Astro Bot is the best argument for the PS5’s DualSense

Sony’s DualSense controller still has the power to surprise players with its technology, namely its adaptive triggers and haptic feedback. PlayStation 5 games like Housemarque’s ReturnInsomniac’s Spider-Man games and Bluepoint’s Demon Souls remake shows that, when implemented well, the DualSense’s detailed force feedback mechanics can be addictive and immersive.

But when the DualSense’s features are implemented haphazardly or out of necessity, they can feel downright bad. Nine times out of 10, when I’m playing a shooter or action game on my PS5, one of the first things I do is disable the adaptive triggers – I don’t want bulky resistance as I’m carefully trying to fire headshots at a video game enemy.

Then there is Astro’s playroomdeveloper Team Asobi’s excellent launch title for the PS5, which served as an audiovisual and tactile showcase for Sony’s current-gen system when it launched in 2020. Next month Astro botborn out of the widespread praise for Playroomlooks to make the combat even better thanks to Team Asobi’s experience studying and prototyping new mechanics using the DualSense controller.

I played a demo of Astro bot in July and was extremely impressed with how the race felt: Astro bot plays like you’re holding an interactive toy in your hands. When you hop onto a DualSense-shaped spaceship in the game, you can feel the jet engines firing as if you were holding the ship’s yoke. When Astro is equipped with spring-loaded boxing gloves (which look like cute little toy frogs), every part of those springy, clicking weapons vibrates the controller realistically.

Team Asobi has proven to be really good at this. Studio head Nicolas Doucet explained in a 2020 interview that the developers of Astro’s playroom And Astro bot worked closely with the engineering group that originally developed the DualSense.

“We have this old collaborative relationship with the team” that came up with the mechanical features of the controller, Doucet told Engadget on the outlet’s podcast“Of course they have a good hunch about what would be a good feature in games, but their core discipline is mechanical engineering.” It was up to Doucet’s team to prove out the concepts from the PlayStation engineering team.

Doucet said his software team would take in-development controller prototypes and quickly prototype dozens of game demos. They would simulate the sensation of firing a gun or a flamethrower using the unfinished controller’s adaptive triggers. They would play with the haptic feedback system, simulating what it would feel like for a game character to walk on sand, rock or water. Doucet’s team would take those small game demos to show the hardware engineering team, who would then reconfigure the placement of motors to fine-tune the force feedback sensations.

For this year Astro botDoucet said that Team Asobi went back to the prototyping phase, devoting a small team within the studio to developing new techniques for using the DualSense. He said PushSquare in June, “We spend a lot of time prototyping game mechanics in an isolated form, and then later we think about how to tie them together in a way that makes sense. We had three or four people break away from the team, and we called that team DualSense 2.0.”

That helps explain why Astro bot and its predecessors feel so good: Team Asobi was influential in the design of the DualSense hardware, and vice versa. And it hasn’t rested on its laurels, revisiting the PS5 controller in the years since to generate new ideas, making Astro’s next outing feel like a fresh new adventure.

One of Astro’s new skills in Astro bot — the ability to grow to gigantic size and shrink back to normal — was born from a new DualSense technique invented by Team Asobi. Doucet said Eurogamer that the “DualSense 2.0” team had made a demo “where it was just a big sponge, that you could put water in, and then, using the adaptive trigger, you could sort of squeeze water out.” The DualSense can convey the feeling of the Astro Bot sponge being soaked and heavy, or dry and fluffy.

“We would never have come up with the idea of ​​turning Astro into a sponge,” Doucet explained, saying that the sponge experiment ultimately inspired a new game mechanic. The team also built in new force feedback techniques for surfaces, which range from smooth to rough. In Astro botPlayers can rub against walls to feel differences in texture, which can help them find a secret passage.

In other words, make sure your controller’s vibration settings are turned on when Astro bot will be released exclusively for the PlayStation 5 on September 6. Fittingly, the game will also come with a special DualSense controller.