Ahh, the venerable Pac Man (sorry, Gender-Neutral-Pac-Person…) an old school/retro/classic gaming icon, simplicity at it’s most basic, a maze of pellets, four relentless apparitions, and four “Power Pellets” that allow you to temporarily turn the tide on your stalkers and consume them, eat the dots, avoid the ghosts, simple to learn, impossible to master…
Okay, take everything you know about the venerable Pac, aside from the “eat pellets” thing and throw it out of your mind, as PMCEDX is different, vastly different and must be played with a slightly different strategy
in PMCEDX, you are once again traversing a neon maze, gorging yourself on pellets (wonder what they taste like, probably chicken, everything tastes like chicken…) and yes, there are ghosts in the maze, but herein lies the fundamental difference…
The ghosts are sleeping, and will ignore you until you pass by them and somehow disturb their eternal slumber (maybe Pac should learn to eat with his mouth closed, or at least learn how to eat quietly…), once awakened, they will chase you incessantly, never tiring, never falling back to sleep
This is the first departure from Classic Pac, in CP, the ghosts would stalk you, try to “get” you, oftentimes taking different paths through the maze to cut you off, or pin you between two of them, not in DX, all they do is give chase, and there are a LOT more than four of them…
let me step back a bit and explain the gameplay here, as the remake is rather brilliant and changes the fundamental way to play Pac Man…
As you start the game, you’ll see a short path of pellets, guiding you around the maze, each pellet path ends with a “treat” (fruit, a key, a spaceship from Galaga, etc…) the pellet paths only appear on one side of the maze, when you eat the snack, the screen wipes and pellets appear on the opposite side of the map, steering you around the maze, you start slowly, and the game gradually ramps up both the speed and the length and pattern of the pellets.
as the pellet paths get more and more intricate, they will invariably pass by some ghosts, which you will wake up and they will begin tailing you, you will eventually build up a constantly lengthening tail of ghosts, as the trail of spectres gets longer and longer, it becomes more important to avoid hitting that trail, to do so will invite Death of the Pac, oh and the game randomly drops in one “roamer” ghost just to keep you on your toes…
So, now, you have a lengthining trail of ghosts, how do you solve that problem, well, the game has a new take on that as well, Pac has with him, a limited supply of incendiary anti-ghost explosive devices (“bombs”), if he gets into a bind (the game will slow down and do a Matrix style "Bullet-Time effect as you approach a ghost to give you time to avoid/react), you can detonate a bomb, which will drop your ghost tail back into the center cage… personally, I find this cheapens the game dramatically…
Thankfully, the old standby is there, Power Pellets still exist, and make the ghosts “edible” for a short while (tastes great? less filling?), when the power pellets appear, they are usually near a long line of sleeping ghosts, once you chow down on the power pellet, ALL the ghosts become edible, and let me just say there’s nothing more satisfying in the game than turning the tables on that 30 to 40 ghost trail you’ve built up, and simply turning and mowing them down, listening to the classic “eaten ghost” sound rack up over and over, and watch your ghost eating score climb into the crazy-silly numbers (200, 400, 800, 1600, 3200, 3200, 3200, 3200, 3200, 3200, 3200, 3200…)
So, the focus has changed from “avoid the ghosts, eat the pellets” to “build up trail of ghosts, eat power pellet, gorge on edible ghosts”, it’s no longer just about survival, it’s about building the longest ghost combo you can…
and it’s dammned addictive, it’s got that “just one more try” feeling in spades, an old classic feels new again