The Pac-Man World series is one I missed entirely back when it was ongoing. Some time back on Youtube, I did notice a few smaller game review channels being really big fans of these games (especially the third), so I was pretty interested to finally try one of them out.

So let’s see if this classic game is actually a classic!

Developer and Publisher: Bandai Namco Games
Release date: August 26, 2022
Platforms: Switch, PC, PS4, Xbone, PS5, Xbox X/S (Switch version reviewed)
Genre: 3D Platformer

Review

He’s just a little guy! It’s his birthday! And yet Inky, Blinky, Pinky and Clyde follow Toc-Man’s orders of kidnapping Pac-Man at his birthday party. But they find a lot of Pac-Man-like people preparing for his birthday party, and also his dog and a Pooka from Dig Dug, so they kidnap his family and friends instead, by mistake. So Pac-Man gets to his birthday party but no one’s there. So he head’s to Toc-Man’s place to save his family. Very wholesome story. That’s really all there is to the plot, there’s hardly any cutscenes or anything really… happening.

Graphically, it’s certainly an upgrade from the PS1 version of the game. Some textures were changed entirely, and Pac-Man used to have a more expressive face (though his polygons were also really fucky), but it’s a very nice big upgrade overall. Seems to be mostly accurate to the original, just way more detailed. I will note, even with performance mode turned on, the Switch version has some stuttering issues. It’s usually fairly okay, but there’s some fairly random moments, usually when scrolling is happening. I assume the other versions are smoother.

So this is a 3D platformer, though it has a lot of side-scrolling style design. Kinda like Mario 3D World and Kirby and the Forgotten Land. Pac-Man has a few basic abilities, though they don’t change as you progress. Pac-Man can jump, throw power pellets, and charge up a roll like Sonic. When jumping, he can ground pound. The ground pound pauses you in the air for a little bit, but if you do 3 consecutive ground pounds, following ones no longer do the pause in the air so you can chain them easier. I didn’t find much use for that, but it’s fun to do. Also, throw pellets sucks because the range is insanely shot, but you can also charge it for a while to throw an exploding pellet (which costs 10 pellets), which is needed/useful in a few places.

Levels are fairly straightforward, but there’s a few gimmicks here and there. There’s moving platforms, water levels that are a bit awful (I noticed some somewhat-unavoidable sharks in there, there’s spots in the level meant to avoid them but it doesn’t work), jumps that you need to do the Sonic spin dash to jump across, platforms that move if you spin dash on them, bounce pads that you ground pound on and various other things. They’re mostly pretty fun. Enemies tend to be defeatable with a ground pound, with some exceptions. The ghosts are the biggest exception, as you need to find a power pellet, which turns you big and makes the ghosts blue so you can eat them.

Levels have a bunch of stuff to do. There’s a bunch of doors all over the place which open if you find the specific fruit that’s on the sign for it to open it. There may be collectibles or switches behind those. The levels feature several things you can pick up, may it be fruit, the letters for the name PACMAN, keys, family members (you need a key to open their cage, the key is not always in the same level as the family member) and of course power pellets. The buttons tend to spawn things, may it be platforms to progress, platforms to lead to . One of the more interesting things you can find is the mazes, which bring you into a maze level that plays like classic pac-man. Those are REALLY tough actually, because some of the levels have obstacles other than just the ghosts, and some have pretty annoyingly-positioned spawn points for the ghosts. Getting all the letters and doing the mazes increases you completion percentage, and there’s some extra mazes outside of the levels as well. And when you finish the main game you unlock the arcade game too. So while it’s not a very long or big game (6 worlds with 3-4 levels each, including the bosses), it has a bit of stuff to do.

Oh, and there’s these metal balls that make you into metal Pac-Man, which changes your jump physics a bit and allows you to sink in water rather than having to swim (which allows to ground pound in the water). I’m a bit curious that this is the only actual transformation, I gotta assume they build on to that in future games. Actually a semi-related series, Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures, is all based around Pac-Man changing forms, so this game is probably where that idea comes from.

Some boss levels are also gimmicks, such as a kart-racer boss and a shmup boss based on Galaga/Galaxian. The other bosses are all about figuring out the weak point and hitting it. Some are kinda stupid easy (the first boss is dumb), some are a bit rougher but might have something to exploit (one of them has ways to get extra hits in for a faster kill). Generally I think the bosses are pretty fun, though the final boss gives you a bit too much leeway to beat it.

I tried to find a few changes between the original game and this remake, and found a few from a very cursory glance at videos and a few comments about the original. There’s one blowtorch enemy, for example, who always points up in the original but changes its aim randomly from up to front in the remake. So in the original you had to use a pellet, in this version you might be able to land a ground pound. I noticed some people saying the original had a level that was very annoying because metal balls wouldn’t respawn… well, that level is still hell in the new version, but at least the metal balls respawn. I’m sure there’s plenty of other changes (such as Pac-Man becoming huge when eating a power pellet, in the original it just turns the ghosts blue so you can eat them), but as I’m not completely familiar with the original, I can’t really say much beyond this.

Overall

While this game didn’t fail in its original release, seemingly getting over a million sales, it’s not one that’s frequently talked about anymore, with people bringing the conversation to Crash Bandicoot/Spyro when talking about oldschool Playstation platformers. I guess it confuses me a bit, considering this game is certainly better than the PS1 Crash games. It’s possible the PS1 version wasn’t as good as this, but it looked very similar so it’s probably fine.

The core gameplay is very nice. It doesn’t change much as you progress since you have the same moveset the whole way through, but each world has its own interesting gimmicks. While not everything is fully polished (I found sharks to be weirdly unavoidable, for example), and one thing I didn’t mention is that depth perception could definitely use a bit of help.

It gets a mild recommendation from me. I think a lot of people would prefer to wait on a sale since it’s not a super long game, but it already launched at a bargain price so… I dunno, I had a lot of fun with it.