The game that everyone ignores actually turns out to be a diamond
2025/8/28
Written by: Jay Kay
I am the kind of person where once I crack open a game, then I like to focus on that game entirely until it is completed. My game of choice at the moment is Santa monica Studios God of War Ragnarok.
As brilliant as God of War Ragnarok is, it is far from brilliant where a young audience is concerned, on account of the swearing that is in the game, plus the violence on top of that. To confirm then, I would never let my young child lay their eyes on God of War Ragnarok.
I am leading up to Astros playroom now! Yesterday I had an unexpected visit from my two young nieces (one is a year old and the other is four), so this meant that God of War Ragnarok had to be put on ice, queue Astros Playroom.
I have had my Playstation 5 since March 2021, and the first game that my wife played on it was Astros Playroom. She only played for a few minutes and soon got bored of it, and I myself was not interested in it in the slightest, so at the earliest opportunity loaded Days Gone (which Sony gave to me for free as a “thank you” for buying the PS5) and I never loaded Astros Playroom since
I’m an aging gamer, whose heart is trapped in the late 1980’s, upto the launch of the Nintendo 64 (which was March 1st 1997 in England). After that my gaming interest became very casual, to the point that some years I did zero gaming at all. I still purchased a Gamecube, a Wii, a PS3 and PS4, but didn’t really start playing games again properly until 2018 when I finally got broadband, and was able to play CoD and Apex legends online with my friends.
The reason I mention this, is because playing Astros Playroom gave me hints of Nintendo. For example in one of the levels, there is sort of like a multi color road, each color coming from the sony trademark square, triangle, X and circle which instantly reminded me of rainbow road in Mario kart.
Further to this, when you discover a secret in Astros Playroom, a sound effect takes place which reminded me of the Legend of Zelda. All of these little memories actually made me resent this game, as I felt they were rehashing old concepts which belonged to Nintendo.
The sound of the characters sound annoying to me too. Definitely aimed at the younger age bracket, though I can confirm this game was too complex for my older niece.
It wasn’t until I was in GPU jungle that Astros Playroom finally took hold of me. The catchy song in the background, with the face high on a mountain singing the song, for some reason made me start to enjoy the game more. Possibly because it was a unique characteristic which i’d never seen in the past games I was flash backing too. My love of the game increased once I got to the first innovation, the monkey suit!
For me the game really takes off on SSD Speedway. You start off using a hand glider, having to dodge futuristic traffic in a clearly colorful vibrant city. Very cool! It gets even better once you reach the rocket and put on a rocket suit. Mastering the thrust of the rocket is so satisfying, and i thoroughly enjoyed it.
After collecting all items - which only took 7 hours in total - you are alerted to a noise coming from the basement. Going to the basement, you see all of the bots quivering and pointing to a black box with playstation button icons on it, which is the source of the commotion. I wont spoil what it was, but needless to say it was very cool.
Upon completing the game, and viewing all the credits, you can go back to the levels as per usual. On my last visit to GPU jungle, I got a message saying that there was a bot in the jungle who didn’t belong there, could I solve the riddle? I assume this meant you the player, as I looked around and couldn’t see any bots out of place there.
Another little secret appears after completing the game, but i’ll leave that to surprise.
No actually! As fun as Astros Playroom is, it’s not something I’d pay for, as it seems too “kiddy” for me. Having said that, I could easily see me playing the game if I had young kids. It would probably be a good family game to play with them. I guess I’d compare it to a classic disney movie like Aladdin, or The Lion king. I wouldn’t watch them now, but would if i had kids of my own, to watch with them.