Ms PAC-MAN Review

Ms PAC-MAN
iPhone/iPad
Get it from the App Store
$4.99

Ms PAC-MAN is an arcade classic follow up to Pac-man.  This version is from NAMCO BANDAI, and coming straight to your iPhone.

Honestly, you should need to hear anymore about Pac-man.  If you somehow have no idea what it is, check out the Wikipedia here or the Giantbomb page here.  Safe to say that the original was highly influential and popular.  That the game recieves iPhone treatment actually makes a lot of sense.  The gameplay is generally solid, and requires few buttons.  Its a simple classic, and the gameplay lends itself to short sessions.  In addition to all this, Ms PAC-MAN is the first game to include integration with Apple's Game Center service.  Game Center tracks achievements across games and is poised to be a single clearing house similar to Xbox Live.

With all this going for it, you would think the $4.99 would be well spent.  You would be wrong.  This is an absolutely terrible version of Pac-Man with almost no redeeming features.  First of all, the game is just plain unfinished.  The Game Center achievements show up as "ACHIE_TXT ID 16" of "ACHIE_TXT ID 8" and so on. Sure, they work, and the Game Center descriptions are accurate, but should we really be putting up with games that have placeholder text?  If you change an option on the pre-game menu, the START GAME BUTTON DISAPPEARS!!!  Seriously!!!  You have to select your option, then back out to the title screen, then go straight through and start the game without making any changes.  While this doesn't make the game unplayable, it just smacks of laziness at best, or blatant laughing in the consumer's face at best.  Its like someone at NAMCO BANDAI sat down and said "Well, we are the first with Game Center integration, let's just through some junk out there for $5 and people will buy it just to try out Game Center."  (Fortunately, there are only 3,599 Game Center users with Ms PAC-MAN, while over 350,000 have downloaded Flight Control, showing that there is justice in this world.)

Those issues aside, the game isn't even a good port.  There is some lag with the controls, and the game hitches at odd moments.  On one hand, I thought the game paused when you ate bonus fruit while a sound effect played for dramatic effect, but this game either just hitches, or the sound effect never got put in.  Either way its jarring and a poor implementation.

The controls, while laggy, are the lone bright spot in this game.  There are a few types to choose from.  The first is the virtual arcade stick, which you swipe to use.  The stick is interestingly drawn, and since it is the only on-screen button, it doesn't suffer as badly as games such as FPS games that force on-screen buttons.  The second method is the "swipe" method, where you simply swipe anywhere on the screen.  This is a great idea.  You are making the same motion as with the virtual control, but you can do it anywhere on the screen you feel comfortable.  Most of the time you find yourself using the bottom, except you don't have to worry about missing.  Also, there is still an on-screen stick that represents the last direction swiped.  The third control scheme uses the accelerometer, and is completely unplayable.  A total waste, but fortunately the other schemes are useable.

As mentioned before, this game does have Game Center support.   You can compare high scores with friends and across all users, which is sort of fun.  There are also 25 achievements, ranging from simple to impossible.  For the most part, they strike a nice balance.  Some you will get easily, some are difficult.  Some require you to try new strategies or different game play styles.  Some, however, are impossible.  The reach stage 256 one comes to mind.  Between the controls and the game's increasing difficulty, I doubt many will ever reach it.

Ms PAC-MAN (by the way, that is the engrish official app name) is a terrible, terrible game, and the $5 price point makes it even less worthwhile.  The lone bright spot is the unique control schemes that actually work, as well as the Game Center support.  Nonetheless, unless you are a hardcore Pac-Man fan, or want to take full advantage of Game Center, I cannot recommend this game.