I’ve seen uses like blowing into a mic to get an in-game fan to move since the days of the original Nintendo DS, so it doesn’t necessarily bring anything all that fresh here. Let us know in the comments section, and be sure to refer to our Astro’s Playroom guide for more collectibles guides. That being said, the fact that my biggest complaint is just that I really wish there was more, is almost more of a compliment. Astro’s Playroom is an extremely well-designed platformer and getting access to it for free feels like a steal. Even as-is I’d wager Sony could easily charge $20 and most people would happily pay that without feeling ripped off at all. Usually rumble tends to fade away and eventually becomes something I stop noticing.
Read Next: Ps5 Review
Astro’s Playroom isn’t just a tech demo but a fun little platformer. It’s great that Sony is investing more in the Astro Bot franchise because this could be their answer to the Super Mario series. The level design is more like Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario 3D World, and that’s a huge compliment.
You also ping Astro into action with a flick of the touchpad and zip up his various special suits by running your finger upwards. It is easy to dismiss Astro’s Playroom as a child’s game, given the artistic design; however, it is more than that and can appeal to a larger audience. While SC 88 isn’t necessarily hard, some levels are quite challenging. As Astro, players must clear hordes of enemies by spinning toward them or, in some cases, using a gun to get through. We’ll be playing Astro Bot for our readers and will have our thoughts ready in time for the game’s launch.
Astro’s Playroom February 2025 Update Adds Ps5 Pro To Artifacts
In the PlayStation Labo area is a Bot sadly trying to make sense of a pile of shapes. This is referencing PS4 launch title Knack, released in 2013 and developed by SCE Japan Studio. The shapes are what Knack is made of, and he was designed to showcase the power of the PlayStation 4 by being made up of thousands of objects. It’s a reference to Symphony of the Night thanks to the blonde hair.
This references the Castlevania series, specifically 1997’s Symphony of the Night on PS1, by Konami Computer Entertainment Tokyo. Nearby the Horizon easter egg is an island with a bot making a blocky T. The game is about making assets and even entire games from scratch. At the start of GPU Jungle, check along the left-hand side between two trees for a lower section with four Bots with various weapons on their backs huddled around a campfire.
Jump onto the lilypads, and leap across, but be careful not to fall in the frozen water as that’s lethal! The PULSE Elite Wireless Headset is a premium version of the PULSE 3D Wireless Headset that carries over its noise-cancelling tech, and has the same magnetic driver tech as the PULSE Explore earbuds. Its other addition is a boom arm microphone that can be used as an alternative to the DualSense’s microphone for voice chat.
Artifact 1/2 “PS Move Navigation Controller” – From the start of the area pull up the wires on the right to grab a throwable item, then throw it at the platform to drop it into the water. Jump across and pull the three small wires, followed by the revealed large middle wire to get this artifact. Puzzle Piece 1/4 – From the start of the area, go to the left and go through or around the igloo to find this puzzle piece.
There is no way to turn the touchpad controls off, nor is there an alternate control method. I handed the controller to my sister asking her to do the area for me, with the expectation this would be a one-off. This next area features a series of platforms rotating in rectangles. Head right and jump onto the first set, but instead of jumping left, ride the platform right. Despite looking like a handheld, the PlayStation Portal doesn’t run games by itself.
Upon touching the fourth starfish, you’ll come across the special bot, and the clue for the riddle — an arrow following a specific route. To find the special bot in SSD Speedway, head to the Bot Beach area. To find the special bot in SSD Speedway, head to the Deep Dataspace area. To solve the riddle, jump up to the circular platforms above this area, where on the far side, you’ll see a little clock on the column.
The strapline used in Astro’s Playroom is a cheeky reference to media confusion regarding what the Processor Unit actually did, initially thought to give the PS4 extra processing power for VR titles. Instead of using an infrared light bar, movement was tracked using the soft light ball on top via the PS Eye Camera, and rotation by the internal SIXAXIS. This made it slightly more advanced than a Wiimote, until the Wii MotionPlus released. [newline]The PS Move controller later made a comeback as the hand tracking method for the PlayStation VR. The colloquially titled “Super Slim” marked the PlayStation 3 as the second PlayStation to receive more than one exterior design revision, after the PSP (which had five).
That said, we really recommend you don’t rush through Astro’s Playroom, as it’s an experience that deserves to be savoured. Take your time exploring the level and discovering all of the Easter eggs; spend a moment walking on the different surfaces and seeing how it affects the DualSense controller’s haptic feedback functionality. Above all else, have fun with friends and family, passing the pad around – experiences like this don’t come around often. Fortunately, Astro’s Playroom has dynamic jumping, which means that holding down X will result in a much bigger jump than just tapping X. Something that interested individuals should keep in mind if they are struggling with the bigger gaps that can be found in the game.
Rather than using cartridges, the PSP is one of the only handhelds to use optical media for the task. UMDs weren’t just for games, as Sony released many movies and even a few TV shows on the format to be viewed on the handheld, most famously Spider-Man 2. The PlayStation 2 Memory Card holds 8 MB of storage, eight times more than the original’s, and abandoned the blocks system so that saves could be whatever size they needed to. It could also store PS1 saves on it if copied over (which Suikoden III took advantage of), although PS1 games would not be able to detect them. Interestingly, the disc in Astro’s Playroom has a blue back, which was used for PS2 games that were small enough to fit on a CD-ROM, the format used by the original PlayStation. The platform design is rarely all that inspired though and we’re still very disappointed that all the enemies are direct rip-offs of Mario enemies, even relatively obscure ones like Pokey and Wiggler.
Study the movement of platforms, observe what enemies are up ahead, and plan your approach accordingly. As you get better at playing games, you’ll get better at being able to make things up as you go. It’s worth noting however that this isn’t the same model from the demo. After jumping up the trigger platforms and tripping a Checkpoint, check the right-hand side for tow Bots hiding from a third with mushrooms on its head. The mushroom Bot refers to a Clicker, a human taken over by parasitic fungi, while the two characters are Joel and Ellie. Joel is holding a brick, a common weapon and means of distraction in the game.
The interior display is four times the resolution of the original, and 3D audio adjusts with your head position. Eye tracking also allows for foveated rendering, where areas you aren’t looking at will not be given priority in order to optimize game performance. The HD Camera follows in the footsteps of the PlayStation Camera, PS Eye and EyeToy before it.
Early models featured RCA jacks for video and audio output and a Parallel I/O port, but these were all removed by the 1999 models. The PS5 comes with a free game that not only demonstrates the new console’s abilities but celebrates the long history of PlayStation. At the top, wait for the last block to slide left so you can stand on the left-hand side. Use a jump and Beam Glide to land on top of the block (just like you did before), then ride the block left through the Coins. From here you can jump left one last time to land on a button that reveals a Yellow Trampoline. Head back to the teeter-totter and Beam Glide on the left side of it to raise it up to the right.