Review: Pac-Man Vs.
Connectivity meets wakka-wakka-wakka.
Shigeru Miyamoto will never be accused of having too few unusual ideas. His latest is a collaboration with Pac-Man creator Toru Iwatani that re-engineers the dot-chomping classic as a multiplayer power struggle. It?s just weird enough to be worth owning for posterity.
There?s no single-player game?you?ll need at least two people and one Game Boy Advance system (with a GameCube link cable). On the big screen, three ghosts search for Pac-Man, but they can see only a small amount of the maze at any time. On the GBA, Pac-Man has the traditional top-down view of the whole playfield, but he?s outnumbered three to one. If a ghost catches the Pac, the roles switch (read: The GBA is passed to a new player), and the hunter becomes the hunted. If a monster grabs the fruit first, their field of view widens, making Pac easier to track. Cherries are suddenly a matter of life and death.
Maybe it?s just the stress of multiplayer hijinks, but Pac-Man seems to move agonizingly slow; this wild goose chase could be more wild. The GBA directional controls feel a little mushy, but all wrong turns on the GameCube end of things are the players? faults. The announcing is handled by none other than Mario, which gets annoying fast. Graphically, the game resembles Namco?s old coin-op Pac-Mania.
You can get Pac-Man Vs. only as part of another purchase (it?s bundled with the GameCube versions of I-Ninja, R: Racing Evolution, or the budget-priced Pac-Man World 2), but if you?re a regular multiplayer gamer, this should be in your collection.
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