Welcome to our review of the newest iteration in the Pac-Man franchise, Pac-Man Championship Edition 2.
Pac-Man is quite possibly the most famous franchise of all time, originally released way back in October 1980, this franchise has never really left the spotlight in arcades all over the world. Originally competing with great classics like Asteroids and Space invaders, Pac-Man made a name for itself as both a great game and a new type of game.
The character Pac-Man has appeared in at least 30 different games as well as tons of bootlegs and clones, not forgetting the anime series it has gotten and well, if we ask anyone to name the 5 most popular game characters of all time, who would not put Pac-Man in that list?
As this game is the latest in the franchise, what can really be said about the core gameplay that you do not already know? Grab the pellets, stay away from the 4 ghosts or eat the power pellet and eat the ghosts only for them to reenter later on the game. You clear the level when all pellets have been eaten.
But this is not the typical Pac-man game, it is the latest in the franchise, so what sets it apart? Pretty much everything! This game partially reinvented the genre and provides with a great alternative which is much more fast-paced.
While it does keep true to the base gameplay, there are numerous differences.
The main game in my book is the score attack mode, which is a time based challenge, letting you run wild for a five minute window in which to finish as many screens as possible. Not the entire field is covered with pellets, but just parts of it. You also got sleeping ghosts everywhere and when you wake them up, they join a colored ghost and for a train like pattern. Making it incredibly fast paced and once you finish all of the pellets, you grab the bonus fruit in order to advance to the next level.
Every few levels, you are granted a power pellet so you can go after the ghosts and this is where it really becomes so much fun! Hunting down ghosts has never been more fun and the intensity when it happens, it gets your adrenalin going!
While it is not really needed to clear every pellet from the level, sometimes you may just opt to clear out the level as soon as possible. No use to waste your time in a fast paced game like this, especially when you are time limited.
What I really liked about this game aside from the high pace, the clear nostalgia feeling is still very much present as well as a feeling of playing a very different game. The game has a very fluent gameplay and seems to be the perfect iteration of the Pac-Man game. Add in a lot of cosmetic options to tweak the game more to your liking, add in tons of different mazes and that awesome neon colour and you end up with an amazing game called Pac-Man Championship Edition 2.
As the game is very score oriented, you can go for the S-rank if you’d please, but if you are not that type of gamer, I can always invite you to adventure mode. Ten challenges. All there is to it. Finish them within a set amount of time and you get a star rating up to 3 stars at once. Do your best to unlock the boss and beat him for a real rush!
As you can see, this mode is much more gameplay oriented compared to getting that high score.
On a sidenote, the way you get the scoring presented to you, by far the coolest I have seen in a very long time, I just had to mention this!
Everything else in the game is all about co-op play. I did play this mode with the CPU and I actually loved it as well. Imagine the matrix merging with the Pac-man series. In this mode, you got this amazing bullet style effect when you get to close to an enemy. Eventually leading yourself to battle an actual boss, in kind of a 2D level but you can actually jump in them to stick to the facing wall. This actually took me a while to really get used to.
In conclusion, This game is pretty darn sweet. The original game is pretty much made complete in this iteration, at least if you enjoy a higher paced version. I enjoyed my time with the game a lot more than I originally anticipated, I mean really, there have been some very disappointing Pac-Man games in the past, but this game is the exact opposite and might be the best of the lot. My rating stands at a whopping 85%.
