Originally shown off as a tech demo of what Namco could do with the DS, Pac-Pix eventually turned in to a full-fledged game. Apparently everyone went ga-ga over it at E3 and small dollar (yen?) signs flashed in Namco's eyes and over their heads. Because hey, who cannot resist a game that is essentially a gimmick? Albeit a pretty ingenious one. Drawing Pac-Man, arrows, and bombs to take out ghosts is pretty fun. The problem with Pac-Pix is that the game is incredibly short, with not enough extras to make the game worthwhile.
Pac-Pix's story is about an evil wizard who found out a way to draw ghosts inside books using this magic ink. Soon, ghosts were terrorizing every book, so Pac-Man jumped in to save the day with his magical pen. With this magical, mystical pen, you can draw Pac-Man on the books, so he can gobble up all the ghosts and save the day. Drawing Pac-Man at first is pretty challenging. You can only draw him going in the clockwise direction, and it seems that he can either to two things: a perfect Pac-Man or a random squiggle. I was once doodling around, making a figure eight, and Pac-Man just sprung to life. I was quite confused. I have also drawn many Pac-Mans shaped like tear drops and a shark (water slicing fin and all.) There are also a few odd times when my Pac-Man starts going down when it was drawn to go right…these are very big annoyances that almost ruin the game. Since the entire game is based on drawing, this makes be a bit perturbed, to say the least. If you are given only a limited supply of Pac-Mans, and then one of them just randomly goes off in an unexpected direction, this could spell Game Over for you. Those Game Overs come very frequently to you at first. While first looking at it, Pac-Pix looks like it is a simple, pick-up-and-play type of game. Well, it dispels the common rumor that short games are like that. Once you get a Game Over, you need to restart the chapter, and drudge through all the pages again. No continues here, because they're for babies.
There are two books in Pac-Pix, each with 12 chapters, each chapter having 6 different pages. To beat a page, you need to eat all ghosts in a certain time limit with a limited amount of Pac-Mans. After every page, you are given a score, and the score is totaled up after the chapter is cleared to give you a ranking. Depending on what ranking you receive, you may get a card. These cards are useless, as they only explain the items that you see in the game, and most of those items are explained in the game's manual. So, the only reason to try and play through each chapter again is rendered useless. It is too bad, because the way that you score points in Pac-Pix is pretty unique. With the first ghost that you devour, only a few points are given. But the more ghosts you eat, the more points you are given for them, until you get 7500 points for one ghost. However, if that Pac-Man who ate those ghosts falls off the page, the new Pac-Man you draw gets only a few points. The game rewards you with keeping your Pac-Man alive, how many Pac-Men you have when you beat a page, and how fast you completed the page. Occasionally, some fruit or a small Pac-Man may appear in the page, and if you eat them, you are handsomely rewarded. There are over 100 levels in Pac-Pix, and that should definitely take a person a while to finish, even longer if they want ever chapter to have an S ranking. Doing one page perfectly is hard enough, but trying to six in a row perfectly? That takes skill, and that is the only way to get an S.
Graphically, Pac-Pix looks very nice. The game has it's own unique style that you create, because you draw everything that is on the screen. The ghosts in the game are like cute anime versions of their classic 1980s counterparts, and with the inclusion of a few new ghosts is nice. The only problem with the look of the game is that everything you draw is just an outline, and it does not fit very well with the looks of the full-bodied ghosts. Well, I guess if you eat all of the ghosts, there ends up being only things that are outlines, so nothing clashes anymore.
The melodic rhythms of Pac-Pix harkens back to a day when 15 second diddys was all they could do…and that day sucked. So why are we forced to hear the same thing over and over again? The wakka-wakka-wakka (Fozzie Bear excluded) sound is twenty five year old now, and how about actually making up some new music? Sure, the opening from the original Pac-Man is nice to hear after being away from it for so long, but come on, you can do better than that now.
You may have noticed, but I am being pretty harsh in my review. I'm mostly only focusing on the negative aspects of Pac-Pix, because they are so glaringly obvious. But yet there is something about Pac-Pix that just…draws me in to keep playing it, no matter how many glaring flaws I see in it. I must continue to draw arrows over and over again so I hit a mirror at just the right angle to turn on a switch. I must continue to blow up boxes filled with ghosts. I must continue to draw little Pac-Mans to eat the ghosts…the game is addictive.
Yet, no matter how much I love my Pac-Crack, I know that there are many problems with the game, that need to be fixed. If they made it possible to start after you die on that same page. If they could make it possible to draw Pac-Man in the counter-clockwise direction. If, if, if. Too Many of them, and it makes me sad.
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