For Christmas I decided to go with a racing theme with the video games. From the 6 that I got, 4 of them were in this genre and I managed to get one from the three big video game icons. You’ll find out what the Sonic and Mario games were soon, but Pac Man was the first one that I completed so it made sense to do this one first. It’s pretty fun and you can tell how it was inspired from Mario Kart, but it lacks the latter’s sheer intensity.
There is no plot of course and the goal is to beat all of the tournaments and ultimately unlock all of the racers and items. There are 15 levels in the game and they are divided up into 4 cups. After completing each cup, you will unlock the ultimate cup, which features all 16 races back to back. I have to admit that those gauntlet styled cups have never been my cup of tea. Imagine losing on the 14th or 15th race and having to do it all over again. It’s a pretty scary thought, but it ultimately must be done if you want more characters. To get all characters, you’ll need to beat all of the cups on hard and getting all of the items means eating a certain amount of ghosts in each cup. That definitely helps the replay value aspect since locked content is always fun to unlock.
The actual gameplay is very similar to Mario Kart, but with its own wrinkles and twists. There are 8 racers and the gameplay speed is similar to Double Dash’s. Along the way you’ll see a lot of items and you can use them to blast the person in first with a Paratroopa Blue Ghost or throw some red shells red ghosts. The game didn’t really try all that much with the items since many of them are not subtle knockoffs of Mario Kart. Instead of lightning, we get a lightning cloud here since I suppose that this makes everything okay. The items are still good of course, but they just aren’t original.
Each level has a shortcut that is blocked by a food door. To get past it, you’ll have to find the fruit switch somewhere on the stage and drive through it to unlock the fruit. After that, you must find the actual fruit and then head through the shortcut on the next lap. Typically, the shortcut is well worth the effort as long as you are able to get the fruit while you are driving. You do the same thing with pellets. First, you activate the switches and then you collect as many as possible. Once you have enough you can use your final smash. I have only used Pac Man’s so far, but it’s definitely solid. You get a new theme to play over the stage music and then you drive a little faster as you eat any cars that get in your way. Eating cars is important to unlock items so you’ll want to eat as many as possible. Occasionally an angelic ghost will appear to give you some pellets, but I’m not sure exactly why it comes to help. It seems like there is some sort of meter that triggers this, but I cannot confirm such a notion just yet.
I think that the game could have done a little better with the stage designs. I liked the final cup the most as the Retro Maze was a good idea and we finally got a city level. The thing is..the first three cups are filled with landscapes that simply aren’t very interesting. A game like this should have a lot of bright levels like Mario Kart Double Dash so you can marvel at the graphics as you drive. The city level towards the end is one of the only ones that I can think of which fits this category. Most of the others are fairly bleak and you’ll forget about them very quickly. There may have been an island level or two, but it’s simply not the same.
The graphics certainly aren’t as good as the other racing games on the console (F Zero and Mario Kart) and it definitely doesn’t look like a whole lot of effort was put into this game. The graphics simply aren’t that good and I would compare them to the MnM game, which is pretty bad. The graphics actually did hurt the game a little as it would be more fun with better graphics. Graphics are never the most important factor in a game, but they certainly play a big part in sport titles.
The soundtrack is as forgettable as the stage designs. You’ll naturally remember Pac Man’s sound effects from the Arcade Game and they are included here, but the themes just vanish in the wind. I can’t think of a single theme and I’m sure that I wouldn’t be able too even if I had just finished playing it moments before this review. It’s like elevator music. It’s typically decent while you’re in the elevator, but you end up forgetting it immediately after.
Needless to say, this game loses out to Sonic and Sega’s All Star Racing as well as to the Mario Kart titles. Pac Man World Rally just lacked a few things that it would need to compete with those two like great stages and fun items. The game can still be pretty fun of course, but it’s not the kind of game that you will want to keep on playing for very long. It would just get tedious and the battle mode is really what saves it from the fate of the 6 star game. Duking it out while on cars has always been a novel concept and while this game may not pull it off as well as Mario Kart of Sonic Riders, it’s cool that it still has it as an option. Just be warned that the games can last a while since the stages are rather large.
Overall, Pac Man World Rally is definitely not the ultimate racing game, but it’s pretty fun to play. It’s on the Gamecube, which is great news for the game because it means that it can support 4 player action and that’s always exciting. This is the kind of game that greatly benefits from that option and there are also many battle modes to try out if you don’t want to race. The replay value is definitely enough to keep you playing long after you’ve beaten the 4 cups since those, admittedly do not take all that much time. I definitely recommend checking this game out and you’ll just need to try and get past Pac Man’s insanely high pitched voice when he celebrates. It’s simply not the Pac Man that we are used too.
Overall 7/10
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