Pac-Man World - Namco - £29.99 - Out Now  You know, I was always a bit suspicious of Pac-Man as a child. Being the sort of kid who always wanted things explained, it just didn't make any sense to me - a little yellow disembodied head who is chased around a maze by a bunch of ghosts, while dining on the tasty treat of white ball things.
So after all those years, munching white balls, Pac-Man has now reached the ripe old age of twenty, and to celebrate the occasion, Namco have released Pac-Man World - a Pac-Man for the new millennium if you will.  Now I don't know about you, but sometimes I just wish that developers would accept that some games just cannot be bettered. For example, why do they bother to keep releasing sequels to Tetris? The very reason it was originally such a good game was due to it's simplicity - MAKING IT 3D AND ADDING WEAPONS DOES NOT MAKE IT BETTER! I therefore approached Pac-Man World with caution - I mean how exactly were Namco gonna improve on a game which was pretty much perfect anyway?
Well, I'll tell you how. They've put Pac-Man into his own 3D platform game! Wow! What genius thinking (sarcasm alert). The thing is though, Pac-Man World is pretty darned good, so despite the hackneyed genre - this is actually quite a worthy update. Pac-Man and co. all look pretty good on screen (their spherical forms lending themselves well to the 3D visuals) and the gameplay, though totally generic (it steals from literally every 3D platformer ever made) somehow emerges as fresh and addictive.  Part of this is probably 'cos Pac-Man and co. are such cool, recognisable characters, and the lavish attention that Namco have given to the graphics and sound is always apparent (One of the best things about this game are the sound effects, which remain very faithful to the original Pac-Man).
There's a lot of game here for your money - adding up to a really good value title, so as well as the platformy bits, the game is also interspersed with 3D updates of the old maze gameplay (which you can play as a stand-alone game) and the original Pac-Man is also included - so it's totally polished and complete. If you like platformers, then I think you'll love Pac-Man World - it's probably one of the most playable of its kind on the PSX, and although it still doesn't make any sense to me twenty years on, Pac-Man is still loooooking good, let's salute him, WACKA WACKA WACKA WACKA…… INTERESTING "PAC-FACT": The creator of Pac-Man came up with the idea after looking at a pizza with a slice taken from it…..think about it!
- Eddy Vista
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