The next generation of PlayStation is finally here, and Astro is clearly eager to get going. The first thing you hear is the excitable chirps of Japan Studio’s diminutive mascot from the DualSense’s speakers, as if he’s been trapped inside your controller and is now desperate to be let out. You soon realise why, though it’s not the wonderfully crisp environments that demonstrate the new-gen difference so much as the fidelity of the haptic feedback in your hands. As you scamper around a plaza hub, Astro’s footsteps feel tangibly different when he walks across a metallic PlayStation logo, and again as he scurries across a glass dome; the accompanying sounds from the controller sell the illusion even more. Later, you hear the skritch of blade on ice and feel a gentle friction that somehow conveys the sensation of skating, while when the heavens open as you negotiate cloudy platforms, you feel the pitter-patter of raindrops in your fingers and thumbs. It’s fitting for a game starring a robot that we’re reminded of Clarke’s third law, because this really is magical stuff.
You soon realise you’re wandering around inside the PS5, an imaginarium that cutely treats its various features – cooling fans, GPU, SSD and memory – as portals to new worlds. The speed at which you’re whisked to each of them is quietly thrilling in its own way: the environments within are by no means compact nor lacking in detail, yet a couple of seconds is all it takes before you touch down. Familiar water, ice and jungle biomes are playfully augmented by hardware features; you uproot a range of objects attached to wires that poke out from the ground, while triggers and thumbsticks are used as platforms and controller cables double as tightropes. But the references go much further. Stepping out into the final area of Cooling Springs, we’re instantly transported back a decade or so by the sound of an orchestra tuning up; looking around, we see the skybox now has its very own XMB.