Pac-Man Championship Edition

It's not easy staying fresh in the game industry, a place where change whips along at a rapid pace. As Xbox Live Arcade lends a new lease of life to retro titles of old, some don't translate too well and others are, to be honest, a bit embarrassing. It's refreshing then, to see that Namco have tweaked the tried-and-tested Pac-Man formula and come up with something that is as good, if not better than the 1980 classic.

Play-wise, the fundamentals remain; move Pac-Man around a maze, eating dots while being pursued by Inky, Blinky, Pinky and Clyde, the troublesome ghosts from the original. Power pills remain and eating one turns you invincible, allowing you to eat the enemies. In the original, eating all the dots moved you on to the next level, this time around things are a bit more interesting.

There are six game modes here with varying time limits. The game ends when you run out of lives or the time runs out. Eating all the dots in the maze makes fruit or other bonus items appear in the centre of the stage. Once eaten, the opposite half of the level morphs into a new maze, resulting in a playing field which constantly evolves. This makes for a degree of strategy once you start to memorise how different fruits shape the stages. For example, the bell will make a stage with more power pills than the burger, which is useful when lives are running low.

Beyond the five-minute classic mode, there is a speed mode, where the ghosts hound you at a lightening pace along relatively uncomplicated stages making for a tense experience. Another mode sees the maze shrouded in darkness except for a small glow surrounding Pac-Man and the ghosts. You can navigate by way of the dots but when only a few remain, finding your way through the darkness can prove difficult. One of the ten-minute extra modes does away with power pils, except for the initial few at the start. Combo enough ghosts with these pills and it becomes a matter of holding on until the timer hits zero.

Graphically, this looks excellent in HD and the pumping techno remix of the original tune suits the modern appearance. It's all very trippy looking — maybe an in-joke about pills that we've missed? It all feels slick and brings such an old-skool premise kicking and screaming into the next-gen. When Pac-Man eats a power pill, the level flashes a deep shade of red and vibrates and distorts, almost in time with the soundtrack.

All-in-all, this is a fine example of lending an old idea a second wind. Namco have crafted a modern classic and although the idea of spending 800 MS points on Pac-Man may sound a bit much, rest assured that this is as addictive as they come. In a market full of Bioshock and Call of Duty, it's interesting to see that a game with such simple aesthetics and gameplay continues to captivate gamers the world over.