Ms. Pac-Man: Maze Madness: Not Too Filling
Company: Namco
The graphics in Ms. Pac-Man< are very similar to the ones that we saw in Pac-Man World; clean, smooth shaded polygons running at a nice clip. The game itself is much more, er, square and maze-like, as it seems to have shucked the run-aroundness of Pac-Man World for mostly maze-style action. As such, however, each of the different zones, from haunted houses to Egyptian-style, has its own graphical flavor that you can tell instantly. The ghosts look different, the enemies look different, and the settings look different. Very nice. The sound is what you expect -- wocka-wocka munching, goofy sounds when you eat a power pellet, and the music is good, but unmemorable.
The gameplay is tight, even with this early demo. You are Ms. Pac-Man, and you basically run around, eat power pellets and normal pellets, and solve simple puzzles. We?re not talking brain-busting activities here, but what activities you partake in are quite fun. As you run around the mazes, you may have to push blocks, bounce around on pads that direct you different places, and of course, eat pellets and power pellets to munch the ghosts. You have a health bar, so getting hit by a ghost doesn?t mean instant death, and healing items abound. There is fruit as well to collect for bonuses, some of it very well hidden. But the game?s simplicity may be its flaw. Sure, running around in mazes and munching pellets in full 3D is fun -- how can it not be? But there may not be too much staying power, enough draw to make you play through the entire game. Fortunately, the thoughtful people at Namco supplied us with some groovy other stuff -- multiplayer, where you can beat the tar out of your friends (and upon dying, come back to haunt them as one of the ghosts - cool), and a (nonfunctional in the demo) ostensibly emulated version of the original Ms. Pac-Man. Considering that Ms. Pac-Man was by far the best of the series (well, Pac-Man Jr. was pretty sweet too), this is a Good Thing (tm).
The demo for Ms. Pac-Man is rather easy, with few ghosts, easy to reach pellets, and whatnot. I didn?t die once in playing through all of the available levels. Of course, the levels themselves end earlier than they will in the full version, and there are more of them in the full version, so the true difficulty of the game has yet to be determined.
The controls for the game are pretty much spot-on, although I found myself falling off of things going the wrong direction more often than not. Luckily, few puzzles rely on directional falling, so it doesn?t really make much of an issue. Otherwise, the game plays very well, at least as much as you can play. It may not be the most original romp, but Ms. Pac-Man: Maze Madness has the potential to be a damned fun game anyway.
-Sunfall to-Ennien, GameVortex Communications AKA Phil Bordelon
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