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One of the resources of the battle royale formula, so common in online gaming in recent years, is that success is reduced to a simple binary. Or you are alive, in this case: Hurray. Or you’re dead, and the hordes of preadolescent jackals are already picking your corpse in search of more Fortnite building materials. You may be crawling to the position of the team or the map, but there is no “loss” in a game like this PUBG or Apex Legends: Either you’re winning or you’re dead.
The problem with this stark reality, however, is that it cuts across certain metrics of success that were once important, in the service of this survival mindset. You can sing about your death toll in a game of Call Of Duty: Warzone, but if at the last minute you are shot in the back by someone who has been hiding behind a shipping container throughout the game, well, you will still lose and still win. Basically, these games are not about playing well, but about playing longer. And that’s a problem when it comes to a game like this Pac-Man 99.
Released this Wednesday, Pac-Man 99 is Nintendo’s last free attempt to get players hooked on its Nintendo Switch Online program (as if you could hunt with your friends at Monster Hunter Rise was not enough service). Following in the footsteps of the devilishly brilliant Tetris 99, i the least successful Mario 35, PM99 he faces the player again against another 98 Pac-Men, fighting to be the last one standing. As with other games in this strange and small series, the effective game allows you to send obstacles to your distant opponents, filling their fields with ghostly Pac-People that can slow them down and even kill them. Win the last Pac chomping.
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In a sense, Pac-Man 99 is a clear evolution of many of the trends that Bandai Namco has applied to the classic Pac formula from Pac-Man Championship Edition arrived in 2007, massively accelerating old-school play by eliminating discreet rounds in favor of ever-increasing waves of complexity and speed. (The concepts of Championship Edition 2, especially the ability to generate massive trains of ghosts to consume in a widespread orgy of pixelated death.) But where it disintegrates is in not recognizing that Pac-Man it is not, at bottom, a game about survival. Instead, it’s all about the points.
Except for the types of “go, there I’ll hit the death screen,” death is a natural part of Pac-Man process. You run the board, accumulate points by swallowing fruit and combining ghosts, bites, and then, hopefully, this stock of points has scored you a couple of extra lives in the meantime to keep the race going. The result is iterative: a good game gives you the chance to recover from mistakes, allowing for a successful cycle. The original Super Mario Bros. it’s similar, with coins and 1-ups that keep you in the game even after a bad jump or a nasty enemy steals your precious fire flower. Of the three games, Nintendo has only applied the online battle royale formula Tetris it’s a unique issue, and this can help explain why it’s been so suitable for a treat that the rewards stay in the game above any other type of successful game. (Although also, Tetris is probably just a better base game than that Pac-Man, which is why less refinement is needed over the years.)
Like all 99/35 games, Pac-Man 99 it is undeniably orderly. The confusion on the screen is visually stimulating, and the basic maze that works is fun. (There’s also a whole element of strategy that we’re still trying to wrap our heads around, such as the game’s four different startup modes.) But trimming a basic element of the game. Pac-Man formula: the accumulation of points, either in the service of additional lives, or only as a purpose for them99 he loses touch with what has made that little yellow record such a lasting icon for the last 41 years. After all, not everything has to be a matter of life or death.