Wednesday 9 March 2011

Pac-man championship edition DX

Gamespot score:9.0(editor's choice)

my score:7.8

(+)Pros:-Offers lots of fast paced chasing action,- sleeping ghosts ideas is cool and get net a lot of points,-quite a lot of modes to play and master,- slow motion is pretty cool,- lots of customizable options.

(-)Cons:-Poor leaderboards,-only hard mode offers a true challenge,-bombs are lame and spoil the fun by making the game too easy.

gameplay time:10-20 hours



Been busy lately, now that my school has finally ended, there are no thorns on my side and I can
fully enjoy my time. These few days I have been going out and having fun, so I had little time to post. Today, heres pac-man championship edition DX. Thats quite a mouthful, so I'll just call it pac man DX. The Pac man franchise should be no stranger to any gamer, its old school core gameplay was one of the best ever made. Playing as pac man, you had to run for your life and eat pellets like mad. Often you would find your self surrounded and would eventually die out. It was fun as hell, and sure was challenging. Does the latest pac-man game live up to its name?

The pac man games were never one to have any story. All you have to know is that our hero pac man is always being chased by 4 pesky ghosts, clyde, pinky,blinky and some other random bloke whose name I cannot remember. Anyway, in the long history of pac man games, including those 3D versions, its always these losers.


In championship DX, the gameplay is very fast paced, which is a good thing. Going too fast is never bad, and it makes the game more intense. The basic core of pac-man action is still here, you run from ghosts, eat pellets, fruits,other insane items and the glow pellet, which will make the ghosts vunerable, and then you can eat them. Its good that way, the core basics of pac man need not be changed. Anyway, in this game, there are alot of new gameplay elements. Since its a championship game, you no longer just play to survive, you now play to get the best score possible. In the maps you play (which have quite the variation), you are given 5 or 10 mins (in score attack) to eat as many things as you can to get as much score as you can. The gameplay varies alot depending on what map you choose. There is the classic championship mode, where everything is as normal as can be, corridor, where you will be popping around here and there, spiral, where the map is just a small area but is easy to get points, darkness, the crazy dark area where surviving is so damn difficult, and many more. The many modes available in the game is probably what makes it so damn fun.


The new gameplay elements make pac man DX a good integration of pacman. Before a match starts, you can change visuals, music and how the on screen characters look. Thats surely a welcoming addition. Also, during matches, while you still get the classic 4 ghosts chasing you around, sleeping ghosts are thrown in to make things more hectic. As you race through the mazes you will pass some ghosts which appear to be sleeping, and they will wake up and chase you. The more sleeping ghosts you pass the more that wake up and chase you, this will add to a huge chain of ghosts which you can eat all in 1 shot when you get a power pellet, this can add to a MAJOR amount of points. This is generally a cool idea, and its fun to attract so many ghosts and then eat them all in 1 fell swoop. To makes things even cooler, now when you are close to death (when ghosts are THIIIISSS close to eating you), the time slows down and zooooms all the way into pac man and the ghost, where you are given a split second to change direction or decide to use a bomb(more on that later).

While pacman DX sounds like a perfectly flawless game, it is not. Checking leaderboards is a pain, you have to cancel menus and enter in and out just to compare scores. Next up is the difficulty. The game is terribly EASY, only on hard mode you start to feel the old pac man classic feel. Chases are not even hard, you know you will outrun them, and since only the sleeping ghosts are chasing you from behind, you only have to worry about the neautral ghosts, which are few. And finally, they think things werent easy enuff, and added the bomb. The bomb resets all ghosts back into the ghost house in the middle of the maze, in other words, it saves your ass. Thats so lame, it totally destroys the pacman spirit, you already have so many lives, and you still want to save your puny ass with bombs? Get real.
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Pac man DX is highly overated, I dont see how such an easy game could get a 9 or a 10 from IGN even. Its an 8 at best and they know it. Anyway, pac man fans can give this a spin, the price is cheap as well, so its quite a worthwhile buy.



Happy gaming.