The best-selling game for PS5! Kind of!note
"Introducing the DualSense Wireless Controller!"
A pack-in title for the PlayStation 5 that functions as a Tech-Demo Game for the system's new DualSense controller. You play the role of Captain Astro (previously from Astro Bot Rescue Mission) as he explores his new home — the inside of your own PlayStation 5 system! Bots are running all over the place, whether they're delivering data, playing games, or performing as your favorite Sony characters (and some other ones, too). After a brief demonstration of the controller, you take control as Astro is plopped into the CPU Plaza where he's free to choose which region of the new machine he wants to explore. You can check out the Memory Meadows, the SSD Speedway, the Cooling Springs, or the GPU Jungle. You'll be bashing dangerous robots and solving puzzles, but you'll also be collecting artifacts for the PlayStation Labo. The artifacts in particular happen to be real-life PlayStation hardware, which will be put on display in the labo after you've collected them. Each of the four worlds ends with Astro obtaining one of the previous PlayStation systems. Once he collects them all, a final challenge awaits him deep within the Plaza...
Developed by Team Asobi, the game is fully ready to play the moment you first turn on your machine.
Tropes:
- Aspect Ratio Switch: The final battle with the PlayStation 1 demo Trex changes the screen to 4:3 standard definition during the first phase
- Celebrity Paradox: Collecting PlayStation controllers and machines for the trophy room inside your PlayStation 5 is weird enough. Weirder still is when you grab the actual PlayStation 5 at the end of the game. So does this one have another Astro inside of it, too?
- Cute Machines: The Bots, Astro in particular. They're tiny, expressive chibi-like machines. The actual animal-bots you encounter can count as well.
- Excuse Plot: There's no real reason for why the Bots with red or yellow eyes are attacking you. The final fight has the upgraded T-rex spitting out some of the enemy bots at you during the fight, implying he might've been behind their malevolence, but otherwise we don't get an answer.
- Game Over: Averted as there is no true failure screen. Astro can only take one good hit, after which he'll be sent back to a checkpoint after a brief-blackout à la Super Mario Odyssey . At worst you lose whatever coins you had gathered since the checkpoint. The only exception to this is during the 1994 Throwback stage, which is a full-on boss stage of two stages akin to Rescue Mission, with Astro having two extra lives he can lose before being thrown back to the start of the phase.
- Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: The T-rex from the original PS1 tech demo serves as the final boss of the game with two phases to its fight, one in its original PS1 graphics and the other as a Humongous Mecha in the new PS5 graphics. It comes with as much foreshadowing as you think it does.
- Gimmick Level: Two per world: Astro will take command of a "suit" that shows off a particular function of the controller. The Ball Suit is for touch controls, while the Ship, Frog, and Monkey show off the adaptive triggers.
- Idle Animation: Astro will pull out a PSP or a PSVR to keep himself busy if he stands around for too long.
- Museum Game: The entire game's world can be considered one, big interactive museum for PlayStation as an intellectual property, each level dedicated to one of the four past consoles, the robots populating the world reenacting PlayStation games when they aren't doing whatever else.
- Mythology Gag: It's crammed full of them, from the obvious to the obscure. IGN has a guide to all of them
. - Platform Game: A 3D Platformer, much like Astro Bot Rescue sans VR.
- No Fourth Wall: Astro is constantly turning to the screen and waving at the player.
- Shout-Out:
- Bots are dressed like characters from games that are PlayStation exclusives or started off as exclusives.
- Cloud's Buster Sword can be found out in open in the Turbo Trail section of SSD Speedway. It has a beam of light shining on it to replicate the title screen of Final Fantasy VII.
- The description of the PS2 memory card mentions that it resists psychics, a reference to Psycho Mantis from Metal Gear Solid and his ability to read certain memory card data when the game is played on an original PlayStation.
- One of Astro's dance animations is the Carlton Dance!
- The description of the PS5 artifact says "Number five is alive!"
- Throughout the game, various bots can be seen re-enacting various moments from PlayStation-owned series, as well as third-party games that started on PlayStation. By location:
- Cooling Springs: Concrete Genie, Fat Princess, God of War, LocoRoco, Metal Gear Solid, Parappa The Rapper, PS VR Worlds, Puppeteer, Resident Evil, Sly Cooper, Um Jammer Lammy, Until Dawn
- GPU Jungle: Bloodborne, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, Crash Bandicoot, Days Gone, Demon's Souls, Dreams, Horizon Zero Dawn, Jak and Daxter, Journey, The Last of Us, Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver, Monster Hunter Freedom, The Order: 1886, Patapon, Shadow of the Colossus, Tekken, Tomb Raider, Uncharted
- Memory Meadows: Ape Escape, Ace Combat, Death Stranding, Doko Demo Issyo, Everybody's Golf VR, Flower, Ghost of Tsushima, Heavy Rain, ICO, Infamous, Jumping Flash!, The Last Guardian, MediEvil, MLB: The Show, Ridge Racer, Siren, Tearaway
- PlayStation Labo: Astro Bot Rescue Mission, Beat Saber, Beyond: Two Souls, DanceDanceRevolution, EyeToy, Knack, Singstar, Spyro the Dragon
- SSD Speedway: Detroit: Become Human, Devil May Cry, Farpoint, Final Fantasy VII, Gravity Rush, Killzone, LittleBigPlanet, Marvel's Spider-Man, Pain, Ratchet & Clank, Resistance, Resogun, Silent Hill 2, Vib-Ribbon, Wipeout
- Spoiler Title: The soundtrack on Spotify lists the tracks CRT-Rex and 4K-Rex, hinting at the fact the PlayStation 1 demo Trex will be the final boss and he'll have an extra stage.
- Tail Slap: the Trex will sometimes attack Astro this way during the second phase of his battle.
- Tech-Demo Game: Natch. It comes pre-loaded on the PlayStation 5 and was designed to show off all the cool new things the DualSense is capable of. The haptic feedback is used to show the differences between floor textures and to feel tiny things like rainfall pitter-pattering on your character's umbrella. A lot of sounds you'd expect to come from the game come from the controller as well to add to the immersion. The player is also given access to a plunger-arrow and a ball-firing gatling gun to show off the adaptive triggers.
- Video Game Cruelty Potential: Nothing's stopping you from smacking other Bots off of cliffs and into outer space, or jumping on the PSOne's eject button and sending the hapless bots sitting on top off into oblivion.
- Wainscot Society: The Bots running around are driving vehicles and delivering data down the SSD Speedway and working hard in the Labo. Some even dress up as characters and have camerabots follow them around, as if they're "filming" them as the game in question is played. Downplayed by the fact that Astro seems quite happy to see you and show you around the game-world, with no need for secrecy.
