Hands on w. PS5 & Astro’s Playroom

In a quiet suburban street in Auckland City there were Bots on the loose.
PlayStation NZ invited press in for a hands on session with the PS5 and Astro’s Playroom ahead of launch.

A family friendly title with a surprisingly brutal difficulty curve in places, exclusive to PS5, sees you take on the role of Astrobot in his own adventure.

It’s a platformer with puzzle elements bolted on, sure, but the real hook is the back-catalogue easter eggs. You’ll spot hardware and software from across PlayStation’s history as you go, which is the whole point of a pack-in tech demo like this.

Astro’s Playroom is the perfect title to get yourself in to on day one.

Not only because it is an included game, but it also shows the capabilities of the DualShock5 controlpad.

The haptic feedback in the PS5 controller is doing real work, not just rumbling for the sake of it. Each surface and impact on screen translates into something distinct in your hands, which is the actual pitch for this hardware generation.
Puzzle sections sit next to mechanical boss fights, and the variety holds up. It’s easy to write this off as a kids’ game because of the art style, but the difficulty and design choices are aimed squarely at longtime PlayStation fans.

Seeing the PS5 in person changes the read on it. The curves aren’t just styling, they’re hiding hardware that backs up the hype.

The hour and a half exclusive session left me wanting more playtime and like yourself am looking forward to the release of this title aswell as the PlayStation console.