Pac-Man World 3 Review (no fat)

Game Description

To celebrate Pac-Man’s 25th anniversary, Namco released a third title in the Pac-Man World series. In Pac-Man World 3, the whimsical hero needs to face the vile Erwin who still dreams of conquering the whole world. The mad scientist finally manages to come up with a machine that can tap into the almost endless supply of energy from the ghosts’ world, the Spectral Realm.

However, things again go awry, as Erwin’s latest invention starts causing both the real world and the Spectral Realm to blend and mutually destroy each other. As usual, only Pac-Man can put an end to Erwin’s perfidious acts and restore things back to normal. He’s not really given a choice, as he’s teleported straight into his foes’ lair by Orson.

Pac-Man World 3 Gameplay

Pac-Man World 3 is basically an improved version of its two predecessors. As a 3D platform game, it lets you control the infamous voracious hero through various levels. The game does a very good job of injecting more personality in Pac-Man, and relies heavily on humor to make up for its generic plot’s shortcomings. You’ll thus even have the opportunity to cooperate with Blinky and Clyde, who are well known for their relentless pursuit of Pac-Man in the twenty-five years old first game. There’s a lot of wit thrown in, specially when the three first meet, and a lot of the same humor is present in the whole game.

This time, Pac-Man’s worries are not solely limited to ghosts. He must also watch out for robots that have been programmed to kill him on sight. Thankfully, Pac-Man’s abilities haven’t been lost over these years. The funny-looking bum is still as hungry as he originally was, and will gladly swallow everything he can find, including pellets and items. As a matter of fact, there are quite a variety of items for him to taste. There’s also a lot of jumping to do, and you’ll often find yourself climbing walls to reach various locations.

Additionally, he has his own peculiar ways to dispose of his enemies. These consist of either punching them with all his might or simply stomping over them like a certain Mario would do. The game also has the decency of bearing some variety by requiring you to solve certain puzzles. These puzzles, while never particularly challenging, do prevent the game from becoming boring, and contribute to make the game more fun. You will thus occasionally have to look for a certain switch to open a door so you can proceed forward and fight more enemies.

While Pac-Man World 3 doesn’t profess to be innovative, it is nevertheless a fun game. Your adventure spans over more than a dozen levels, which range from monolithic factories to ominous forests. Some levels also have a good dose of ingenuity. Your quest thus involves gobbling enemies in a faithful rendition of the classic Pac-Man mazes, which will obviously please fans of those games.

Along the way, you also obtain power-ups, most of which are geared towards making Pac-Man stronger for a short period of time. Find the correct item, and you can suddenly shoot electricity balls that will instantly rip through your enemies. You can also call upon the help of your gnarly friends, Blinky and Clyde, who have their own abilities.

Pac-Man World 3 has its fair share of extras. Nostalgic fans can play through the Arcade classic again, and there are even summaries of all the Pac-Man games in the Museum option, along with an explanation of how the series evolved over time. Again, these extras are mainly geared towards fans of the series who just love to know everything about the orange freak.

All is not well in the World of Pac-Man

The game unfortunately suffers from several glitches, and these can only be countered by a soft reset. You can actually find yourself falling to a certain death due to those bugs, which gets frustrating when you are deep in the game and haven’t saved for a long time.

Pac-Man World 3 Controls

Pac-Man has a nice variety of actions he can pull, which include his trademark gobbling. The game has an intuitive control setup with a great response time. This gives Pac-Man World 3 an excellent learning curve, as you immediately find yourself gleefully jumping around and swallowing pellets.

Pac-Man World 3 Visuals

The game’s exhaustive use of cut scenes to lay out the levels is a good idea. However, this doesn’t hide the fact that Pac-Man World 3 has poor graphics, which are actually a step down from its predecessor. The backgrounds are bland and suffer from a blatant lack of details in spite of their diversity. The color palette and character models are also limited, which can be annoying at times.

Pac-Man World 3 Sound

The game prefers to concentrate on ambient noises rather than music, which admittedly works very well. Each action is moreover perfectly punctuated with sharp sound effects, and this does a great job of restoring the original Pac-Man’s mood in this 3D platform adventure. The dubbing is excellent with cute voices that add a nice touch to the game.

Pac-Man World 3 Overall

Pac-Man World 3 is a conventional 3D platform title with a few extras thrown in such as the inclusion of the first game. While there isn’t anything exceptional about this third release, longtime Pac-Man fans may consider it blasphemous not recommend the most popular glutton of all.

Pac-Man World 3 Cost

Pac-Man World 3 retails for $29.99, at the time of writing.