PAC-MAN

I'm a fan of classic arcade games, but the $7 price tag of Pac-Man in the Market has caused me to stop every time I've considered purchasing it, but tonight the desire to try it overcame me and I did so. Pac-Man is a simple game and its beauty is in its simplicity. All you need to play is a 4-way joystick. You control the 'pizza minus a slice' shaped Pac-Man around a maze gobbling up dots while being chased by 4 named and colored ghosts. However, in each of the four corners is a blinking power pill that turns the tables and allows Pac-Man to gobble down the ghosts, too. Oh, and there's fruit (and other treats) that occasionally appear to round out Pac-Man's diet.

I was preparing to lambast the game before trying it, but quite honestly this game is well done. The graphics and sounds are spot on. And instead of using a virtual joystick you swipe in the direction you want Pac-Man to move (and the on-screen joystick visual displays your input). If you have a D-Pad then it works with that too as is the case with my Droid... I was able to slide the keyboard out to the left and use it while remaining in portrait mode for the game's display. The game also offers 3 different difficulty levels although it's not clear on how difficult classic is when mixed with words like 'medium' in terms of challenge. You can also choose which level to start on and so forth. If you are dying for a spot on Pac-Man you have found it!

The game does have some slow down in it that seems to be a frequent issue with Android games presumably because the phone has a multi-tasking OS and some other apps needs a few extra CPU cycles, and in this kind of game that hurts. And if you're stuck using the swipe method of input I sympathize... while not horrible I have to say that I was much more comfortable once I starting using my DPad.

But all in all this kinds of game begs the difficulty in turning a game into a number of stars ranging from 1 to 5. Did the developers achieve their goal? Yes! Is this game overpriced for what it is? Yes! How to factor the latter answer into the former answer? I don't know! Personally I'm not going to keep this game as I can't justify the cost coupled with having purchased Pac-Man seemingly a zillion times including at J.C. Penny when the dismal Atari 2600 version was released. But that doesn't mean it's not a well done Pac-Man. 3/5 stars being knocked down mainly because of price.