Pac-Man World: Re-PAC (PS5)

Before I started The Game Hoard, I decided to give Pac-Man World on the PS1 a look to see if it was some 3D platforming classic I had missed out on, and I quickly lost interest in it. It wasn’t particularly awful, it just failed to grab me with its approach to level design and rougher elements like a bad camera and seemingly tedious requirements for full game completion. When I heard it was being remade in the form of Pac-Man World: Re-PAC though, my interest was ignited, the remake promising a chance to smooth things out and rework the action into something more effective. Pac-Man World: Re-PAC does make a host of changes, some like good camera angles on the action the kind of thing that should have been there from the start while boss reworks and a new small flutter jump trying to bring the difficulty down a tad. Pac-Man World: Re-PAC is now a rather stress-free and breezy experience, the kind that it was quite easy to keep returning to until I had done everything in the game.

 

One of the odder choices the remake makes is how its simple story is told though. Pac-Man is about to celebrate his birthday with his family, or at least people who appear to be his family but don’t look like the same characters he’s been living with for years. Ms. Pac-Man has been replaced with Pac-Mom, his son went from Jr. Pac-Man to Pac-Boy, and Baby Pac-Man is now Pac-Sis. While this alteration seemingly stems from Namco’s ongoing issues with the rights to Ms. Pac-Man, this second family for the familiar pellet-gobbling hero is kidnapped right before the party is meant to begin, all because the ghosts who usually hassle Pac-Man in his mazes mistook them for him. A giant robotic doppleganger called Toc-Man wants to be viewed as the real Pac-Man and is even organizing a party for the ghosts with the “real” Pac-Man as the headlining guest, but the true Pac-Man aims to crash that party and free his family who have been imprisoned around Ghost Island.

Despite nominally taking place on Ghost Island, the locations Pac-Man must explore to find his family can range wildly. An old-fashioned pirate port serves as the game’s first area and a set of ruins the second, but then world three is set in outer space with laser technology and forcefields blocking your path. While hardly cohesive, the world themes do at least lead to some interesting unique hazards, the circus area having platforming challenges across plenty of spinning and moving attractions for example, although you also see some idea reuse like the pirate cannons that can catch you in their crosshairs as they’re shooting targeting dummies becoming guns firing at carnival prizes in that circus area. Levels definitely feel better off embracing big ideas, stages in worlds like the Factory area blending together save for the rather non-linear swimming heavy level Under Pressure.

 

While sometimes a bit uninspired, level layouts usually keep you plenty active, especially thanks to the collectibles you can scoop-up. Each level has you collecting the letters in PACMAN as a side objective and there is usually a hidden maze where you can briefly play a something closer to the original arcade Pac-Man. These optional mazes give you three lives to clear out an entire maze of dots, there being a few unique designs per world and even special hazards like closing paths or bomb-dropping parrots depending on the maze you’re playing. These aren’t particularly difficult though, the Power Pellets in the corners turning the enemy ghosts patrolling these mazes blue so they can’t kill you for a time. The Power Pellets are close enough you can likely grab most of the dots without danger and then need to do a bit of clean-up briefly after, this diversion not exactly demanding but also a bit of a decent breather from platforming that ends up hard to resent.

 

During regular level exploration, Pac-Man packs a few different skills to help him out. A rev-roll lets you build up speed to either launch off a ramp or crash into an enemy to defeat them. The butt bounce instead sends you slamming down after a jump, letting you crush foes or even bound your way up to a higher platform or ignore slopes entirely if you get the rhythm down well in repeating the technique. It does involve pressing the same button as your jump to execute though, leading to occasional moments where you might slam down to your doom if you slip off a platform while setting up a leap. The mid-air flutter jump you can do feels like an attempt to address some platforming issues found in the game’s original version that don’t quite exist here, the game smartly putting invisible walls in places to prevent you walking off to your doom or getting curious and thinking there might be a secret path where there isn’t. There are technically a fair few secret paths, these usually leading to extra lives or the fairly valuable fruits. Fruits are used like keys to unlock doors found throughout the level, but their placement is handled in an unusual way. Usually you encounter a door that requires a certain fruit and then adventure forward some, uncovering the fruit you need through a small bit of extra platforming. Then, you head back, open the door, and usually find something optional but useful like a PACMAN letter, a hidden maze, or the means to explore another side area. What this does mean is many levels essentially want you to go through platforming challenges forward, back, and forward again, and while they’re small and not too difficult, it does the game no favors to have you retread the same spots for small rewards.

Many of the platforming trials are decent when you’re going through them the first time at least and can be rushed through after, and there are sometimes Pac-Man can get a power-up for a brief different style of play. Grabbing a Power Pellet outside the mazes lets you go on a little rampage which is mostly for fun and wiping out otherwise impervious ghost enemies, but the Metal Dot is a more useful item when found. Pac-Man will be encased in steel when you munch that Metal Dot, making him impervious to damage for a while, giving him the power to damage metallic foes, and letting him walk and use his jumping powers underwater. The Metal Dot isn’t overplayed, often appearing to add some substance to a watery area’s exploration but at others it is instead a way to get around some otherwise pesky hazards like steam-spewing pipes. Pac-Man World: Re-PAC does kind of settle on the Metal Dot being its one major shift to the regular platforming within the levels themselves, but the game’s bosses do try to get a bit more creative.

 

Pac-Man World: Re-PAC’s bosses take on many different forms and even ask you to fight them all differently. The giant Anubis Rex statue is about finding openings to use your rev-roll to spin fan platforms, one boss fight asks you to shoot down aliens in space, and another actually takes on the form of a first-person race against some clowns. Even when the game leans more into its typical gameplay, the fights all feel like they ask for something different in terms of your participation, it actually rather exciting to see what awaits you at a world’s end because it can be such a break from the usual tried and true platforming seen elsewhere. Few regular stages break the mold, meaning Pac-Man World: Re-PAC can get a little tired near the end as there aren’t too many big level gimmicks setting levels apart, and every stage caps off with a slot machine roll for extra lives in a game teeming with them already. If you get the PACMAN letters you also play a bonus game for goodies that isn’t too difficult to clear most of the time, but much like the backtracking, these segments don’t last long enough to really weaken your estimation of the game. They just feel like they exist in place of providing more worthwhile ground to cover.

THE VERDICT: Pac-Man World: Re-PAC is a well done remake as it irons out some of the blander and more frustrating parts from the original game, but its changes can’t quite elevate the game away from mediocrity. Its levels still are defined mostly by going back and forth to open fruit doors and diversions like the mazes don’t quite pack a strong punch either. The game is short and it is easy to speed through the little retreads at least, and some area gimmicks and bosses do feel inspired enough that you’ll at least want to stick with this quick platforming adventure to see what’s up next.

 

And so, I give Pac-Man World: Re-PAC for PlayStation 5…

An OKAY rating. Pac-Man World: Re-PAC tidies up the original game but doesn’t want to completely reinvent it, and that’s not a bad approach to a remake. The experience is refined enough and contains some clean and colorful graphics that don’t really show the limits that sometimes caused the 1999 original to trip up, but it does need to carry the original ideas for things like level designs into the modern age for it to be a faithful remake. The decision to have little platforming challenges to unlock fruit doors wasn’t a bad one, but making the door come before the area containing the fruit feels like things got implemented backwards. If things at least maybe split off more cleanly it could have been fine as well, a branching path or secret area that then brings you back to the door before continuing down the main road would make things cleaner. It’s not that interesting to see the door first either, you know the fruit will have to be nearby up ahead since there are points of no return in levels so it’s not like it makes you search any deeper than you would be otherwise, and usually going over an area more than once isn’t introducing any new dangers. Pac-Man World: Re-PAC keeping the retreads condensed in scope means you at least won’t grow weary of doing it if you are shooting for all the collectibles, but perhaps a greater increase in difficulty was what really was needed. It might have been avoided because of the common backtracking element, but there are levels like Under Pressure where you start thinking more about your actions and more platforming challenges with tight requirements could spice things up.

 

Pac-Man World: Re-PAC is mostly about providing gentle platforming and a good clean time, a few bosses or hazards sometimes injecting a little danger so it doesn’t end up too tame. Rather than feeling hard to commit to like the original though, its mediocrity instead makes it a bit hard to recommend over more effective members of its genre. Its Pac-Man mazes don’t really put up a big fight and powers like the butt bounce don’t reshape the world into interesting trials, but it does well enough with simple world themes that it’s hard to hate your time with it.