Simple, challenging, addictive ... just like the original.
Nintendo was on the right track with its rethinking of Pac-Man and its "Pac-Man Vs." bonus game it gave away for the GameCube (and have announced for the DS). And, with the release of Pac-Man Championship Edition for the XBLA, Namco is, too. The game retains the basic gameplay of its predecessor (Pac-Man eats dots, ghosts chase Pac-Man, Pac-Man eats energizer, Pac-Man chases ghosts) and gives it a shot of adrenaline just right for today's gotta-go-faster gamers.
You start in a simple maze with only a few dots and maybe a couple of energizers, symmetrically divided across the screen. Munch all the dots on one side, and a fruit target appears next to the ghost pen. Grab the fruit, and a new batch of dots appears, along with a redrawn maze. The ghosts still chase you, but you can turn the tables with an energizer, which turns them blue and makes them ripe for chomping, with each ghost being worth more and more points. Simple, right?
So far, yes. But that's just the start. Namco has added a timer to the mix, turning the game into a Time Attack mode, where you try and score as many points as you can in the time limit provided. Fortunately, there are many new ways to score points. For starters, the longer Pac-Man avoids the ghosts, the more points the individual dots are worth (slowly ramping from 10pts to 50pts each). Energizers can be chained together by allowing ghosts to return to the pen and respawn, only to turn blue again. Like the dots, the ghosts' point values keep going up with each successive chomp in the same chain (up to a whopping 3200pts each). Lastly, the fruits continually reappear and, yep, they keep earning more and more points, maxxing out at Namco's ubiquitous 7650pts (anyone know the significance of that number?).
So how about the challenge factor? Well as the timer runs down and the number of fruits increases, both Pac-Man and the ghosts speed up, the "blue time" decreases, and the techno soundtrack (always the same music) keeps your pulse racing. Pac-Man is now able to hug the sides of the maze, generating "sparks" and allowing him to take corners faster in an effort to elude the pursuing ghosts. The speed, combined with the relatively small maze, is blazingly fast.
The usual XBLA accoutrements are here, notably leaderboards and achievements. The achievements are a bit easy to earn, and a good player should get them all within a few days of downloading the title. Fortunately, if you've got a "gotta-get-better" gene in you, you'll be back time and time again after you've gotten all 12 achievements, just to see if you can improve your best scores, and the time-limit format makes this a perfect game to play in short bursts.