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Wakka, Wakka, Verily, Woop-Woop
By bukkhead | July 17, 2007
VIDEO GAME REVIEW: ‘PAC-MAN C. E.’
Developed by Namco Bandai Games Inc.
Distributed by Namco Bandai Games Inc.
Platforms: Xbox 360, (Xbox Live Arcade)
Genre: Table-Top Platform
Notwithstanding Mr. Tycho over at Penny Arcade, I’m going to write a review of Pacman. (Penny Arcade! – My Latest Assault). He may, indeed, murder me twice. One can only hope to scrape just a smidge of PA’s fame from under my defensive-wounds-fingernails. Heck, one can only hope to scrape some writing skills too, apparently. I realize dropping the PA-bomb is a bit pretentious—just revel in the idea that the world now holds gamers and cartoonists in high enough esteem to be an element of pretention. So, yeah, Pac-Man. Actually, Pac-Man Championship Edition., which Tycho his own self reviewed, and so it doesn’t count. So really, I am just mentioning Penny Arcade for the kiss-ass of it. Onto PMCE. Awesome. Like my review? 4 stars. Even better now?
The reason someone might write a review for a classic coin-op port is because we want to know what about it is different. And on the 360, that means achievements (at least it does for me). After all,. I downloaded Ms. Pac-Man because the GF likes Ms. Pac-Man. And for the achievements. Heck, I’ll play just about anything for the achievements. I’ve got collecting and hoarding in my blood. When The Good Lord ™ decides to kill me, all He has to do is toss me Pokemon. “Gotta Collect Them All” becomes the biggest “duh” statement of the decade.
PMCE is very different from your grand-dad’s Pac-Man, even outside of the achievements. The dots never stop coming, and the board changes on the fly. You still got your Pac and your ghosts and your power-pellets, but the whole thing’s changed from a step-by-step set of goals to a continuous stream of elude and chase, shuck and jive. This is Pac-Man for the FPS players who can’t stop moving. And when you die, the ghosts go back home, but you revive right where you met your maker (or one fifth of your maker or one tenth if you’re getting easy free guys).
Scoring is a bit different too, but I think we stopped paying attention to score when Mario came on the scene, and we forgot all about it when we switched from coin-op to home consoles. And some people don’t like this, but I do: each game is set at 5 minutes or 10, depending on which version you’re playing. That’s another reflection on the changing world of games. There will always be content for the hard-core folks who have half a day or more to spend on a game. For others, games in small squirts have to start being as robust as the in-depth RPGs.
Pac-Man C.E. delivers. I feel stupid for waiting as long as I did to try it, and will be putting it on the must-have list for all my 360 acquaintances. And I agree with T, I hope it finds a way to live outside of Xbox Live Arcade. It’s elemental, if I can borrow his use of italics. PMCE is the sort of game you play because, fundamentally, you’re a player.
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