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Pac Man and The Ghostly Adventures Review

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PAC Man is a legendary icon and one of the most recognized characters in all of media. It’s no exaggeration to say that more people know about him than heavy weights like Luke Benson or even the great Parappa The Rapper. Surprisingly he hasn’t had dozens of games to exploit this fact and at one point he went for such a long time without a game that it felt like the franchise was cancelled. This led to this game, a reboot in which PAC Man the Family Man was transformed into PAC Teen, a revel who breaks the rules and can’t control his urges for food. Would it be a success?

The plot is pretty light as the game prefers to let its gameplay do the talking. An evil ghost from the Netherworld named Betrayus has kidnapped PAC Man’s two friends and also threatens the entire world with a new weapon that he had developed. Our young hero decides to stop him but he will have fun along the way because he never recognizes Betrayus as a legitimate threat. Honestly that is probably pretty humiliating for the guy and I’m tempted to feel bad for him. That’s the plot in a nutshell and trust me when I say that the game never wants you to take it seriously either. It’s pretty much all played for laughs.

Fortunately the gameplay actually is pretty smooth. Each stage will typically have an assortment of objects to jump or walk around as you progress. You can eat ghosts or even cause objects to open so you can eat the power pellets that come from them. Along the way you will obtain various Super forms like fire and ice which each have their own special ability. Defeating the ghosts is easy no matter what form you use so I recommend making the most of them since most of the forms come with Silver trophies for eating 100 ghosts. You will get the hang of the controls pretty quickly since they are fairly limited while the levels vary in design and difficulty, the basics carry over. It is funny how some skills don’t pop up until near the very end of the game but I suppose it had to end at some point so it’s nice that they gave us more powers.

The game’s length is reasonable although definitely erring on the short side. You’ll have it beat in a matter of hours. Part of why it is so fast is because it is so easy. You likely won’t lose many lives during the game unless you get hit by glitches or try to rush a little too much. The bosses are easy and even a novice to the platforming genre should pick up on what to do before the levels get difficult. There is some replay value in the game though like obtaining all of the trophies. This will require you to complete the game twice which automatically doubles the play time. The rest of the trophies will take some time as well like clearing all of the arcade games you unlocked but they aren’t too difficult either. It’s a very achievable Platinum and one that I would recommend going for in consideration of that.

Graphically the game holds up quite nicely. The colors are vibrant and the level designs are solid. PAC Man’s design will certainly cause you to take a step back though as you wonder what the animators were thinking. His eyes are always half closed as he gives a nervous smile. Everyone else has a decent design so PAC sticks out. The rest of him is good though so it’s a relatively minor detail. There isn’t a wide variety for the music but the main theme is always fun and certainly holds up well. It’s fast paced and is a good remix of the classic theme. You definitely won’t be bored as you play through the game with the fun levels to look at and listen to.

Now the game does have some issues. Uninspired plot aside, the game can be rather glitchy. You will suddenly be stuck and unable to move at some points and you will fall through objects as you plummet to your doom. I’ve certainly seen and played glitchier games but considering that this is for the PS3 it is definitely noticeable enough to mention. It was the cause of a few deaths for me and the moral is always to slow down a little to let the game catch up to you.

Now, was PAC Man himself as bad as they say? Well, the burping gimmick does get old very quickly. He burps at the end of every single levels. Sometimes he is proud of it and other times he does seem to regret his actions. He does this in the show as well, but with no remorse and burps several times each episode. That’s his worst quality but beyond that we don’t see his other negative traits from the show so he comes off as at least a decent main character. At the end of the day he just wants to eat a lot and save the day along the way. He may not be as heroic or selfless as the original PAC Man but as far as edgy redesigns go it wasn’t half bad.

Overall, PAC Man and the Ghostly Adventures is a fun title. The plot may not be particularly good, but the gameplay is surprisingly solid and that makes quite the difference. PAC Man can move really fast which makes the platforming fun and the game did a good job with his powers. You always feel very powerful against the ghosts which should always be the case when you’re playing a PAC Man game. The soundtrack and graphics are good so that makes for a very complete package. The cover and the idea of a reboot for PAC man may put you off the title but you’d be missing out on what is actually a really good game. I’m definitely hyped for the sequel since I’ve heard it’s even better and can be compared to the legendary Super Mario Galaxy 2.

Overall 7/10

Pac-Man and The Ghostly Adventures Review

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It’s been a little over 2 years since I started this show. While the three holiday episodes have not aired yet, the show is essentially over so it’s time for this review to illuminate us all on how well Pac Man did. Was it a good show or did it fall to the immense amounts of crude humor and dicey moments? Well, it’s not the Pac Man show that we wanted, but perhaps it is the one that we deserved!

This show took the Pac Man mythos in a completely new direction. The old Pac Man was responsible, tough, had a strong moral compass, did what had to be done, and he was essentially the ultimate leader. He was a nice guy, but he could fight when pushed and he saved the world on several occasions. The new Pac Man is essentially the opposite in many ways and he’s such an obvious laugh in the face of the original that you can’t help but laugh. Depending on how much you like the original Pac Man, you will either enjoy this interpretation or you will just cringe.

Let’s quickly look at the plot. It’s been ages since the ghosts have been seen and nobody even believes in them anymore. That’s a shame right? Pac Man is also the only member of his species who is still alive. His parents mysteriously disappeared a very long time ago. One day, the ghosts attack once again and Pac Man is charged with protecting the planet from them. He can eat them with ease and Pac Man can even eat some berries to give him super powers so that he can defeat the ghosts by the dozens. His two friends, Cyli and Spiral also help him out in this battle against the evil Betrayus.

The show actually managed to crack 50+ episodes, which is most impressive. I’m pretty sure that the old show never made it that far. It’s too bad though since the old Pac Man show was a lot of fun and I even looked up some of the episodes on Youtube a while back. Each one was only 10 minutes similar to Arthur so they’re very accessible and you’ll see Pac Man as he was meant to be seen. If you’re a true Pac fan, that’s where you’ll want to be.

Back to this show, let’s start off with the technical aspects. The soundtrack is actually quite good and many of the tunes are memorable. You’ll actually remember them as you finish the show and they can actually get quite epic as there is even an opera theme at one moment. That’s definitely a good way to reel in the action fans right? Even the theme song is epic as the narrator says “The Pac is back!” He says it with a very dead voice, but that may be part of the point so I suppose that it can be excused.

As for the animation, Pac Man is unfortunately in CGI. This is a sad trend that has been going on for quite a while, particularly with American shows. Japan has also gotten into it, but not quite as much. It’s just sad because the old Pac Man show looks about as good as this one even though it’s so much older. That being said, the CGI is good as far as CG goes. One thing that you will notice is how Pac Man’s eyes are always half closed. It’s an odd quirk and one that is likely not intended to be there, but the CG just made it so. We do get some neat fight scenes, but they are naturally comedy action scenes that don’t take themselves seriously. If they did…I’m not sure if the animation could keep up. CG has a ton of limits, but still, the show does not look bad at all. It’s still clear and modern.

All right, let’s talk about the characters. Pac Man is essentially your average main character who fights to save the world. The main difference is that unlike other heroes, Pac Man literally cannot control his hunger. If there is food around, he’s going to eat it. This applies to events as well and he even eats all of the food at the President’s party, spoiling the event for everyone. Fans of the Pac won’t like how he can be pretty selfish with this and he’s never apologetic in the slightest. He gets scared by the bully of the school as well. He’s also the kind of guy who will get a crush on someone after seeing her for about a minute and he still can’t stop himself from burping after every bite. Yes, whenever he swallows a ghost, he has to burp afterwards. He does this in literally every episode of the series. I like Pac’s charismatic character to an extent…he means well anyway. I do think that the burping can be a little much though.
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Spiral is one of Pac’s best friends and he’s always around to help out. His character basically is that he’s Pac’s friend as it doesn’t really go further than that. He doesn’t really have a gimmick. He seems to be the “cool” character of the group as he always says “bro” at the end of his sentences and fights off the ghosts with his cannon. I’d say that he’s a good character. Likewise, Cyli helps to keep Pac Man in check and she has more of a school presence than the other two. She nearly became class president, but ultimately decided not to do so. Her trendy parents embarrass her at times, but she mostly doesn’t have to worry about that as they only appear once or twice during the whole series.

Pac Man also has a few other supporting characters who help out. His aunt used to be a hardcore army fighter back in the wars and she reminds the heroes of this any chance that she gets. You could say that she’s the hype character of the show. Pac’s aunt is a good character although she doesn’t have all that much personality when you get past the hype. The President is on good terms with Pac Man and they have a very casual relationship similar to how the main character of Pixels could walk into the White House in shorts. The President gives Pac Man various missions ranging from being someone’s friend to saving the town. That being said, the President has a lot of dark secrets like crying as a kid or being allergic to peas, which makes him an easy target for black mail.

We can’t forget Sir Cumference, who can’t always hear very well, but he has a lot of technology at his disposal. He comes to the rescue more than once and he’s certainly one of the most dependable characters in the show. Another major character is Skeebo. He’s the bully who tries to be a relatable character once in a while, but always reverts back to his old ways. He only picks on people who are weaker than him and he loves to give Pac Man a tough time by calling him “Lemon Loser” and a lot of other lemon related names. Pac Man is pretty round so it makes the name calling easy for Skeebo. He was a pretty fun character and typically gave the show its best humor. Skeebo even turned into a superhero once, which was pretty neat! He may be a mean guy, but in the end, the heroes can count on him to help.

As for the villains, Betrayus is naturally the main one. He appears in every episode and is always thwarted by Pac Man. Typically, this happens in a very embarrassing way. Any toughness that he had at the start is quickly taken away as he is forced to team up with Pac Man several times and run away in others. At least he can fight though as Betrayus can shoot blasts of fire. That automatically makes him one of the toughest characters in the series since most of the other ghosts can just stand around and get eaten. The 4 ghosts from the classic Pac Man show are always around of course, but they have no real powers. Blinky’s the classic leader of the ghosts, but surprisingly that is rarely ever stated if at all. He’s just another guy in the gang like Inky. Pinky has the biggest role as she is always going after Pac, who denies her advances by running away. Clyde is the not very smart member of the group who speaks in a very slow and hollow voice to push that point across. He’s probably the best member of the group as he brings in the puns. Buttler and Dr. Buttocks were two recurring characters who worked for Betrayus and as you can tell from their names, they were typically the but of the jokes in the netherworld. Betrayus would have fun beating both of them up in most of the episodes.

Aside from the ghosts, we also have the aliens. They seem to know what happened to Pac’s family and may be holding them hostage although it’s hinted that they escaped. They have a warrior known as the Pacinator, who even gave Pac Man a good fight by forcing him to eat Ice Cream. That guy doesn’t mess around and that episode was the best one in the series. How can you top something that Epic!? The plot had returned and that didn’t happen too often. There were also one shot villains like the Easter Bunny who were typically fun to see.

The main thing that held the series back was how much crude humor it had. Literally every episode had multiple moments of this and it never let up for an instant. Seriously, you could expect slime jokes, burps, farts, and all kinds of gross moments in every single episode. It could definitely get quite excessive and there were some especially dicey episodes like the pimple one on picture day and one episode where Pac Man became a planet. I can’t even begin to describe how sad those episodes could be. If every episode was like that, this show would have gotten a 1 or a 2.

Luckily, there were still a decent amount of good episodes. After a while, you’ll barely even notice Pac’s burps as he eats the ghosts. It’s just too bad that the plot wasn’t around very often as 40+ of the episodes were spent on filler as Pac dealt with the ghosts. That’s not too bad depending on how you look at it, but I’m confident that the show would have been better if the plot had been pushed into the forefront a little more. Random episodes of crude humor can only get you so far after all.

Also, since this is really a complete comedy with some action, none of the characters ever stay serious for long. Even if there is an alien invasion, we’ll quickly get at least 3-5 comic relief scenes to compensate. There’s never a sense of danger or anything, but that’s the point. The problem is that the humor just isn’t good enough to make each joke good. The comic relief ones are simply recycled for the whole series instead of thinking of new ones. The characters are entertaining for the most part and we get some fun shenanigans like the campfire stories or the episode with the transfer student (That was an “emotional” one….) but I can’t forget the bad episodes. The reason why the score is still decent is that it’s typically a fun show despite its flaws.

At the very least, it is always a pretty happy cartoon so it makes for a good watch when you just want to see something light and fun. The episodes will shoot past you very quickly. It’s highly unlikely that the series will continue, but if it does, the next season would likely have a lot of promise and could bring the show up as the plot could mean more action and tension await us….or maybe not. Still, it’s fun to think about!
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Overall, The Pac Man show definitely a bit of a miss. I’d say that it only barely broke even and that’s mainly due to the fact that it is a Pac Man show. Since I know the character, it’s hilarious to see how they’ve warped him. It’s like the Ultimate Spider Man show, but much more extreme. To an extent, that’s the only way you can expect to really enjoy the show a lot. If you like seeing your favorite characters look bad, you’re going to be in for some seriously hilarious moments! I aim to play the games based off of this show at some point, but it could be a little while until I pull that off. I really can’t recommend this show unless you either like crude humor or just don’t mind it. If you have to see the show for Pac Man honor, then you can at least be glad to know that there are some fight scenes once in a while. They’re around…just not too frequently! Well, I guess we can wait for the next Pac Man show now!

Overall 5/10