Pac ‘n Roll (DS)

After Pac-Pix made use of Pac-Man’s iconic 2D shape for a DS game all about drawing him, Namco decided to quickly put out another Pac-Man game but with a different approach to playing as the pellet-muncher. The arcade game Pac-Mania featured Pac-Man in a ball-like form in a maze game title that attempted to look 3D, and with the DS actually able to have 3D models, returning to this shape for the character wasn’t a bad idea. Pac ‘n Roll doesn’t restrict the ball form of one of gaming’s biggest icons to mazes though, instead making a little adventure out of it that goes some rather odd places.

 

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of this unassuming DS game is that it attempts to create an origin story for the character nearly 25 years after his debut. Ghosts are a frequent problem in the land of Pac-Land, and as such, people train to properly combat them. The Pac-Master has taken young Pac-Man under his wing, and during training Pac-Man even meets the lady who would one day be his almost equally famous wife. However, before Pac-Man could become an official ghost muncher, four ghosts call upon a legendary ghost that had been banished to space to help spoil the harvest of the Power Pellets the Pac-people use to eat evil spirits. This legendary ghost is apparently a rock star inspired spirit named Golvis whose plan to beat the Pac-Master and crew is to turn them all into balls and suck them up into his guitar. Luckily, a fairy named Krystal helps Pac-Man avoid capture, but unfortunately not before his legs and arms have disappeared. Stuck in this strange form, Pac-Man must fight the ghostly menace as best he can and rescue his friends from Golvis’s grip. It’s not exactly bad or very interesting, but it is a strange attempt to add a new history to a character who has been around for ages, especially one that feels so inconsequential thanks to a weird main villain choice.

When you begin to play Pac ‘n Roll, you’ll find the controls take a little getting used to. Rolling Pac-Man around is easy, his ball form shown at all times on the bottom screen and swipes across it with your stylus causing him to roll in the appropriate direction on the top screen where the action is displayed. To do a burst of speed in a direction though requires you to move your stylus to the white edges of the area Pac-Man is displayed in and stopping, leaving your stylus on the border long enough for it to detect that you’re trying to do the burst. It’s reliable once you’ve got a feel for the timing the game expects of you, and at least it is a lot more reliable than the other little touch screen troubles. To brake involves holding Pac-Man in place in the middle of the screen, something that can be done in the air for a quick drop and thus can lead to the rare issue where a quick swipe instead registers as a brake drop. Braking can be a little slow to activate at other times too, but few places ask for perfect precision with it and you can usually put in at least some oomph behind stylus motions to avoid the accidental braking woes. Gaining enough speed to cross a gap can be a bit less reliable though. Trying to build up momentum can sometimes fail to give a good sense of speed, making it difficult to determine why you crossed the gap properly on one attempt and didn’t on another. For the most part, the moments where these problems could arise have safety nets or are optional, the main game keeping its demands reasonable for its control methods.

 

So, while the controls aren’t perfect, they are suitable for most of the gameplay. The thing is, many level designs seem hesitant to test it too much. Pac ‘n Roll is definitely designed to appeal to younger players, not often asking for much dexterity or quick action to achieve success. For the most part, Pac ‘n Roll levels involve areas delineated by Golvis Gates that require pellets to open, the idea being that as you travel you should try and make sure you roll through the dots that are placed around these 3D levels. Most areas have one simple challenge at their heart. A long slide is about making sure you move appropriately to grab the pellets on the way down and avoid the dangerous ghosts, the player needing to remove any attacking spirits by tapping them to remove them before they steal all your life. A set of bridges will have you have to tilt them one way to quickly dash forward and launch off the other end like a ramp. Even a few maze-like areas ask you to weave Pac-Man around barriers and ghosts to get the goodies he needs to open the next Golvis Gate. These challenges take place in worlds with some interesting theming after you get out of the generic starting areas. A theme park based around snacks, a cemetery where the ghosts are in abundance, and a fortress set atop a volcano provide some more interesting gimmicks than just physics and barriers. Having to hop between jump pads perfectly as they sink down into lava and finding hidden goodies in a room where ghosts can pop out of doors at any moment feel quite different in a game that otherwise relies mostly on guiding Pac-Man around level geometry properly.

There are some gimmicks that pop up even in the earlier levels, the edible chocolates opening up a few more possibilities. Knight Chocolate will put Pac-Man in a helmet that lets him smash through iron boxes and sink to the bottom of water at the cost of movement speed, and the Wing Chocolate will give him a flying cap that let’s him glide over gaps. Some areas reward you if you can carry these further than intended, others will use the Knight Chocolate as a trap to slow you down while the Wing Chocolate might betray you in windy areas, and then regular play integrates them as well by having underwater sections or sky high trips where the special maneuverability advantages can save your bacon. The two power-ups appear enough that their influence is definitely important, but it really doesn’t feel like the game starts to put up much of a fight until you’re near the end. That’s when the devious chocolate placement crops up most, where the proper movement of Pac-Man becomes vital to avoid death, and the level design stops giving you so much wiggle room for failure. Sadly, Flaming Fortress and the final boss fight are basically the only place where Pac ‘n Roll is really going to test your ability to handle this ball skillfully, simplicity and safety nets a bit too common in the regular game.

 

There is an attempt to add a challenging mode to Pac ‘n Roll. Most stages also feature a time attack and challenge version where the basic level design is tinkered with a bit. Time Attack becomes about moving through the level at high speeds with a bunch of new barriers but doesn’t really feel like it’s trying to get the most out of your movement save levels where that was already the case, and the Challenges, while adding twists to how you collect dots or approach hazards, are unlocked in a sporadic order and don’t offer the same depth of challenge that levels like those in the Flaming Fortress can have by being built initially to put up a fight. There are jewels to collect if you want to scour levels and the Pac-Moon area has a few bonuses like being able to play the original arcade Pac-Man, but a lot of the game is too tame. Even the boss fights can sometimes be breezed through. Golvis appears at different points in the adventure, the player needing three power pellets to damage him. These normally provide invincibility and let you eat the enemy ghosts in most stages, but here, you collect them and then hit the boss, the fights surprisingly straightforward until the same point where the game pumps up the general difficulty. Those harder and more diverse stage designs come a little too late, but at least Pac ‘n Roll started to realize its potential instead of being an entirely mediocre execution of its premise.

THE VERDICT: The roll controls in Pac ‘n Roll do their job decently enough, but the level design isn’t often up to the task of making them particularly exciting. Unique set pieces and gimmicks intersect with the play often enough that your adventure won’t be a bore, but the short and snappy levels really lack any major substance until you are getting near the end. The game does eventually whip out ideas and challenges that spice up the play, but it mostly relegates them to a tougher final stretch where the premise finally finds good footing. If the game had another two worlds or so to grow once it found its stride it could have been a fun little ball-rolling adventure, but instead it holds back when it should push it harder, meaning a bit too much of Pac-Man’s strange origin story lands in the middle of the road.

 

And so, I give Pac ‘n Roll for Nintendo DS…

An OKAY rating. Once the final levels start asking for precision in thin areas, intelligent use of ramps, and proper engagement with gimmicks, you really start to see where Pac ‘n Roll could have gone with its ideas. The length of the game means getting there isn’t fraught with much tedium, and areas like Ghost Land and Sweet Land have fun theming to make their sometimes plainer designs feel more interesting, but a lot of the time it does just feel like you’re rolling a ball to a goal that’s a bit too easy to reach. It’s easy to suggest how to improve Pac ‘n Roll because it starts showing you how it can be done nearer to the end, and if the early levels were just to ease you into a longer adventure, their accommodating design and straightforward set pieces could be easier to accept. Instead, they are sort of the bulk of the experience and their alterations in the other modes have to make do with their construction even as they attempt to add new challenging conditions to how you play them.

 

Pac ‘n Roll does fare better than Pac-Pix as its gameplay only has the rare mechanical stumble, and the worlds featured in this game are definitely a good fit for Pac-Man’s ball form, it just takes too long to really test your ability to handle this style of play, and once it has reached that point, you’ve nearly wrapped up the adventure. Pac ‘n Roll would get reimagined later in Namco Museum Remix and Namco Museum Megamix with features both removed and added so Namco did at least realize there was potential in adjusting the ideas featured here, but Pac ‘n Roll is certainly a game that suffers for its length. More content would have been a great boon to this little game, a batch of extra levels having the potential to take it from something mostly serviceable into a properly portioned gaming treat.