| paleface [sys=GC; cat=Platformer; reg=NA] |
| | | Reference added: 644
"Namco sold Pac-Man vs. and Pac-Man World 2 (GC) in a budget double-pack."
Got my copy of this in a budget double-pack with Pac-Man vs. (see entry 644). I didn't really want this game, actually, but there was no helping it.
I'm not sure why Namco insists on making Pac-Man into a 3D platformer, but there you are. I much prefer Ms. Pac-Man Maze Madness (see entry 380), in which you move around in good old 2D maze-style, even though the mazes are rendered in 3D. Anyway, here in Pac-Man World 2 you have to do a hell of a lot of platform jumping and running around open areas jumping on top of monsters to kill them. Sure, the ghosts are still around, and power pellets, but they seem pretty superfluous now.
The "arcade" in little Pac Village, where you start out, apparently offers four of the old Pac-Man arcade games (including Pac Mania and Ms. Pac-Man) as playable games, but you have to collect a bajillion tokens from around the 3D levels in order to play them.
The arcade also has Ms. Pac-Man-style 3D 2D mazes for each of the 3D platformer worlds you beat, or something. Now that's more like it.
Still, you gotta do the platforming parts, and I don't like them. The music is super cheesy and annoying, the graphics uniformly bright and fuzzy, and monsters dumb, fruit scattered hither and yon, and the camera is horrible. I mean, I can usually handle a mediocre camera without complaint, but this one is just plain bad--it follows Pac-Man super slow, and if you try to rotate it manually, it inevitably clonks into something (apparently it has a huge hit box) and stops. You pretty much just can't rotate the fucker. Heck, there are spots in the game, like where you're chain-jumping along little ledges over death pits, where the game just flat out says "no, no camera rotation allowed here." Well excuse me for trying to see where the hell I'm going! Ugh.
Pac-Man has gained a few gimmick moves in addition to jumping: he can now land on things with his rear-end to break them (the game actually refers to this as the "butt bounce"!), he can do a Sonic-like charge-dash (yawn), and a mostly useless flip-kick. Thrills-ville.
Into the bin with ye!
Does not support progressive scan. Figures. |
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