Tag Archives: Apple Arcade

PAC-Man Party Royale Review

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You already know that this isn’t the real Pac Man because he never runs from a fight. That said, it’s always cool to see the franchise getting new games even if this one is locked on the Apple Arcade for now. While I’ve got the free trial it seemed like a good idea to jump in though. I think the concept is cool but the control scheme doesn’t work amazingly on the phone. (Disclaimer that these games can all be played with a controller but I didn’t bother setting it up. If you’re on the Arcade then you should work well even on mobile right?

There isn’t a story here so mainly what you’re doing is playing through a bunch of stages to see just how skilled you are. There is also a heavy online component as well of course. The gameplay is mainly similar to the classic game but then it introduces a lot of new control gimmicks and objectives. For example in one style you have to stop the other Pac Men and the way to do that is to literally fire off energy blasts. Pretty cool right? Well the concept is cool even if it doesn’t feel like Pac Man. Other times you have to eat all of the ghosts instead of getting all of the pellets.

There is a decent amount of variety here but because of that I do think the fundamentals are not as strong as the original Pac Man. Let me explain. The first Pac Man is a fairly simple game through and through but one that has one of the most addicting gameplay styles of all time. This one is so busy trying to top it that it loses the plot. I think sticking to the original and adding some kind of basic plot would have worked so much better. In some ways I would say to think of this more like a Pac Man Party kind of approach. It has a lot of styles to it but none of them are super developed.

Getting to the control scheme, it’s also not very smooth. The game opts to ditch the typical motion stick used for titles like Sonic, TMNT, and Mega Man in place of having to swipe on the screen in order to move. The problem is that this takes longer to do of course and so it puts you in a rather difficult spot. So you end up dying more and further realize that this doesn’t work so well. There’s no excuse because I’ve seen games work well with tons of different gameplay styles. Me personally I tend to find that collecting and matching games end to work best on mobile with their consistency but there are also many great platformers and such on here.

So the game gets a bit of a thumbs down there. Ultimately there just isn’t a ton of content to keep you busy. The missions can last you for a little bit but there’s not a lot of incentive to actually playing through them. This is where even a short story could have helped out a lot. So the game is totally reliant on you knowing someone who also owns the game so you can play with friends and since a lot of people don’t own the Apple Arcade as it is, it’s not the greatest selling point imaginable.

The graphics are pretty good though. Nothing super top tier or anything like that but they hold their own. The soundtrack is also decent although not the most memorable. On a technical level the game certainly suffices and is ultimately just let down by a rather lackluster main gameplay style. Even if this was on console I don’t think it would have done all that well as the Championship Edition does all of this but in a far better way with more enticing rewards at the ready. This is sort of like a miniature version of that.

Now, the final question is should they keep the energy blasts or not? Me personally? I’d say to keep it in, it is a pretty interesting mechanic but maybe instead of that being the power for a whole level, let it be an attack you can use once per life. That will keep people from spamming it and also add a little more strategy into the equation. Yes, this sounds like a good idea to me.

Overall, Pac Man: Party Royale is a game that had a lot of potential but I feel like it’s not really at the level where it should be. I didn’t play this one for very long next to the other mobile titles as it got stale quickly. I think it’s fair to say that it might be the weakest of the Pac Man titles all around. Hopefully they give this another try at some point because I think the next great Pac Man game might just be around the corner! They just gotta put a little more oomph into the next one.

Overall 5/10

Sonic Dream Team Review

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When this game came out there were some massive waves among the gaming community. After all the game would be Apple exclusive and it’s crazy to see Sonic stuck on the mobile market since he’s usually on all of the big consoles. It’s a sign of how things are changing though and hopefully a port comes out at some point. In the meantime I figured this was the time to break out the 3 month free trial offer that Apple has. The game’s fairly short so it’s definitely beatable within that time.

The basic plot is that Eggman gets in a little over his head with a dream device but somehow puts up the ultimate comeback effort and takes over the dream world. I have to say that I was quite impressed with that since usually he would have lost. The guardian over the dream world is forced to ask Sonic and friends for help after they fell for Eggman’s trap and land inside the dream as well. Sonic and friends are always ready for a challenge and so they accept but will they really have what it takes to win this?

There are 4 worlds and each world has 3 levels and then a boss stage. Each level has 8 mini levels inside of them so that’s a fairly good amount. Beating each stage grants you an orb and you need orbs to unlock future levels. You will find that you need to clear most of the levels in order to reach the end but they tend to be bite sized so it’s not a huge undertaking. The first level is always the longest one and then they branch out from there.

The game steadily ramps up the difficulty level as the worlds go on though so you’ll notice yourself moving a bit slower after a while. The game has an infinite respawn mechanic so don’t worry about game overs or anything like that. The only kind of level you may have to restart are the time trials but otherwise you can die as often as you need to in order to understand and master the level. Once that has happened then you will be all set.

The boss battles are all handled pretty well. I appreciate that the game has unique bosses and they all fight differently. The final boss is the most different as you don’t actually fight him. It’s more of a chase scene type of level as you have to keep on running and dodging until you make it to the end. It’s definitely a very climactic way to end things off but it does come across as a little on the easy side. The rest of the bosses were all more difficult.

The graphics here are very good. This definitely looks like a full AAA Sonic game even though it’s for mobile and it shows just how far the market has gone over the years. Gone are the days where a mobile game looked like a last gen title. I also have to give a special shoutout to the soundtrack which is excellent. A lot of very catchy tunes here. They’re going for a very electronic vibe for just about the whole soundtrack and it works really well.

I’m also really glad that there’s a real story here. It would have been so easy for the game to have just skipped that and called it a day but that wasn’t the case here. The cutscenes may not have traditional movement but there are a lot of slides to get the feeling across. Also the opening is definitely very high budget. Hopefully the new character returns and I want them to keep on making more Sonic games with full stories like this. Sonic Dream Team keeps the light tone of the old games while having a full story like the Adventure titles which should keep both sides of the fanbase pretty happy. (Well most of them anyway)

The mobile controls do get a little tricky but of course I would say that’s not a big thing to be upset about since you can pair your PS4 controller to it. I didn’t bother in this case, I would have if this was a 50 hour RPG or something but I’m used to the phone pretty well as it is. I’ve been mobile gaming for several years at this point even if I’m still more of a console gamer overall. Now while I did enjoy the game, I do hope they really limit how many games are exclusive to Arcade because once this free trial is gone I doubt I’ll be able to get another.

For some closing notes, it’s nice how you can play as several different characters. It uses a system like Adventure 2 Battle where there are different classes and then each character in that class has the same abilities. So in this game that means there are 3 pairs: Sonic/Amy, Tails/Cream, and Rouge/Knuckles. Having 3 different gameplay styles is pretty fun and being able to change during a level is also cool. The game’s really trying out some interesting ideas here. I mainly stuck as Sonic when I was given a choice but there are many times you are forced to play as someone else so I recommend you to be as familiar with all of them as possible.

Overall, Sonic Dream Team is definitely a pretty good game. It’s not really as short as you would expect, I want to say that I put in around 4 hours so it’s about Sonic Forces level. There is some replay value as well although not a ton so I don’t want to trick you on that one. The levels are just big enough where getting all of the collectibles will likely take some work but also short enough where they are easy to replay and also just a lot of fun. I think that’s the biggest thing the game gets right, it’s just a lot of fun the whole time with colorful levels and high speed gameplay. Longtime Sonic fans will probably have fun 100% completing the game. Hey if you have Apple Arcade then you should absolutely play this game. I probably wouldn’t go out of my way to play it if I didn’t have the free trial but I’m sure it is the best game on the whole Arcade system so you don’t want to miss out on it.

Overall 7/10