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Subject: XBLA: PacMan Championship Edition DX
OK, so Namco/Bandai (or is it Namco Generations now?) released PacMan Championship Edition DX yesterday, and I - because utterly adored the first one - I bought it immediately.
![[Image: http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/PacManCEDX-1.png]](http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/PacManCEDX-1.png "http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/PacManCEDX-1.png")
Well, I kinda regret it, I think. I'm not yet sure but I think the game might be incredibly dull.
Update: Much of this review is completely wrong. My controller mod causes the game to run at half speed, making it suck mightily. It does not, in reality, suck. In fact it's quite awesome, and I take it all back. Here's a revised review!
Here's how it works: You get a time limit and you have to see what kind of score you can rack up before the time runs out. You do this in typical PacMan fashion, eating dots and ghosts, but now there is a twist: the ghosts chain. They'll be sleeping around the maze until you pass them by, at which time they'll wake and join the train behind you. You'll soon have forty ghosts on your tail and the noise they make when you eat them all in a row will give you geek wood.
But here's the problem: the maze always appears in the same order, the ghosts always in the same spot, and the only random element is the one or two or three old-style ghosts that start appearing towards the end of the time limit. In effect you're following a script that never changes, and ten games in a row my score was virtually the same.
You have some choices to make: you can just eat dots, clear more mazes and eat more high-point fruit without expanding the train of ghosts following you, but the ghosts are the biggest score component so you probably don't want to do this. So yes, one option is not chaining ghosts, just as you can chose to park it in a corner and not do anything at all. It's possible but why would you?
![[Image: http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/PacManCEDX-2.png]](http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/PacManCEDX-2.png "http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/PacManCEDX-2.png")
The random ghosts are random, but they fear PacMan. They might accidentally come towards you on occasion but will always take the first opportunity to run away from you so they're never really a threat. On the unlikely chance you do get close to one, the game slows and zooms in and makes it easier for you to sort it out. This effect is actually quite cool at first, and enhanced my panic factor, but in later games it just made it easier to survive.
It sounds great, looks great, and if you take a very superficial view of the game like Ars did you might give it a glowing review.
But for the life of me I can't work out the fun factor here.
There's got to be something to it. While every single one of my scores is about 720,000 points I did get one top score of 990,000. That's a 50% bonus score for no reason I can work out at all.
So perhaps I'm missing the point. Clearly there's something I'm missing, but unless someone tells me soon what it is I'm not going to consider this $15 well spent.
![[Image: http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/PacLine.png]](http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/PacLine.png "http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/PacLine.png")
Well, I kinda regret it, I think. I'm not yet sure but I think the game might be incredibly dull.
Update: Much of this review is completely wrong. My controller mod causes the game to run at half speed, making it suck mightily. It does not, in reality, suck. In fact it's quite awesome, and I take it all back. Here's a revised review!
Here's how it works: You get a time limit and you have to see what kind of score you can rack up before the time runs out. You do this in typical PacMan fashion, eating dots and ghosts, but now there is a twist: the ghosts chain. They'll be sleeping around the maze until you pass them by, at which time they'll wake and join the train behind you. You'll soon have forty ghosts on your tail and the noise they make when you eat them all in a row will give you geek wood.
But here's the problem: the maze always appears in the same order, the ghosts always in the same spot, and the only random element is the one or two or three old-style ghosts that start appearing towards the end of the time limit. In effect you're following a script that never changes, and ten games in a row my score was virtually the same.
You have some choices to make: you can just eat dots, clear more mazes and eat more high-point fruit without expanding the train of ghosts following you, but the ghosts are the biggest score component so you probably don't want to do this. So yes, one option is not chaining ghosts, just as you can chose to park it in a corner and not do anything at all. It's possible but why would you?
The random ghosts are random, but they fear PacMan. They might accidentally come towards you on occasion but will always take the first opportunity to run away from you so they're never really a threat. On the unlikely chance you do get close to one, the game slows and zooms in and makes it easier for you to sort it out. This effect is actually quite cool at first, and enhanced my panic factor, but in later games it just made it easier to survive.
It sounds great, looks great, and if you take a very superficial view of the game like Ars did you might give it a glowing review.
But for the life of me I can't work out the fun factor here.
There's got to be something to it. While every single one of my scores is about 720,000 points I did get one top score of 990,000. That's a 50% bonus score for no reason I can work out at all.
So perhaps I'm missing the point. Clearly there's something I'm missing, but unless someone tells me soon what it is I'm not going to consider this $15 well spent.
BLEARGH
This post was edited on 2010-11-20, 23:41 by 
![[Image: http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/PacStars2.png]](http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/PacStars2.png "http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/PacStars2.png")
![[Image: http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/pac.png]](http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/pac.png "http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/pac.png")
![[Image: http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/PacManCEDX-2.jpg]](http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/PacManCEDX-2.jpg "http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/PacManCEDX-2.jpg")