Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures Review
THE PROLOGUE:
For some reason, of all the things, I decided to get really into Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures as a kid. To be fair, it helps that there was no other Pac-Man things going on at that time, no games like the Pac-Man World series, and the Championship Edition series didn't have any physical releases, so I couldn't find them in the store and ask for them for Christmas. So, this is what I got, and for some reason, among all of the games that I got as a kid that I could never beat, I beat this game and the sequel that released the next year. What great uses of my 'one video game per Christmas', only to be beaten by Sonic Forces in a few years... kid me had such good taste. Despite this game being one that I had for a long time, it didn't stick too much with me, for reasons that we will surely be going over soon.
It's worth noting that this game was attached to this 'Ghostly Adventures' era of Pac-Man, including a character redesign and a TV series that ran for two seasons (which I watched on Netflix as a kid). I enjoyed my time with the series decently well at the time - and it was one of the first TV shows I'd seen that had a storyline that over-arched the entire series. I thought this was really cool at the time, but in hindsight it was a very bare bones implementation of this kind of thing - I just wasn't allowed to watch Gravity Falls or Adventure Time as a kid so it felt kind of cool to me. I rewatched the first episode of the show after I played this game, and yeah, it doesn't hold up. The animation quality is alright, but the world looks so bland, the voice acting is questionable, and the entire thing feels cheap and stilted. Theme song isn't great either.
THE GAMEPLAY:
Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures | Bandai Namco
Now, after two paragraphs, maybe I'll finally talk about the videogame that I played. This is a pretty by-the-numbers 3D platformer for the era, although with a surprisingly small amount of actual platforming that happens in it. Platforming challenges tend to be very simplistic, and the game relies heavily on enemy encounters with ghosts (funny this whole rebrand is about ghosts when the ghosts in the original Pac-Man were only ever called 'Monsters'). There's a little bit of variety with these, different colors have different attack patterns, and there's some bigger ghosts that you'll need to approach slightly differently, but for the most part they all go down in one hit and their attacks are easily avoidable. Pac-Man's basic chomp ability here actually works similarly to Sonic's homing attack, homing in on any nearby enemies, and is even occasionally used to fly across a gap of static ghosts. Across the board the controls are solid - but not outstanding. Nothing sticks out but there's a few instances where something doesn't feel well considered, like the sizing of platforms between gaps. What I'm trying to say here is that you aren't going to be getting a Nintendo quality platformer here, the stages are mostly straight lines with optional enemies littering the whole thing, and a few gimmicks to interact with.
Chameleon Pac from Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures | Bandai Namco
The main gimmick in question here is the 'Power Pellet' - repurposed into a variety of Mario-esque power-ups throughout the game. You've got your generic fire and ice powers that behave as expected, alongside some more interesting ones. The chameleon power is cool in concept, but you're expected to use its tongue to grab onto grapple points which is super janky, and it isn't clear where and when you lock onto them (a sonic-style homing attack reticle here would have done wonders). A large number of my deaths throughout the game were at the hands of bottomless pits and this power-up. For some reason, there are also a handful of places in this game where you fall into a pit of lava where you can't get out from the knockback, which leads you to just take damage 3-6 times and then finally die. Just... make it a bottomless pit if it's inescapable. There's also the Granite Pac power which turns you into a big rolling rock. It's hard to control but not unmanageable, and they do a couple of fun things with it throughout the game that they don't with the Chameleon power for example. We also have Metal Pac which allows you to magnetize to metal blocks in these side-scrolling segments that are super clunky because every time you touch a metal block you stop in place for a second - makes jumping in this platformer pretty annoying. There's also a spinning top power up that they make decent use of, and one where Pac-Man inflates like a balloon and you have to slowly drift around floating fans in certain stages. This one's slow and annoying, but really easy once you get the hang of it. Ah- almost forgot there's also one where he turns into a rubber ball - which allows him to wall jump for some reason? Strange but inoffensive.
The game is divided into 6 worlds (where 2 of them are reskins of previous worlds) and each world only contains around 5-7 stages. Strangely there are bosses, but they seem to appear in stages at random points rather than at the end of each world. They're inoffensive and pretty easy, like the whole game, but there's some fun designs in here and a fight where you have to fend off one of Pac-Man's friends possessed. Different worlds feature different power-ups, and I'd say the variety there is pretty good - holding off some new power-ups until towards the end and reintroducing old ones in new worlds.
Chef Boss Fight from Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures | Bandai Namco
There's also 4 unlockable minigames, which are a nice bonus, but aside from the zucchini one they are actually insufferable to play - just clunky, not fun, and very cheap feeling. Unfortunately beating them is required for the achievements, but I would absolutely never touch these again.
ART & SOUND:
Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures | Bandai Namco
Stylistically, the game is a mixed bag. The characters and environments look nearly exactly like the show that this game is based on. Character animation is pretty solid across the board as well - at least when compared to the show. There's some ways in which these characters designs look strange and animate stranger - but it's the same in the show so fair game. I will say the animation is expressive and has a decent amount of character across the board. Unfortunately, because it's based on a show with a bland world, the world here is also very bland and without context. Environments are generic - though again reflective of the show well. It's just not a strong art direction in my opinion even if the graphics are very technically impressive compared to some other games I have seen from this generation of consoles. The UI here feels a bit stilted as well - with some clunky menus and questionable design choices (why did they have to have Freaky Pac-Man as the default HUD icon????).
From a sound perspective, to my ears it seems like the game reuses a lot of tunes from the show, including good use of a central lietmotif and usage of iconic Pac-Man jingles. Something I really enjoyed about this game's sound design is the incorporation of the OG Pac-Man's sound effects (like the chomp) into the modern sounds without entirely reusing the old sound. It's retro-inspired, but in a way that sounds modern still. The soundtrack isn't there mostly though, it's pretty generic unfortunately.
Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures | Bandai Namco
Almost forgot this game had a story lol it's mid. Something about a ray of doom something something. It feels like a bog standard episode of the TV show. I always feel like when a TV show gets adapted to a game the story therein should be higher stakes than an average episode of the show (a-la Battle for Bikini Bottom) but this game does not do that. The cutscenes are average at best - with poor performances from some of the VA dupes and decent animations for the characters, but Pac certainly looks better in gameplay.
OUTRO:
I think I've mostly covered my bases here - it's a perfectly inoffensive game that does a few things well, a few things poorly, and a TON of things un-noteworthy. Having recently played the remake of Pac-Man World, I can say that the difference is night and day, even though that game definitely has its own problems. It's a nearly totally different set of problems - ironically enough, which is pretty funny.
If you want to play this game it's tricky to get your hands on. It's been delisted from Steam, Xbox, and, Playstation and it's not backwards compatible on the Xbox One/Series consoles, meaning your only options here are piracy or a physical copy, which are pretty cheap since nobody wants to play this game. I'm of the opinion that all games deserve to be remembered and preserved, but I can't lie and say that this game isn't prioritized at the bottom of that list for me - I'm only here since I had this game as a kid. The Pac is NOT back with this one boys.