PAC-MAN 256+

Disclaimer that I have not played the arcade version of this game, which I understand has more content. The only measure of a game quality that I care about is how much I return to it. And I played this one a LOT. The controls are simple: you swipe to change direction, and that’s it. You can swipe at anytime before the turning point, so you don’t have to time it exactly right. Occasionally you will go in a different direction than you wanted to - the game is finicky about swiping direction. I was able to adjust eventually and the problem all but went away. The progress grid is like a map where as you complete objectives, new ones open up. Depending on the objective, you have to adjust your play tactics, which is a good thing. The absolute best part of this game is when you reach a high enough level on a board, you are as unstoppable as your ability to swipe quickly. It’s like riding the world’s fastest water tube. A couple of times I got a literal rush from an exceptional run. The power ups are interesting and mostly equally useful, although a few of them seemed to do the same thing as others. Eventually, you reach a point where the only objective is to beat your high scores, but you’ll get many hours playing it before then. Definitely recommend.

Okay, so they fixed the daily issue, but the rest of the issues remain, plus some new ones. Sometimes in Pac-Mania, Pac-Man does not move forward after going off a jump, and sometimes he does. Turns out it isn’t just an issue with moving forward out of a jump, sometimes he will turn when I tell him to, sometimes he won’t. This issue can result in getting killed by a ghost or affecting combo count. And the more I play, the worse the swiping controls have become. It doesn’t properly recognize the directions and I die because Pac-Man will go the wrong way. The more I play the more issues arise. I was upgrading my upgrades and one of them had two then reverted back to one when I upgraded another to three. Using the bomb power-up, I exploded a ghost but somehow still died. Also related to the bomb, there is a mission to raise the bomb radius to level 5. So raising the bomb to level 5 using fuse upgrades doesn’t work, okay. But getting the bomb to level 5 using only radius upgrades also doesn’t work. It needs to be upgraded to level 6 using 5 radius power ups. It’s a basic wording issue. And now I’m trying to buy worlds that were 100 coins and for some reason they now cost 1250 coins. Now I’m bottlenecked in the progress because I need to buy a world and can’t. Ridiculous.

Take PAC-MAN and combine it with “endless runner” genre concepts and you get PAC-MAN 256, which throws in a glitch wall trying to constantly catch up to you in a constantly changing maze with power-ups. But if you take those antics, revamp them, and add new features, you get PAC-MAN 256+. The new and changed features make this game worthy of that “+” at the end of its name. Unlike the original PAC-MAN 256, there’s a “Level Up” feature which starts you at 1, and as you play a game, it increases, giving you additional power-ups and upgrades to pick from at random. These reset on Game Over, but there are permanent upgrades and power-up unlocks which allow you the chance to obtain them next time you play. In PAC-MAN 256+, however, multiple power-ups can be active at once, including a Power Pellet. This is a huge improvement in my book, and is perfect for letting hilarity ensue. Because, yes, we *all* want to see a giant PAC-MAN chasing down vulnerable Ghosts with a trail of lava behind him while mines are strewn about. Yes, that can actually happen. Mwahaha.