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One of the calls formula battle royale, so common in online games in recent years, is that it reduces the success to a simple binary. Or you’re alive, in which case: Hooray. Or you’re dead and the hordes of pre-teen jackals are already picking your corpse in search of more Fortnite Building Materials. You may move to the position of the equipment or the map, but there are no “losses” in a game like PUBG or Apex Legends: Either you win or you’re dead.
However, the problem with this cruel reality is that it interrupts certain previously important successful metrics in the service of this survival mentality. You might sing about your number killed in a game Call Of Duty: Warzone, but if you’re shot in the back at the last minute by someone who hid the whole game behind a cargo container, well, you still lost and yet they won. In essence, these games are not about playing well, but about playing the most. And that’s a problem when it comes to a game like that Pac-Man 99.
Released on Wednesday, Pac-Man 99 is Nintendo’s latest free attempt to attract gamers to its Nintendo Switch Online program (as if you could hunt with your friends in Monster Hunter Rise there was not enough service). Following in the footsteps the diabolical genius Tetris 99, and much less successful Mario 35, PM99 Once again he pits the player against another 98 Pac-Men, all fighting to be the last to stand. As with other games in this strange series, the effective game allows you to send obstacles to your distant opponents, filling their fields with ghostly Pac-People that can slow down or even kill them. The last Pac chomping wins.
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In a sense, Pac-Man 99 is a clear evolution of many trends that Bandai Namco has applied to the classic bang formula since Pac-Man Championship Edition it came back in 2007, massively accelerating the old school game by eliminating discreet rounds in favor of growing waves of complexity and speed. (Raises especially concepts from Championship Edition 2, especially the ability to generate massive trains of ghosts to consume in a widespread orgy of pixelated death.) If it falls apart, however, it fails to recognize that Pac-Man it is not, in essence, a game about survival. Instead, it’s about points.
Aside from the “hop, I’m going to hit the killscreen” type, death is a natural part of Pac-Man trial. Lead the board, collect points by swallowing fruit and combining ghosts, die and then, hopefully, the stock of points will bring you a few extra lives in the meantime to keep the race going. The result is iterative – good play buys you the ability to recover from mistakes, allowing a successful cycle. original Super Mario brothers. it’s similar, with coins and 1-ups that keep you in the game even after a bad jump or the tiring enemy robs you of the precious flower of fire. Of the three games, Nintendo only applied the online battle royale formula Tetris it’s a one-hit deal – and that could help explain why it was such a good fit for a treatment that the rewards stay in the game above any other successful game. (Although also Tetris It is probable just a better base game than Pac-Man, which is why it needs less refinement over the years.)
Like all 99/35 Games, Pac-Man 99 it is unquestionably neat. The confusion on the screen is visually stimulating, and the running basic maze remains fun. (There is also a whole element of strategy that we are still trying to wrap up, for example: the four distinct ways to start the game.) But by cutting a basic element of Pac-Man formula – the accumulation of points, either in the service of additional lives or only as a goal for themselves –99 loses touch with what has made the little yellow puck such a lasting icon for the past 41 years. After all, not everything has to be a matter of life and death.