Pac-Man Fever might not be around anymore, but at 30, Pac-Man is better than ever. Surprisingly, Pac-Man Championship Edition DX was dropped out of nowhere less than a month before release by Namco while the previously shown off Pac-Man Battle Royale that was supposed to come out this month is nowhere to be found. After I played Pac-Man CE DX just once, I have no complaints about that decision.

Pac-Man CE DX takes the CE formula from 2007 and cranks it up multiple notches by packing in way more ghosts. I went back to the first CE and it is now akin to watching a slow turtle wade through molasses in comparison. And forget story and graphics, gameplay is king here.

 

The "Namco Generations News" available in game had an "article" stating the goal of this Pac-Man was to indeed to feature more ghosts, and I guess to make money but they didn't say that. However, having a million ghosts running around aimlessly and then chasing Pac-Man from every which way would delve the player into an impossible quagmire. Namco got around this by making sentry ghosts that are asleep until Pac-Man passes by. The sentry ghost only starts moving until another ghost passes by that is chasing Pac-Man and forms a rainbow colored chain, AKA a conga line, of tightly packed ghosts behind him. If Pac-Man passes by a sentry ghost but the chain doesn't, then that ghost won't end up following Pac-Man.

The ghost chain presents a new hazard to Pac-Man when it becomes longer as you'll often have to avoid backtracking on it. Usually, this isn't a problem if you manage to keep on the perfect path but as the speed increases and you miss a turn, you might find yourself on the scenic route. To balance against more ghosts and being corned, Pac-Man has been given an arsenal of short range bombs and automatic slow motion in near death situations.

 

Bombs will send back any nearby ghosts to their starting box of purgatory and give Pac-Man some reprieve. Kudos to Namco for briefly displaying the amount of bombs left near Pac-Man after using one to keep eyes on the action. The trade-off to using a bomb is that it will lower the game speed, visible in the UI, and thus slowing the accumulation of points. And it will throw a wrench in the collection of sentry ghosts into the ghost chain, a necessity for collecting massive amounts of points by chowing down on ghosts after a power pellet. Chomping down on thirty ghosts in a couple seconds is perhaps one of the most satisfying and rewarding moments in games, even better than killing the Kevlar-skinned locusts in Gears of War. The pressure of eating as many ghosts as possible while the pellet time meter counts down adds to the thrill.

 

Adding slow motion to the game in near death situations created tons of gaming moments for me after being able to successfully weave through mazes at such a high speed that leaves spectators in disbelief or amusement. One of my favorite situations is when I run out of bombs and am forced to keep darting back and forth in slow motion between a ghost and the ghost chain. There are also hold your breath slow motion moments when Pac-Man squeaks around a ghost by a hair, err, pixel. Slow motion at key moments makes Pac-Man more accessible to all gamers and encourages the player to keep playing instead of running into the game over screen.

At first I thought CE DX featured multiple game modes, or levels really, while the first CE did not. Turns out CE had them but I never bothered to look for them as the main mode was good enough! Namco made mode selection the best designed menu this iteration, complete with Pac-Man sound effects. Unfortunately, the modes and different level skins feel more like a way to put a bigger number of specs in the game description and ultimately water down the game experience. If Namco stopped at the five best modes, Pac-Man CE DX would have been a better, more refined product. The wide open Highway and the narrow, claustrophobic Manhattan modes are my favorites other than the standard Championship II mode. Darkness mode will challenge your memory of the map layouts while Junction will punish you for taking a wrong turn off the pellet path.

 

What makes Pac-Man CE DX so damn good? It's an extremely satisfying and rewarding experience with lots of positive feedback for doing well. Everything is amplified as the game speeds up during a round with more rapid succession when eating pellets and ghosts as the music picks up to a heart pounding tempo and comes to a crescendo. Simply put, it is a fantastic balance of visuals, audio and gameplay (thanks Geometry Wars!) that always left me craving for just one more game.

A few things keep me from giving the game a perfect score. Sometimes there are so many points being displayed from eating a ghost chain that it blocks the view of where I have to go. On occasion, the audio will stutter while eating really long ghost chains at high speed since there is a sound effect played for every ghost. In the leaderboards, I'm in my own tab and not in a list competing with my friends. And as mentioned previously, not all the game modes or skins are that good. If you have a piece of crap in your ice cream, that better be damn good ice cream if you're going to eat around it. OK, so maybe Pac-Man CE DX is more similar to having steak with broccoli.

Considering how Pac-Man CE roots itself firmly in the foundation that Geometry Wars laid out in neon and leaderboards, it is an amazing accomplishment for this sequel to outclass the original by leaps and bounds compared to Geometry Wars 2's meh-ish reception. Plus, it's available on PSN as well this time around for those whose Xbox Live disconnects all the time like mine! It may seem that Pac-Man can't get any better after this one but here's hoping that Namco pulls if off. Virtually accessible to anyone but difficult to master, I highly recommend Pac-Man CE DX if you even remotely like arcade games.

 

Note: This game was reviewed on Xbox 360