This is an inspired update that captures all the fun that made Pac-Man such an enduring classic in the first place.
User Rating: 8.6 | Pac-Man Championship Edition X360
Before video games became characterized as being largely the domain of young males, there was a glorious golden age in the early 1980s during which video games were for everyone. Heck, even my mom played video games. And the poster...umm...man for this era was Pac-Man, whose game was simple enough and fun enough to appeal to just about everyone, making it a smashing success and making Pac-Man a household name. Yes, today it's hard to believe that for a while there the two biggest pop culture icons were Michael Jackson and Pac-Man. While one of those guys lost his cool ages ago, Pac-Man is as rad as ever, and Pac-Man Championship Edition is the proof. Pac-Man Championship Edition is most definitely Pac-Man, and if you've never liked Pac-Man, this game probably won't change how you feel. You know the drill. You control Pac-Man using just the joystick or D-pad, manuevering him through a maze, gobbling up dots and power pellets while trying to avoid the four pesky ghosts who are constantly on the hunt for you. Eating a power pellet lets you gobble up the ghosts for a short time. Unlike in the original Pac-Man, the maze here is laid out horizontally, and the left and right sides of the maze are independent of each other. The maze layouts are different here from the original game, and they're constantly evolving, which keeps the game feeling fresh. Each time you clear out one side of all the dots and power pellets, a fruit or other item appears on the other side, and eating that item causes the empty side to be repopulated with a new layout and more stuff to gobble. These new layouts can keep the strategy in the game changing as well, as sometimes you're presented with enough power pellets to go on long, satisfying offenses against the ghosts, while at other times (at least in some of the game's modes) you may have no power pellets at all, putting you on the defensive for a while. Another important difference from the original is that here you can string together power pellets in rapid succession to earn more points for the ghosts you eat. The final key difference here is that each of the game's modes is timed, so rather than just playing until you run out of lives, the pressure is on to score as many points as possible before your five or ten minutes are up. Like the original game, things gradually speed up here, and you want to stay alive as long as possible, because each death not only costs you a few valuable seconds, but also slows down the action a little bit. It's genuinely surprising how far these little differences go, but they all add up to make playing this game a remarkably fun experience. It's sort of like playing Pac-Man again for the first time. The presentation in Pac-Man Championship Edition is sort of dance club. The mazes, which are constantly changing colors, have a bit of a neon glow to them, and the ghosts leave a faint trail behind them as they move, while Pac-Man has a pool of light that follows him wherever he moves. The music certainly fits in well with this visual style. There's a pulsing beat that accompanies the action throughout, while a melody reminiscent of the original Pac-Man music echoes from time to time and builds up effectively as the final moments of the game count down. It's a sharp, cohesive presentation that, like the gameplay, freshens up the game without fundamentally changing what made it so appealing in the first place.
The one area in which the game perhaps falters is in terms of its value. The going rate for Pac-Man Championship Edition is 800 points, which seems like a lot for such a simple game, even one as legendary as Pac-Man. Still, the game is fun enough that you may find yourself coming back to it a lot more than plenty of other games on the Marketplace. The game's 200 achievement points are all pretty easy to acquire, but you don't play a game like this for the achievements anyway. What keeps you coming back again and again to a game like this is the irresistible gameplay and one more shot at a better high score. In that regard, amongst games on the Xbox Live Arcade, Pac-Man Championship Edition is perhaps most reminiscent of Geometry Wars. It's certainly the best simple, fast-paced action game to hit the Marketplace since then. This is an inspired update that captures all the fun that made Pac-Man such an enduring classic in the first place.
