Pac-Man Fever
The generation of remakes continues. Bandai Namco is the next company on the list to cash in on nostalgia with a remake of a PSOne title of all things. Pac-Man World was originally released back in 1999 for the original PlayStation. The game was created to celebrate the game’s 20th anniversary, which is now 23 years old. Holy cow I am becoming an old man. Now two decades later everyone’s favorite yellow dot-chomper is back with a remake. For better or worse this game contains all the same designs as the original PSOne title with a visual makeover, I guess you could say it is an interesting Re-Pac-kaging…
Pac-Man World Re-Pac is a full-fledged remake in the sense that all of the visuals have been replaced with modern ones. The design of the levels and collectibles remain intact. The game kicks off with Pac-Man’s family being kidnapped by the likes of the ghosts. Who knows what Inky and Blinky were thinking. Then our hero must set out on a series of themed levels to rescue them by collecting items and of course taking out ghosts. Each level carries a theme with it and it is the quintessential design of a platformer from that late 90s era.
MSRP: $29.99
Platforms: Xbox (reviewed), PlayStation, Switch, PC
Price I’d Pay: $19.99
Everything about Pac-Man World feels of that era. The design of the game gives off vibes of the early Crash Bandicoot games where the levels are 3D, but highly constrained. Perspective plays a role as well with items being hidden behind cleverly placed walls. There is also an obscene amount of backtracking in the game. There are so many fruits and letters and other items to collect and I found myself having to go back and forth to get them all. There is so much to get and missing something would require an entirely new run to get. This slows down the pacing of the game making it feel bloated and not fun at times.
Going through all the levels takes less than ten hours and it truly lacks any sort of challenge. The punishment for death is minimal and most of the challenge comes from testing my patience on the backtracking. The boss encounters are rarely a challenge of anything other than patience. Every level also contains a hidden maze for players to find, which again isn’t hard. Everything about the game screams 90s era platformer. I did enjoy being able to unlock the original arcade game, but I could have just played one of my 50 copies of that game.
Controlling Pac-Man feels stiff at times. His movements can be awkward, especially when jumping. The pseudo 2D perspective in a 3D world plays tricks on the platforming. Thankfully precision isn’t required in most cases. Except when swimming. Man I ran into those spike mines far too often.
Graphically the game looks fine even though if I had not known better I would have thought this was a remaster (not a remake) of a Gamecube era platformer. That is the kind of visual fidelity we are looking at here. Character models retain that PSOne design with a coat of paint from the PS2 era. It is Pac-Man though so I was not expecting a series of ray-traced reflections although now that I think about it, that would have been really cool to see.
Pac-Man World Re-Pac is a solid game that just doesn’t wow on any level. The concept feels from a different time and anyone who has nostalgia will likely enjoy the game for what it is. Still not entirely sure why this game was chosen for a remake as opposed to perhaps something like Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures from the 360 era. Those were much more competent platform games. Still it is a decent package with some frustrating older design.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.
