Pac-Man Championship Edition DX

The best part of paying the 50 bucks a year for PlayStation Plus service is the plethora of free games that you can download.  Though I came for the Just Cause 2, Infamous 2, and Ratchet and Clank: All 4 One, I figured it wouldn't hurt to fill my PlayStation 3 hard drive with the Pac-Man Championship Edition DX game which I'd seen was good in some magazine or on the Inter-webs.  And that Inter-web was right.

I started it up, expecting to play a multiplayer Pac-Man game or even just a shinier version of the 1980 classic.  But that was not it at all.  The game comes in a variety of flavors including a high-score mode and a time-attack mode.  But unlike in the original, the stages are constantly shifting in rippling disco lights with new fruits appearing seemingly at random, though, in actuality, following the emptying of the playfield of Pac-dots.  And the cast has ballooned from the original four.  My God, the number of ghosts in this game.  Honestly, I didn't think too much of this until my first power pellet.  Instead of chasing down one or two ghosts, the stupid spectres followed closely behind me, and plowed directly into my mouth, ghost after ghost after ghost.  Hearing the electronic bloop, bloop, bloop chomping noise of my round protagonist, I was Billy Mitchell reborn.  Points? They don't matter.  I've got a million of them.  Suddenly, the end of each game resulted in my wanting play just a little more.  As I did, I began to love the seizure-inducing graphics and cool little extras like bombs to briefly shoo away your pursuers and a time slow-down mechanic where your speeding Pac-Man can dodge his enemies with deft maneuvers down the only clear path.  Honestly, will original Pac-Man be able to hold a candle to this modern re imagining.

AHHHH! I'm tripping balls!!

This is the Pac-Man for the new century, the slick, fast-moving, mobile-esque version of a game that the vast majority of Americans probably don't even remember.  But no smart phone can handle the speed, the split-second control, the glorious glorious rush of decimating those doe-eyed ghost bastards like a console.  I don't think Pac-Man Championship Edition DX will hold my interest forever, but this is a game that I could come back to every now and again to see if I can break my score record or chain of ghosts devoured (63!).  This is an easy purchase at 5-10 bucks but, for me, its free-ness adds to the Really Good time I experienced with the game.  Anyone who has a mild interest in games would enjoy this version of Pac-Man and it's nice to see the thought that went into revising this classic.