SDCC: Pac-Man Championship Edition 2 Is Just Like The Last Game, And I’m Okay With That
The original Pac-Man Championship Edition is easily one of the best digital games of all time. Released in 2007, the game may not have reinvented the wheel when it came to the core gameplay of Pac-Man, but rather it polished it to a pristine shine, the final product being a game that felt familiar, yet new at the same time, with it’s techno soundtrack and bright neon colors. The follow up, Pac-Man Championship Edition DX was also the same as the first one, but with newer stages and various skins to unlock and play as. Now we’ve reached Pac-Man Championship 2, and I got my hands on it during this year’s San Diego Comic Con. And you know what? It played just like the other games, and that’s alright by me.
The demo I played involved me eating pellets and chase ghosts in a maze within a certain time limit, as Pac-Man is wont to do. The twist this time was that there were two ghosts chasing me, a bunch of smaller ghosts were also in the maze as well, and if you’re not careful, running into these sleeping ghosts will add them to one of the bigger two, creating a line of ghosts that will chase you around the maze. While it does make it harder to go around the map eating pellets (especially since the big ghosts act like how they do in the original depending on their color), but on the other hand, eating a power pellet will net players extra points the more ghosts you gobble. It quickly became hectic, as Pac-Man moved faster and faster, making it harder not to hit the smaller ghosts.
Alas, my luck didn’t hold out for very long, and it ended with a measly 300,000 score. Not my best run, I’ll admit. But despite that, I enjoyed my time with the game. While I don’t think it’ll grace my personal Game of the Year list, this is the kind of game that I would play to wind down after a long day, much like the previous games. And honestly, that’s all I can ask for. Pac-Man Championship Edition releases in September of this year for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.
