Rating: E
Players: 1-2
Price Range: ~$16 USD
A 3D platformer involving Pac-Man in the Pac-Man World series.
A truly underrated platformer.
Runs well, and musically and graphically, it isn't too shabby either.
A linear fare with collect-a-thon elements, you have to stop Spooky the Ghost with the Golden Fruits to imprison him once again. Using Rev Rolls, Butt Bounces, and Air Kicks in addition to the powerups to either make you metal or allow you to eat ghosts via the familiar Power Pellet, there is a lot to do.
Quite lengthy and with quite familiar, but well done and spiced up stages and with a lot of Fruits and Pac Dots to collect, this is one of the yellow muncher's best adventures yet.
Usually packed in with Pac-Man Vs., this game has quite the replay value. There are even Tokens in the game's stages that unlocks old Pac-Man titles in the village's Arcade, hence the possibility with multiplayer in Pac-Attack, a puzzle game.
Also, collecting Galaxians from...Galaxian, takes you to a new and traditional Pac-Man maze in 3D, which are quite good as well.
Just overall a great 3D platformer in a time when the genre was unfortunately dying out.
No major flaws here, although...
The game can get quite hard too, with the lava world in particular being quite the challenge, and arguably too much so.
Also, the bosses are...bad.
The first one against Clyde (the orange one) in this frog machine is pitifully easy and so braindead, that even as a first boss it is underwhelming and doesn't leave much an impression.
What's sad is that he is one of the more unique boss fights in the game. The machines the other three ghost fight in are the same with only the environmental hazards really being your worst enemy there, with the fight against Blinky (the red one) being extremely frustrating because you have to Rev Roll with this very tiny slopes to these other island close by and you almost never end up where you want.
Also, the collect-a-thon elements were not well executed at all. Besides Galaxians to get those new mazes to play at the title screen and Tokens for the arcade games, the Fruits and the Pac Dots are horrible collectables.
Why?
Well, because if you don't get all of a single Fruit type or all the Pac Dots, then you have to get them all again in a single run. Say, you get all the Cherries except one and finish the stage. Because you didn't get that one Cherry, you have to replay the level and get them all again in order to have it completed for that Fruit. This makes the experience better if you don't go out of your way to 100% this game, which was clearly a mistake on the devs' part.
Still, this a very solid 3D platformer, that, besides not really innovating or bringing anything mind-blowing to the table, is definitely a good time.
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