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'Ms. Pac-Man' Review (Xbox 360)


Submitted by thankeeka on January 12, 2007 - 2:28pm. Exclusive Game Review

Is she the cutest videogame vixen to ever grace the screen? Nah, and if it weren't for a few in-game cutscenes she just as well could be Pac-Man himself in drag. However, Ms. Pac-Man still remains one of the most popular lead female characters of all-time, and in fact many people enjoy her version of the game over her husband sibling. You go girlfriend and eat those pellets!

In Ms. Pac-Man, you'll find yourself controlling the titular character as she must navigate through various top-down mazes, where she must run around, chomping down on all of the pellets that she can, and once every one of them is eaten, she'll be able to move along to the next maze and repeat the process all over again. After so many levels are completed, the player gets to see a little bonus cutscene detailing the love story of Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man. Is it much of a story? Nah, but it is fairly cute for the primitive time in which the arcade machine lived.

Ms Pac-ManSo what is too hard about running around a maze collecting pellets? Well, not much, except for a handful of ghosts who are persistent in their determination to take you down. The ghosts of the game are just as vicious in their pursuit as they used to be in the arcade, as you really have to act on the fly to avoid them, doing such tactics as luring them over to one place of the screen so you can hopefully sweep across though another passage and reach the pellets you are missing. However, your skillful passage running isn't all that you have at your disposal, because scattered around are also some super pellets that, when eaten, makes Ms. Pac-Man invulnerable for a short time from the ghosts and actually gives her the power to eat them, temporarily sending them off the board for a short time. A great player will know when to go for what pellets, use what passages, and know how to properly use the super pellets to maximize their offensive strategy so they can really take it to the ghosts and plan quick attacks to other pellets on the other side of the board.

The game controls easily with you being able to use either the left thumbstick or the directional pad to control the direction in which Ms. Pac-Man moves. Beyond that, there isn't any other controls, because there are no powerups you need to activate by pressing a button, no jump button, or anything else for that matter that would make you need to use anything but something for direction.

The graphics faithfully recreate the look of the old arcade system, which basically means that it doesn't look like much of nothing (my nephew's plug and play Leap Frog systems look better than this game does now on your 360). Though the game screen itself is shrunk to fill only part of your screen, the Ms. Pac-Man drawings and graphics that adorn the outside give that look of the old arcade cabinet as well. The sound effects are okay with their constant chomping noises and death sounds, but there isn't much sound work beyond that.

Look, it is Ms. Pac-Man for crying out loud! You either loved the game back in the day when it originally came out when you plunked quarter after quarter into the machine or you don't. Nothing has been updated for the release on the Xbox 360 and if anything it feels more like a temporary placeholder to fill a spot that Microsoft simply didn't have anything else to go there. I mean, 360 owners can already download Pac-Man. Do we really need Ms. Pac-Man? The leaderboards are nice and will let you strive to get the top score of all time, but unless you are a fan, you probably won't care much about this game at all.

Rating: 2star
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