Pac-man Championship Edition DX for WP7: chomp your way through fun

| May 22, 2011 | Comments 1

PAC-MAN™ Championship Edition DX ($ 6.99, Trial)
PAC-MAN™ Championship Edition DX for Windows Phone 7 (click to open with Zune)The King of video-games lands again on your Windows Phone 7. After appearing at launch with Pac-Man, the yellow dot-eating machine that symbolized the video games era in the eighties is back. Boring? Well, you have never heard of Pac-Man Championship Edition then!
PAC-MAN™ Championship Edition DX for Windows Phone 7 (click to enlarge).0CE is a new variation on the old classic puck-man clearing its way through the maze eating dots and avoiding ghosts; now the chase is infinite: the munching is no longer finalized in clearing the screen, but to harvest points… in style!

DX is the second version of Pac-Man Championship Edition. This variation has amazed the reviewers on the Xbox 360 Arcade version (IGN.com gave a perfect score of 10 out of 10 in their review) and is now available on Windows Phone 7 as the first mobile version (iPhone has the first CE edition). DX offers 3 different courses with 5 game modes for a total of 40 variations. Game modes include Score Attack (do as many points as possible in a limited time) Ghost Combo (how many ghosts in a row can you eat) and Time Trial (clear the maze as fast as possible).
PAC-MAN™ Championship Edition DX for Windows Phone 7 (click to enlarge).1The controls are what you would expect this time, and work soooo much better than the first Pac Man WP7 appearance: swipe in the direction you want to move your yellow dot friend, he will go there.

Gameplay is simply top notch. As usual, you have to clear the appearing dots in sequence; once you clear a part of the maze from dots and fruit, new ghosts and pellets appear on the other side.

Ghosts are sleeping, if you get close they get angry and follow you. Line up a bunch of ghosts, eat the Power Pellet, turn around and eat lots of them in sequence with bangs, roars and flashes (satisfying!). If the ghosts get too close, the time slows down in a Max Payne-like effect, giving you time to react and avoid being killed by them; also now you have a bomb: pinch to deploy it.
PAC-MAN™ Championship Edition DX for Windows Phone 7 (click to enlarge).2Not everything is gold pleated in this game, though. The menu system is possibly the worst we have seen in a mobile game of this level.

Example of annoying menu 1: Start the game, the tutorial is available. Select the tutorial, do the tutorial. Game question: continue tutorial? Err…dunno…Yes? Tutorial restarts! (Darn, could they ask if we wanted to restart it rather than continue? )

Example of annoying menu 2: visuals selection: select Type A, B or C. Wait a minute: WHAT? A, B or C? Could they give them, like, a NAME?
PAC-MAN™ Championship Edition DX for Windows Phone 7 (click to enlarge).3Ok, so the menu is bad, but the game is great, and of course this is an Xbox Live game, so you can welcome Achievements (cheevos!) and Leaderboards. The question remains though: is this worth 7 dollars? The price tag is high for a mobile game, even if not out of this world, AAA games on iPhone and Android also touch similar price levels (Pac-Man CE is 5 bucks on the App Store as we write); well our answer is yes, it’s worth the price.
And you can easily find out if you agree with us by downloading the free trial version – it’s free!
Verdict (version reviewed: 1.0.0.0)

Pac Man CE DX gameplay is just gorgeous: challenging, fulfilling and never-ending – you have what you are looking for here: hours and hours of great gameplay on your Windows Phone 7.
Get this app for Windows Phone 7

Filed Under: 5 Stars • Featured • Full Reviews • Games