No, I’m not talking about Horizon Forbidden West. Though that game is bundled in with both types of PS5 at the moment, and also probably qualifies for the “brilliant” title…its presence raises the price of the system by $50, which means it’s slightly discounted as opposed to free.
Instead, I’m referring to Astro’s Playroom, a wonderful little game that’s pre-installed on every PS5 console and that some of you may never have even noticed. Deleting the game to free up space became a meme at one point and was so often Googled around the system’s launch that multiple big tech outlets literally wrote stories telling users how to do it.
I felt terrible when I deleted the game last week (ironically to make room for Horizon’s huge install), because I played through the whole thing and it’s a delight. It’s a great launch title, a fantastic tech demo for all the different new things inside the PS5…and yes, kind of just a huge lavish ad for Sony products.
That last part is the only thing keeping it from feeling totally essential. Yes, you could argue that its obsessive look at the history of PlayStation is nothing but a fun and nostalgic homage, but to me it felt just as much like a cynical branding exercise. The core gameplay, graphics, and audio of Astro’s Playroom are good enough that I didn’t also need to collect hyper-detailed 3D…
