PAC-MAN Championship edition on Xbox 360

[Steven W]

“Pac-Man Championship Edition” — featuring the first new Pac-Man mazes in more than 26 years — available only on the Xbox 360 tommorow.

Quote:

The “Pac-Man Championship Edition” is the same beloved “Pac-Man” game played in arcades of the ’80s but is updated with new features that former “Pac-Man” fanatics and new generations of fans alike will love. It includes new mazes that dynamically change shape during gameplay, six new timed game modes, new soundtracks and high-definition (HD) graphics

[Blademrk]

Downloaded the demo, and I reallly enjoyed it (so much so that I bought it).

The controls seem a bit more responsive than the previous Pac-Man offerings on Live and the pace gets really hectic later on (speed increases as your score does).

It's a bit different to other Pac-Man games in that the maze is "split" into left side / right side and there is only so many Pac-dots shown on each side. After eating all the dots on one side of the field a fruit/item appears on the opposite side which must be collected for the maze to change on the side the dots were eaten (more dots appear with the new maze half). You must survive for either 5 or 10 minutes (depending on game type) which can be tricky as the speed increases. at game end a replay of your game is shown followed by a 3-tier graph (bar chart) showing how you scored over time (dots eaten, Ghosts caught and Items collected) which (I thought) was fairly interesting.

Overall, I think it's a pretty good (and addictive) game and one I'll be playing a fair amount to try and beat my score. However, I think it should have been priced at around 500/600 points as there's not a lot to it other than the 6 mazes (2 lasting 5 minutes 4 lasting 10) so a good player should be able to beat it in 50 minutes, getting all the achievements (I'm not that good at it yet, beat the first 5 minute maze and managed to get down to a minute remaining on one of the 10 minute ones).