Difficulty:

Hard

Time Spent:

10 Hours or Less

The Bottom Line:

"Just plain fun"

I am one of the biggest Pac-Man fans around. Along with about 80 million other people, I was addicted to the game years ago and I even downloaded the original game over Xbox Live. Now, on Xbox Live, Namco gives us a reimagined version of one of the most famous games of all time. And to my surprise, it's actually very good. There a couple of annoying issues, but the game gives Pac-Man a new feel that it has been lacking for many years.

Instead of just rehashing the original game with better visuals, Namco felt the need to completely change the way you play the game. Instead of just moving around one maze collecting all the dots, fruit and avoiding ghosts, this game has you doing all of those same things........but with a major twist. You see, when you first start the game you have a timer. This timer ticks down and the trick is to stay alive and rack up as many points as you can in that alotted timeframe. A lot of the challenge, actually, is trying to get as many points as you can in the time you are allowed. It's not so much survival, as it is smart time management.

Another thing that has changed is that the maze is rarely completely filled with dots. Usually only one half is filled at a time. When you almost finish clearing one half of the maze, a fruit or an object will appear. If you go eat this object, then the other half of the maze gets some dots. There are also different sets of mazes and several new play modes. The only problem I have with the game is the fact that all of the new play modes has a time limit. You can never just play until you run out of lives. Some of the scores would be mind-blowing considering how easy it is to score points in this game.

This Xbox Live version of Pac-Man C.E. (as opposed to the other two, Pac-Man & Ms. Pac-Man) handles very well, actually. My main problem with the other two games was the fact that the Xbox 360 controller's d-pad is atrocious. And it never just felt right while using the analog stick. In this game, the analog stick works beautifully. It should go to show how much effort was put into this game, or the lack there-of in the previous two. Either way, Pac-Man Championship Edition is a blast and is a must download for any fan of the Pac-Man games. The achievements are a little harder this time around (and that's a good thing) and the game is very addicting. While the price tag ($10) certainly isn't chump change, it's worth for this great update to one of the greatest games ever.