Topic: IMPRESSIONS: Pac-Man Fever

[TheYoungerPlumber]

Namco’s trying its luck with the Party game genre with Pac-Man Fever, and TYP has the goods.

Nintendo and Hudson’s Mario Party is the standard, but Namco hopes to bring something new to the genre with Pac-Man Fever.  Featuring Pac-Man and other popular Namco characters, players traverse a game board in hopes to be first across the finish line.  The spaces range from free tokens (money) to shops to one-on-one battles, which give the boards some purpose, but they’re nowhere near as interactive as those in Mario Party 4.  Boards are primarily a way to keep score, as movement is dependant on a player’s performance on the previous mini-game, which is at the start of a turn.  This prevents players from suffering cruel fates based on bad luck…something I don’t like about Mario Party.  Overall, I liked the general game layout.    

But the mini-games are the bulk of any party game, and Namco seems to be aware of this.  The mini-games I played in Pac-Man Fever are hardly revolutionary or terribly inspired, but the games are varied and fairly well implemented.  Each board has its own set of mini-games centered around the board’s main theme, a feature I appreciated.  I did find the analog control to be a little on the sensitive side in the mini-games, as making your character/icon move a short distance was difficult, but games were still playable.  Some of my favorites are the Arcade-style shooting game and the kart game, where players collect fruit while avoiding obstacles.  Namco does need to work on the visuals: textures are blurry and models are simplistic—the game looks last-generation right now.  I couldn’t hear any sound during my time with the game.