Draw Pac-Men to eat ghosts in this great game

User Rating: 8 | Pac-Pix DS
By Ignition_jammy | Review Date:
In Pac-Pix, you'll draw the outline of a Pac-Man and watch him come to life and begin moving; eating anything in his path. You can draw walls to change the Pac-Man's directions, and your goal is to eat a specific number of ghosts before a time limit expires. You can draw more than one Pac-Man to try finish the level faster, but multiple Pac-Men make it more difficult to control and keep on the screen. You only have a certain stockpile of Pac-Men and one you run out, the game ends. As you progress through the game, you gain the ability to draw other gestures. Drawing an arrow will fire the missile up to the top screen, where you can pop bubbles containing ghosts, or hit switches. Drawing bombs and attaching the fuse to the fire source causes an explosion to destroy shields, or stun ghosts. However, all gestures have to be drawn in a certain way, unless they won't be recognised, this is particularly frustrating when drawing bombs, since the ink remains on the screen, and you will want it to disappear so you can draw a better bomb in its place.
There are 12 chapters, and each one is broken up into a five or so stages. Failing a stage by running out of Pac-Men or letting the time limit elapse sees you having to restart the chapter again. This becomes frustrating at times, especially when you get to the boss fight and can't work out how to tackle him in time. When time is ticking down, its natural to try speed the drawings up, but this makes your drawings sloppier, which then lowers the success rate for the game to recognise. This exacerbates the bomb problem since a n unrecognised bomb tends to stay on the screen and preventing you from drawing a replacement for several seconds. Also, there was a problem with drawing Pac-Men but it seems to me this was an intentional characteristic the programmers put in. The side of the Pac-Man that you draw the mouth indicates its movement direction. Eg However, if you drew the Pac-Man a bit deformed, sometimes the Pac-Man would move a different direction. The game clearly knew where the mouth was, because it animates your drawing to get the chomping effect that we all know Pac-Man for, so why does the Pac-Man defy its usual behaviour? This is a major frustration because if you draw your Pac-Man at the very edge of the screen, and he moves straight off it, that's a life lost within less than a second.
Overall, Pac-Pix was a very original and entertaining game. The graphics are basic but work extremely well. The game probably could be completed fairly quickly, but the hardcore gamers out there could replay it to gain a higher score by using less lifes and completing the chapters in the shortest time possible.

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