PacMan is at the same time one of the simplest and most addictive arcade games to ever come out of the arcade golden age that was the 80’s. To this day, hardcore players around the world spend ungodly hours competing for high scores. This classic game has been ported and adapted to numerous platforms over the years, with mixed success. Today I’m going to take a look at the flash version developed by Paul Neave.
If you’ve never played PacMan, what the hell are you even doing reading this review? Because it is quite obvious that you, sir, are not a gamer. In fact, you probably aren’t even from this planet, so I’m not entirely sure how you’ve even found your way onto the internet. Regardless, I guess a brief description wouldn’t hurt.
In PacMan you play as, well, PacMan. What is PacMan you may ask? After twenty plus years, we’re still not entirely sure, although the common consensus is that he is some manner of supernatural cheese man with an addiction to yellow M&Ms and a crippling fear of colors other than blue, trapped in some sort of maze for reasons unknown for all eternity with a legion of rainbow colored ghosts. You must run through the maze eating little dots, running from ghosts, and eating the big dots to turn the ghosts blue and edible. Sometimes pieces of fruit or candy will show up worth bonus points. When a board is cleared of all dots, a new one begins. This is the game in its entirety, and it can potentially last for entire days if the player is good enough.
While most ports of the PacMan arcade game follow the same basic gameplay structure, there are often slight differences from the original, whether due to the limitations of the hardware, the way they were programmed, or the developer’s choice. While the differences aren’t as noticeable in this version as in some others, they are present. I had two major gripes with this version. The first is the speed at which PacMan moves. While you can definitely play the game just fine, the pace of gameplay is noticeably different than the arcade game and it threw me off. The second problem was the AI on the ghosts, which wasn’t as sharp as it seems like it should be. Several times I noticed them just bumping into walls for a few seconds rather than coming after me. They figured out what they were supposed to be doing and got back to it fairly quickly, but this little glitch really bugged me.
While I’ve never been all that crazy about the PacMan, I’ll admit its a pretty a fun game for a while, especially when this version is free. Playing PacMan brought back fond memories of feeding arcade machines quarters down by the beach. Nowadays… well, good luck even finding an arcade.
Game Verdict
All in all, this port isn’t THAT different from the original. If you want the PacMan experience without parting with your hard earned quarters, this is about as true to the arcade version as we’re ever going to get. It’s nothing spectacular, but it is certainly worth checking out.
- Playability: 9/10
- Graphics: 7/10
- Originality: 5/10
- Game Detail: 7/10
- Addictiveness: 9/10
- Final Score: 74%
