Familiar, Yet Different, But Still Good
The Pac-Man franchise is nearly thirty years old, can you believe that? The franchise has seen numerous spin-offs, sequels, and re-imaginings. Even if you haven’t played Pac-Man, there is little doubt that you have seen it referenced in pop culture, so it’s a safe bet that you already know what the core game is like.
This remixed version is based off of that same type of gameplay in which players must guide Pac-Man through a maze while simultaneously munching up all of the pac-dots, or pellets, to clear the stage. Navigating the maze is easy, but the pursuit of Pac-Man by four ghosts is where the challenge comes in. Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde can all kill Pac-Man with a single touch, unless of course he is powered up.
By keeping the same core gameplay, Remix is instantly accessible, familiar, and intuitive. New features do nothing to disrupt this formula either, although I didn’t care for every new addition. Included are additional power ups, teleporters, elevators, giant ghost bosses, and a couple of abilities like jump and dash that are available to you when needed (during certain boss fights). New power ups include Lucky and Ninja. Lucky turns every pac-dot or pellet into a power-pellet, the classic power up that sends ghosts running and lets Pac-Man eat them for points. Lucky powerups are rare, but they’re fun while they last. The Ninja power up creates a transparent, mirror image of Pac-Man. This ability is used a few times, primarily to defeat one of the bosses during the second half of the game.
Teleporters and elevators allow changes to level design that spice up the old formula a little bit. Teleporters are color coded squares; a blue teleporter will always transport you to the other blue teleporter. Both Pac-Man and the ghosts are able to use the teleporters to quickly jump to other areas of the maze, or stage. Teleporters can work as a quick escape from a ghost, but they’re also required to navigate the entire stage so that all pellets can be munched up. At most, a stage might have three different teleporters to bounce between.
As for elevators, these automated lifts take one character from level one to two and back again. As a visual aid, the floor of the elevator will show a 1 or 2 depending on which level it’s currently at. Elevators add an extra tier to a maze and some additionally harrowing moments that stem from waiting for an elevator while ghosts are nearby.
Launch marks, as I will call them, are similar to what we’ve seen in several Sonic games. These are a part of numerousstages in Pac-Man Remix, and are identified by small arrow marks on the floor. If you approach the mark in the direction of the arrow, Pac-Man will shoot forward very quickly, although he’s still vulnerable to the touch of death from the ghosts. If you approach the mark from any other direction, there is no effect.
Sometimes during a boss fight, Pac-Man needs the ability to jump or dash, and for these moments there are two powerups that give you precisely those abilities. All of the bosses are giant ghosts that have some form of offense or another. One boss will try to reach out and snatch you with its claw, resulting in instant death, and another deploys an electric beam that sweeps across most of the maze, requiring you to jump over it. All of these bosses are defeated in the same way. To defeat them, Pac-Man need only pickup a power-pellet. When he does, the boss drops a whole bunch of small blue ghosts, which Pac-Man needs to eat up as quickly as possible. Picking up additionally power pellets during this time yields additional time to destroy these ghosts before they hop back into the giant ghost form. When all of the blue ghosts are removed, the boss is defeated and the next level, or game ending, ensues.
In between levels, a world map is shown that gives you a view of your progress and of what each level theme is. Pac-Man will go through levels with garden, industrial, water, and castle themes, to name four of the six anyway. As I mentioned earlier, within each level are five stages. The difficulty stays about the same throughout, and thanks to optional unlimited continues, it’s not a problem to finish this game on Normal in under an hour. After that, you might try your hand at Hard mode, reduce your number of lives, or adjust how often continues are available. Outside of that, Free Play is available so that you can practice on the stages. High scores are maintained for viewing and goal-setting, too.
Stage Clear – Summing Up
As far as control and presentation, Pac-Man Remix does well. By default, four buttons appear on screen and you use these to move Pac-Man around. These worked well overall; there were a few times where my left thumb strayed out of range of the left arrow button, but that’s as much user error than anything. If you don’t like the d-pad system, players can also flick the direction that they want to send Pac-Man but I found this to be a little too awkward and unnecessary as the d-pad controls responded fine.
Visually, Pac-Man Remix is colorful, smooth, and frankly quite sufficient for the game that it is. Load times are minimal and the graphics were never confusing or problematic. As far as sound, Remix sounds like an old school title, which can be grating at times, but on the other hand it adds to the Pac-Man atmosphere.
So is it worth $6? If you enjoy Pac-Man games, this isn’t a bad purchase. I’m not sure how often I’ll play it, but I did enjoy my time with Pac-Man Remix.