Pac-Man Championship Edition is a refreshing take of a classic game.IF IT ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Obviously the folks at Namco Bandai did not take heed to those words of wisdom when they redesigned the world’s most recognisable video game, Pac-Man, in the new Pac-Man Championship Edition for Xbox Live Arcade.
Pac-Man is a coin-munching arcade game that was designed to give paying gamers a short burst of enjoyment for their loose change.
So it came as no surprise that the pill munching legend disappointed when the original game was released to Microsoft’s digital download service, Xbox Live Arcade, last year.
But this time around, developer Namco Bandai has reworked the arcade classic to recreate Pac-Man as you’ve never seen it before, in the new Pac-Man Championship Edition.
It, too, has been released for download on Xbox Live Arcade, and contains all-new maps, game modes, and in-game features to make it console-friendly and, in many ways, somewhat more enjoyable than the original.
This is not the equivalent of video game heresy. Namco Bandai has far from destroyed Pac-Man.
In fact, the game is in many ways better than the original.
While the original will always be remembered for its nostalgic feel, there is no denying the gameplay is repetitive by today’s standards.
This is due largely to the game’s original coin-op design, where it was intended to eat away at your loose change in return for a quick bash at Pac-Man’s mazes.
Bring that design to a console, and you have a game that grows stale very quickly.
So for Pac-Man Championship Edition, Namco Bandai has designed a Pac-Man game to suit longer term gaming.
Firstly, the all-new maze fills a widescreen television, giving the player more space to roam. The maze changes its walls dynamically as the player progresses to a higher score, which makes the game refreshing and interesting. The controls are much slicker than the original, and suit the analogue joystick on the Xbox 360 controller.
The graphics have retained their simplistic appearance but the maze is often swirling with different colours and effects after players munch their way past certain obstacles.
Players pick from a variety of timed game modes, meaning survival is not so much the goal – instead, scoring highly is.
Pac-Man Championship Edition is the result of clever game design, ensuring that the feel of the original game was not destroyed by developers’ intentions to provide a new take on an old angle.
It comes highly recommended, as it is only a fraction of the cost of a new retail game thanks to being a part of the budget price Xbox Live Arcade series.
Score 9/10
Pros: All new Pac-Man gameplay designed to keep your interest for longer periods of time. And it works.
Cons: If you didn’t like Pac-Man to begin with, there’s no reason to begin doing so here.
