Overall 9 Graphics 8.5 Sound 9.5 Addictive 8 Story 7 Depth 9 Difficulty 8
8.5
"One villages peace, soon put into horror and fear" sonicthehedgeho..
Waka-Waka-Waka-Waka *eats reviewing pellet* Oh...hello everyone nice to see you after a few min, don't mind me I was just finishing up a special stage...dang blinky always gets in my way and wastes my time! Yes it's time for the return of a beloved gaming icon, the man of pac-land, the belly for ghost gobbling, and the heroic yet timid rescuer set out for the golden fruit that was stolen. Twas all but a usually night when those ghosts decided to bring and upstart of deviousness to the town and it seemed as though nothing good was to come from it; but, then in the middle of the night they decided to be circus ghosts and play around with the legendary golden fruit causing a mystifying horror from AGES ago to be reborn into this land only going by the name: "Spooky" promising to rid the world of the pac men! However; can this really be pulled off, is our hero of pellets just going to be forgotten and destroyed in this terror? *collects cherry and power pellet* mmm well that's where I have to leave off as I can't waste anymore time that I need to spend on the journey ahead so maybe you'll know what's going on as the story moves on but for now see ya!
*Rev-Rolls off-screen*
....::::**** Experiencing the fun filled land of Pac in improved 3D ****::::......
Almost everyone in today's world knows about Pac-Man or has played one of his games whether it reaches from the arcade version to even just his cameo in Smash Bros, he's a beloved character and his games usually revolve around a 2-D plane just collecting pac-dots and trying to avoid the 4 ghosts, this game decides just like it's predecessor (yet usually an unfavored game) changes the whole format and the scenery being implemented into 3-D making the levels beautiful and eye-catching when you look at how the games used to be. Surprisingly as well, this is one of those few games where I believe the mouth actually go with what the characters say compared to a lot of other games that went into 3-D for the first time or just new games where you can see a delay in the mouth movement and/or the mouth just repeats with no rhythm what so ever. To understand what I mean I'll give you a few examples of areas in this game so let's go!
..:::.. Canyon Chaos ::...::
The 3rd level in this game takes you into a grassland type area similar to a previous level but this time there are pitfalls and more enemies surrounding the area as you rev-roll off the wall or just collect a Power Pellet ball and eat the enemy ghost in your way. Running around this peaceful and beautiful mostly grass filled landscape finding several ponds to immerse yourself in half-way through the trip. Swim through the clear blue water finding fruit and other helpful items until you feel ready to emerge from the water ground again. Even when you're done with that you can decide to have fun adventuring around the landscape and rolling over pitfalls thanks to planks that are raised a little. Just a pure nature beauty to behold even if it's in pac-man's cartoonish glory!
_::.:: Pac-Village ::.::_/
Right in the area where our fellow yellow hero lives and rests peacefully before he went on this whirlwind of an adventure, you may think ok...? ohhhh big deal probably just going to be a place surrounded by houses and villagers, nothing more. Too bad that's actually false as there are plenty of things you can enjoy and check out in this area, between the observatory to the arcade house where you can play games and just help out other villagers around the grass field area with a smile, heck there are things you can collect in this place too so it's not just a basic stage as one may think. Fun and great place to relax in this game.
/__ Treewood Forest ___
Probably one of the best areas to me that reminds me of the childhood nature of camping/just being out in the woods at night! Looking up at the deep dark blue skies where even the tree's at times almost look like skyscrapers as you lay on the wooden enticed land thinking about the beautiful branches and tops of trees wondering how it'd feel to be reaching that high almost as if you cold touch the stars. While you roam with our Pac friend bouncing from wooden based trampolines and scaling the tree's from the cut edges holding on for dear pac life as you look down at the far down drop that could happen. A wonderful and I mean wonderful relaxation place too!
With everything combined from before, I can say that this game definitely has such beautiful surroundings so I find it only fair to give this a graphics rating of a
9 out of 10 since it's not perfect but still very great even for GC standards.
_|Music that resonates with the traversing planes_|
I know this may be hard to believe but this probably has some of my favorite classic gamecube theme's, even though 2/3 themes in one area are remixes of the first levels theme from the same area. You see the thing that makes it different from most games is that when it remixes the themes it gives them a completely different value from before, meaning that one level can be peaceful but more so tense at the same time while the other level that has the mixed theme is even more peaceful than earlier with just a happier tone too, now onto the actual understanding for the music/effects.
~ Pac-Dot Pond ~
Being the last level in the first part of the game, you would honestly think that the music would be getting a tiny creepier or more tense because you're about to head for your first boss; however, the music actually gets MORE peaceful if you can believe that? With the beautiful scenery that I mentioned from Canyon Chaos just adding more of a water type field to the area that makes it just even more sweet and pretty to me. But the music ohhhhh it just makes it that much better and honestly it wouldn't be the same without it, with the flutes and xylophone instruments playing in the background as you travel this area back to forth. If you love Zelda music or things similar to it in a different fashion then I can promise this will at least be a tiny bit enjoyable to you.
~ B-Doing Woods ~
If you haven't been interested from the Treewood Forest segment then you'll fall in love with this Very Very upbeat music that almost feels like it's carrying you at times across the platforms and the trees. Having the trumpets serenade you from the sky and tree field area it's so nice and great to listen to when you need a little happiness in your day.
~Shark Attack}
Ahhh how I remember first reaching this level and it instantly being reminded of a certain level from Super Mario 64....can you guess what it is for one moment? *bounces pac-dot on feet* ....hm? You don't know? Ok it's Jolly Roger Bay from the game above, what makes it different is the fact that this song is much more involved than the previous one, as while the other one just has one repeating beat that picks up a little later in the song it never really completely maintains a strong beat throughout most of the level. Like as if you're being chased by an enemy the whole time while seeing the beautiful underwater scenery that you must swim through, throughout the entire level. Maybe it's just me but I personally LOVE water areas since it's like all worries are just washed away. There's no real way to do this song justice to me except for you to try and listen to it for yourself.
Such a childish toned game yet it has such a great soundtrack to boot. It's fun, charming, and really upbeat at times which can improve your mood by a lot which make me give the sound for the game a more than average
9 out of 10. {New Style, New Looks, Even more Fun}
As I stated in the beginning this is no longer the same Pac-Man that you know and love, it's a whole new 3-D linear style similar to Crash Bandicoot or Spyro the Dragon and this game has a lot to offer in terms on what you can do between playing the normal levels, trying to be a completionist by collecting all the tokens or just gain 100% in each and every level, beating all the bosses in one run, or gaining as many tokens as you can to play the arcade games found in Pac-Village. What makes the game really addictive though is basically the music and look of the game since you become so involved with the scenery you sometimes even forget you're playing a game here and it'll make you smile that you can just enjoy everything without having to even think about the gameplay much. The only real other part that may be addictive to talk about would be the story of this game that I've briefly talked about earlier during the intro; although, I'm going to wait and talk about this in more detail in the following section so I won't say much about that here. One thing that may bring the addictiveness down for you may be the control in some parts, mostly in the camera control since it doesn't always work like you would think which has caused me many many infuriating deaths as a young child so that's one thing that can make things hard for you to enjoy in the later levels. Even though this is short I think I'll end my score here with an
8 out of 10 for nice features but some tight spots that can damage the fun.
_____________________________
+-_ Dark Memories from centuries before_-+
Thousands of year's ago a wonderful and brilliant scientist of this lovely pac-land we know and love had decided to create Golden Fruit for the wonderful land and all seemed at peace; however, this happiness didn't last for long...as the evil spawn of pac-land named Spooky had decided to threaten the town with darkness and terror including death as well. Just in the nick of time though, this lands great warrior Sir Pac-a-lot showed up to defend the citizens from this vile creature and with the help of the powerful Golden Fruit which helped sealed the monster away underneath Pac Lands fruit tree for all time...or so they'd hoped. One
sleepful night in this village as we see the newest popular villager "Pac-Man" resting up, the 4 ghosts named: "Inky, Blinky, Pinky, Clyde" decide to have fun making mischief in the village and their bright idea is to take off the Golden Fruit from the tree that sealed away the evil spirit Spooky from before. Thanks to their bright idea this monster is summoned out again, instead of treating the ghosts as worthless pawns though he invites the ghost crew to join in the havoc Spooky plans on creating now that he's been freed.
Fully rested and alive in the morning our main character is startled by the mayor of Pac-Village whom warns him about the fruit having been stolen by Spooky and given to the ghosts in order to seal Pac-Lands fate and tells Pac Man that without the fruits this place of living will be doomed! Arming up all his courage and strength he sets open for his brand new adventure!
Probably not the best story you've read but when you're making a pac-man game you don't really have a lot to work off from so this is still an ok story but definitely not one of the best by any means, which leaves my score for this only at a
5 out of 10 __/~/ Lots to explore, much to collect, hours of fun ~__
Pac-Man World 2 is definitely one of those games that doesn't leave you empty handed upon playing the game since there is much to explore and collect during your quest to finish off Spooky and the other fiendish ghosts, you also have tokens and bonus tokens that you can collect upon your adventure as well which can be used for 2 main reasons: the Arcade and the building up the museum. The arcade is definitely going to be an enjoyable part of this game for you if you're an older Pac-Man fan but would could never find the original games or never had a real chance to try any of them out, then you're in luck here as the games located in this arcade are just that! Older Pac-Man games which just require a certain amount of tokens to play and there's no limit to how many times you can play them either. The games are as follows: Pac-Man (Original Game), Pac-Attack ~ similar to tetris in an inventive way" Pac-Mania - which is basically like the original Pac-Man except that you can jump over ghosts in this game and power-ups are added into the game, and finally Ms. Pac-Man - same as Pac-Man except she's faster, and finally you have Pac-Man World 2.....wait? WHAT? The game is inside the game?! O.O ....No..this game basically is just the maze stages that you can play from gaining Galaxian Tokens from levels and beating them. There's one other thing left in the museum and that's the Jukebox which you can listen to music of stages you've been to already.
Moving onto something else, the amount of levels inside this game is 25 each specific area having 3 normal stages then usually followed by a Boss stage which means usually 4 levels per area. That may not seem a lot at first but these levels are really big and like stated before, great minimal game for completionists whom don't want to get too caught up with a game. So when you look at everything above I'd say the depth earns a solid
9 out of 10! /| A game with usually average difficulty, but suffers from one bad option /|
Though this game may seem so simple and easy at first, the difficulty will spike up once you reach the last 2 areas of this game, between the camera angles getting worse to handle with or just bosses becoming more of a pain to pass through the difficulty can sometimes drive you mad and have you shut off the system at one point. Some examples I can kindly give are:
|Pinky Fight| - This one is especially hard with the camera angles messing up where you intend to land on the platform...doesn't seem that bad at first but I'm sure when I tell you this next part, you'll understand what I mean...since it's an ice level....yeah....I'm sure every gamer knows what that means because ice physics are pure EVIL and it makes it soo soooo easy to slip off the platform while the enemy tries attacking you.
|Night Crawling| - Another part that may be frustrating to new users of this game is that there is no map in this game so I remember being lost in this area for so long and I was afraid to fall down into a pit of death so I was lost for hours thanks to the camera not being cooperative, yay bad camera angles!
For the most part though even if this game does have challenge it's usually fair in all segments except for that bloody camera which has cost many many pac-lives and cost much of our childhood paitence...which if you don't know isn't very high to begin with. So the difficulty for Pac-Man world 2 deserves an
8 out of 10 for unfair camera angles but usual fairness in gameplay.
You've just returned to Pac-Village and now you see the lightning field skies surrounding the beautiful land you once loved and knew so well, with that most dreadful villain behind you near the Fruit Tree, the only thing you can do is wish for the best alongside the Golden Fruit you recovered and with their power hope to vanquish this vile darkness once and for all, time to bring back the peace for the village! Time to end this long overdue battle!
*Butt-Bounces towards Vizzed and flip kicks*
(Sonicthehedgehog57+Pokefreak219 2014tm)
Graphics 9 Sound 9 Addictive 8 Story 5 Depth 9 Difficulty 8
Review Rating: 5/5
Submitted: 11-30-14
Review Replies: 7
9
There's a sphere in this cuboid console! Run! Boxia
There is absolutely no doubt that Pac-Man is one of the most influential and well-known video game series ever. A yellow circle eating dots and evading ghosts may have sounded like a stupid idea for a game at first, but soon it would be one of the most popular games of all time. It spawned a whole franchise, with spin-offs, comics, and cameos. Eventually, however, Namco decided to do those bored with the standard Pac-Man format a solid by making a new plat former series with Pac-y as the main character. Just hearing that idea probably caused a lot of people to fall over laughing. How could they possibly make it work? Well, there were three installments in the series and the second one is especially praised, so obviously they must have done something right. Gobble up your Pac-dots, get out your fruit bowl, and reach for your yellow bed sheet. We're heading to Pac-Village!
An Interesting and Innovative Story!
For centuries, a malevolent spirit known as Spooky has been sealed underneath a tree in the center of Pac-Village. All those centuries ago, a wizard and a knight used five Golden Fruits to seal Spooky, who had been terrorizing the lands. Cut to the present day. One night, four ghosts (Inky, Binky, Pinky, and Clyde) sneak into the village for a night of fun and steal the Golden Fruit. This action releases Spooky, who immediately subjugates the ghosts and orders them to take the fruit so as to ensure the destruction of the Pac-people. Pac-Man wakes up and Professor Pac has quite a story to tell him. The professor gives Pac-Man a critical task: traverse the ghost-infested Pac-Land, recover the Golden Fruit, and return Spooky to his prison. The journey takes him to the forests, the plains, the mountains, the nearby volcano, the sea, and even the hellish Ghost Island.
Unlike the story of the first Pac-Man World, which was essentially about hunting down a doppelganger, this game boasts a tale of multiple persistent antagonists and consequences worse than Pac-Man’s rep getting tarnished; Pac-Land would be done for if it wasn't for Pac-Man. This adds to the feeling of urgency and realism. My only real beef is with a character introduced very late in-game. I feel he would have left more of an impact if he was introduced earlier, especially since he proves to be very close to Spooky.
Entertaining Game Play with Loads to Do!
There are a grand total of 24 levels in this game (not counting Pac-Village), about four per area. That means three "normal" levels and a boss level for each area. Each area has a motif, like forests (trees, buzz saws) and the sea (you're in a submarine). There are all-new enemies to go with these levels, including spider-like foes and bears as well as ghosts, which require glowing pellets to defeat. To go with the enemies are a plethora of plat forming challenges, some unique to certain areas and levels. For example, there is an ice-skating level in the mountain area that I find to be VERY creative and fun. To help you with all of this are new attacks, including a rev-roll, allowing you to mow down many enemies and move very quickly. The bosses are entertaining enough to keep you coming back to them, but the first batch of them is much too easy. In fact, the whole game is quite easy and balanced until you reach the volcano area. Anyone who got to this part at any point in their lives will remark how unfair it is. Ridiculous plat forming challenges and insane bosses abound, beating any of the levels without deaths is near impossible. That goes for the two areas after, as well. All this is made worse by camera issues (discussed below). The contrast in difficulty between the two halves of the game is so great you'd think you started playing Pac-Man Hell 2. One thing that almost redeems this, however, is the control scheme. Fluid and responsive, it takes advantage of the GCN controllers’ superior layout perfectly, with a Super Mario Sunshine like mapping - very convenient.
Just like the original Pac-Man, there's a score system, fruit, and Pac-dots. The last two count as collectibles and increase your score. Your score can also be increased through defeating enemies; you get more points for enemy-killing combos. Besides score-increasing collectibles, there are also tokens. Tokens can be identified by their brown colour, glow, and the Namco print on their face. What is the purpose of these? There's an arcade in Pac-Village. After amassing about 70 tokens, this arcade opens up and you can, with a certain amount of tokens, play different classic Pac-Man games. The cost of these games range from 50 (Pac-Man) to 250 (Ms. Pac-Man). The games are a nice little bonus, and a good diversion to cool you down once you reach the second half of the main quest. Finally, there's the only "secret" in this game. I use quotation marks because these technically count as collectibles and must be collected to get 100%. In some levels, you can find a Galaxian. Sometimes you must kill a foe to find one. Touching a Galaxian will send you into a 3-D maze a la the original Pac-Man. To really "collect" the Glaxian you must complete this maze. It's a lovely call back that harkens back to the arcade days. Take note that there are not an even amount of collectables for each level. In short, there are a great amount of collectables in each level that help enhance the experience by giving you something to do besides advance.
At last, completing any level triggers a time trial in that level. Hitting the stopwatch in the beginning of the stage will initiate a time trial. You must get through the level as fast as possible. Clocks will show up where items once were, extending your time limit by the amount indicated on their sprite. However, these clocks won't accumulate, meaning, for example, if you're in a situation where there's a 2 and 4 clock, you'd be better off going for the 4 clock alone. The mode is a fun little challenge that helps improve the entertainment levels.
Great Graphics and an Even Better Score!
I never thought I’d be saying this about a Pac-Man game, but the graphics are phenomenal. Look at any background, and sprite, any anything. It's bound to be heavily detailed and good-looking. Just look at the Pac-Village. The houses and trees look quirky, but also aesthetically pleasing with their bright colours and distinct patterns. The other areas have amazing textures as well, with beautiful mountains, snow textures, water, trees etc. The looks of the enemies are also distinctly cool, with comically stereotypical ghosts, epic-looking bears and machines, and amusing green little spiders all helping to give the game a unique flavour. There's just one HUGE flaw here; the camera is abysmal. In many tight areas where you need to tilt the camera, it will lock up. This often leaves you totally unaware of what's in front of you and is especially bad in the forest area, where this often causes you to fall into a bottomless pit. Other times, the camera goes too far away or too close, resulting in an uncomfortable situation in which you're either seeing way too much to process quickly enough or too close to see whatever's heading straight for you. Worse still, it often impairs your ability to appreciate the awesome graphics.
You're definitely hoping the music goes with the graphics perfectly to form an arsenal of atmosphere. The very, VERY good news is that it does. That may be the most glorious news of all time. Always matching their assigned stages perfectly, the tunes always retain a bit of that distinct comic feel, helping keep the theme fresh in your mind. So even when fighting a steel machine in a lava-filled caldera the tune manages to sneak in a little bit of comic. That's not very easy, is it? Even better are the glitch-devoid sound effects. The often-used BOING noise is so funny that it can't be the least annoying, as are all of the other sound effects. How amazingly epic that the noise in this game could convey the theme so perfectly.
Final Verdict:
Pac-Man World 2 is one of the best GCN games of all time. It makes up for camera and difficulty issues with awesome graphics and music, as well as a plethora of collectibles and levels to keep you entertained for a long time. It's an absolute must play, even for those not into classic Pac-Man games.
Final Score: 9/10
Graphics 8 Sound 10 Addictive 8 Story 9 Depth 9 Difficulty 8
Review Rating: 3/5
Submitted: 09-20-14
Updated: 10-08-14
Review Replies: 4
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