Pac-Man Championship Edition DX+

Year of our lord 2015, played Pac-Man for the first time.

At least: As far as I can remember. Pac-Man is one of the 'forgotten' gaming icons, unless your name is Adam Sandler, something that didn't really hold on through the years, though more so than like ... Bubsy the cat. I honestly don't know that I played the original Pac-Man or any revision in the past, so this is a review of this game without really knowing what tier of update it is. I'm just going to shorten the title to Pac-Man, I'm not referencing any other game or version of this game. That's it, here we go, ghosts on the chomp

Gaming revivalism is an interesting concept to me, since you end up with a lot of weird phrases and ideas mixing with what ultimately amounts to marketing via the hook of nostalgia in your soft unprotected rump. Franchises at this point sort of co-exist in a market space dominated by franchises, and names don't really have a meaning beyond being "okay" for mainstream play. Pac-Man probably doesn't have the star power of say, a Ubisoft or Nintendo mass-produced product, and as such, isn't exactly a revival so much as just a game based on Pac-Man.

Like I said, I don't really remember playing Pac-Man (older versions) at any point in my life, so I don't really know or remember what the "core mechanics" are or how faithful this game actually is. It feels like a Pac-Man game but I don't necessarily think it feels like the original, or the maybe more popular Ms Pac-Man which I think I've heard was the definitive edition?

As you can tell, I don't know very much about Pac-Man and wasn't especially hyped about Pac-Man.


I bought Pac-Man entirely on the back of a friend of mine claiming he was super-hyped for it and stating it was very satisfying. We never really discussed it afterward, and now any discussion of Pac-Man has not been responded to online. Maybe the ghosts got him.

Pac-Man here is a mix of two or three game modes (hard to say, exactly) with the basic axis being either Score or Time. There is not, as far as I can tell, any of the basic original Pac-Man mode. You can also do free play to learn the maps, though we'll get into why this is kinda goofy.

In terms of basics presentation Pac-Man has something really bad off the bat. The map selection thing doesn't really give you any sense of difficulty curve or even the basic outline of a game, it just sort of slams you with a big pile of options and says "figure it out". The lack of a linear opening makes figuring out the initial couple plays of the game a little less relaxing than you'd like, and I'm pointing this out because it detracts from the initial expression.

Pac-Man is, completely and absolutely, a beautiful pick up and play title. Once you get into the swing of the things, you have (generally, not always) two kind of score attacks on each map - 5min and 10min - and then various time attacks, ranging from one minute limits to ten minute limits. As soon as you've figured out what you're doing, the game is great for this. You got like ten minutes to play? Hit one of the 10 min options, and there you go.

The presentation, once you get past that first hiccup, is excellent. The game is beautiful, sounds wonderful, has excellent visual effects and runs quite smoothly. The UI is crisp and communicates what needs to be without ever looking like it falls off or getting in the way. It reminds me of arcane cabinets, which didn't overlap or hide things, they just built around the "playing board" much in the way board games one did. Obviously, that's the idea.

The game has that weird, slick "neon future" ideal that I guess is sort of the weird "updated cyberpunk" style you see from 80s revival products, reminiscent of the visual flair of Far Cry: Blood Dragon and the like. Not all of the levels look like this, but some more than others - Darkness mode especially - but the interesting thing is you can generally just turn it off if you're not into it, and play Pac-Man in classic, retro or references to the Pac-Man cartoon that ran in (according to wikipedia) apparently 2013. There is also even a Dig-Dug scheme, which is hard to follow, but cool for at least being in the game. The selection options are a bit weird in being tied to each other, it likes to

Beyond the core visuals, Pac-Man has a lot of slick moves that add to the excitement. The game moves increasingly fast, but you're given a couple tricks to handle the raw speed. For one, Pac-Man can 'bomb' the ghosts to knock them back to start, for another the game slows down if you're about to get hit giving you time to react. When you power up and start tearing through ghosts, the screen shakes and it is surprisingly visceral. As you chain through sections, the game triggers new sections being laid down, with different ghost set ups and even moving the board around on the fly.

On the most part, this creates a lively and exciting game you can play in short chunks. There's lots of little tweaks - for one thing, you can often marshal the ghosts to be where you want them to be, and their behavior is a big part of the score attack scoring - and the whole speed up/speed down element having to do with your performance is interesting. That being said, some of the maps are better than others, and sometimes you can feel oddly boxed in like you're supposed to play in an Exact Specific manner. It feels weird to mess up and need to restart a game of pac-man, but there you are?

All in all, I was pretty surprised at how much fun I had with Pac-Man for the price I paid. I'm not really in need of games to play, so mastering it is out of the question, but a good five hours for what was part of a $1 bundle is pretty damn good deal. The game really is just Pac-Man for better or worse, so while it is expanded out a little you're still basically chumping dots and scoring points. I'm not even mad I sat down thinking it had cards and then realizing it didn't!

I like it, but I did get tired of it after a couple hours. I wish it had modes set up to make it a party game, although maybe it does and I didn't notice? The menus aren't super great, but still, the actual gameplay makes up for it. A good solid pick up if you think you'll like it.