Reviews
Popping pills in a dark room with neon lights and techno beats is always going to be addictive; Pacman Championship Edition delivers a healthy dose of just that, without the need for chubba chups.
The popularity of Pacman has been exploited down to every last pac-dot over the years and decades on, Bandai Namco have gone back to the roots in delivering this surprise gem of a game. The core elements of Pacman have remained: clear a maze by eating dots, avoid bumping into a ghost unless you’ve swallowed a power-pellet and eat the occasional fruit. Surprisingly they’ve reinvented the game through simple, yet effective mods that have added a new dimension to an immortal classic.
Pacman CE is all about surviving either 5 or 10 minutes (depending on game mode) and scoring as much as possible in that time. The higher your score, the faster the game gets. Rather than clearing a maze to progress to the next level, you clear half the maze and are presented with an item (typically fruit) you need to eat for that half of the maze to evolve into a new shape with refreshed pac-dots. This creates a fluent flow of non stop action often depriving you of life saving power-pellets.
Every subtle change to the game has clearly made it faster and more exciting than the original. The visuals have kept the true essence of the game and I’m glad to see they didn’t get sucked into making it 3D. There’s only a slight hint of depth with an explosion of pulsating sharp colours that work perfectly with the music.
Gameplay mechanics have also been slightly tweaked. A Bonus Pac-Man is now available after only 20K points and turning before reaching a corner causes sparks and allows you to turn faster – great for evading ghosts.
In terms of sound, the effects again remain true to the original, and the music works perfectly with the gameplay and visual effects creating a nice sense of adrenalin. Chasing your high score whilst evading Pinky & the gang of ghosts is a simple, exciting challenge.
There are a handful of different modes essentially offering a different set of mazes and time limits (either 5 or 10 minutes). Each has a subtle variance in difficulty, and each has its own set of leaderboards on Live. One maze in particular stands out as the boundaries of the maze are dark apart from a small radius around you. Although Pac-Man is really all about the scores, it would have been nice to have seen some kind of multi-player over Live. Two Pac-men fighting out on the same screen or possibly even taking control of the ghosts may have worked nicely.
In a Nutshell
Pacman CE is a very fast paced true arcade game that has maintained its original charms whilst doing just the right thing in renewing its appeal. A lack of MP is only a minor blemish in an otherwise addictive and often exciting game. A definite must for fans of the original and certainly worth trialing for anyone else.
XboxZone Score: 8/10
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