase for the PS5, but it isn’t merely a brief collection of features where you play around with toggles to see exactly how pretty everything looks - it’s a fully-fledged platformer brimming with enough imagination to rival even Mario with its brilliance. Astro Bot works its way through a selection of brilliant levels all designed as a homage to certain periods of PlayStation history. It’s like the player is venturing through the exaggerated innards of each console as they encounter beloved faces from all their favourite games in chibi form. You can create a second game out of discovering all the hidden easter eggs alone, with some oꩵbvious and some subtle depending on when or where you look. It is designed with a love and charm we don’t see in PlayStation exclusives nowadays as it pays homage to the treasured past and looks towards a hopeful future.
It’s also worth highlighting how good Astro’s Playroom feels to play. Platforming is beautifully precise and satisfying, with built-in speedrunning mechanics going to show how much Team Asobi believes in the mechanics it has constructed. It is applied across countless biomes based on the internal hardware of the PS5 as you slide across giant ♌tundras of ice or brave the billowing winds on sun-drenched deserts. I turn a corner in Astro’s Playroom and I’m bombarded with creativity, looking around in every direction to make sure I don’t miss anything. The soundtrack is phenomenal and, aside from Returnal, it’s the best use I’ve seen of the Dualsense in any game since. That’s largely because the game has the assignment of selling us on the platform’s potential, but it immediately goes above and beyond that prerogative.
My favourite part of the entire package is the central hub you return to between levels. Not only is this adorable space also ripe with collectibles and charming characterಌs, it acts as a means to house everything you’ve found throughout the game. This includes scale replicas for every single piece of PlayStation hardware in existence, right down to the most obscure peripher𒀰als and forgotten accessories one can think of. Finding my way atop a PlayStation 3 before pushing the power button and watching it come to life is a nostalgic wonder, and this much love has been put into the animations and sound effects of everything you can touch.
When I try to think up a game that can only be played on the PS5 and fully represents Sony’s creative vision, Astro’s Playroom is the only experience entering the conversation. Demon’s Soulꦬs is a stunning remake and Final Fantasy 16 pushes the boundaries of character action, but it’s only Astro that sticks in my memory and reminds me over and over again why I love the medium so much, and how many memories I’ve mad﷽e over the almost three decades of my life. After three years of the console being on the market, nothing has come close to matching it.
