Pac-Man World 2 Review
October 5, 2024
The original Pac-Man World on the PS1 was a fun little platformer that while not quite reaching the level of it's contemporaries managed to garner an audience and sell well. It's sequel however, Pac-Man World 2 reached a wider audience due to being available on every platform of the time and as a result became a childhood classic for many. This became especially clear upon the announcement Pac-Man World Re-Pac which had many comments from people saying they were only buying the game so they'd remake the sequel. Does Pac-Man World 2 stand tall with the likes of Mario Sunshine or Jak and Daxter? No, not really but it's still a really fun game.
The story is pretty basic, the ghosts accidentally free the evil "Spooky" and steal the golden mcguffin fruits used to seal him away. Pac-Man's gotta go on a journey to stop them, game start. Not much but for what the game is, it's serviceable. The game proper starts with a small tutorial level in Pac Village. The graphics are bright and colorful, really nice to look at. Some of the level themes are what you'd expect like grassy plains, water and fire but there are stand outs like a logging site and a haunted boardwalk. Pac-Man's animations are adorable, I love watching his doofy face as he eats up everything in in front of him. The title theme's melody is catchy and is used in the background of other tracks which I think is a nice touch.
Each stage is littered with pac-dots and fruit that raise your high score. The levels are designed in a way that let's you choose how difficult your experience is. Do you go straight to the check point or do you take on difficult side paths to collect all the fruit? Collecting everything is completely optional so while you don't technically need any of the dots or fruits to progress it does add an element of replay value. I never try for a 100% though, mainly because you need to collect everything in a level in one shot, if you end the level with everything but one pac dot, too bad you have to collect everything again. I understand the scoring system necessitates dots and fruits being there but I feel like making collected items transparent or putting a switch in the beginning of the level would have fixed that problem. The only thing that stays collected are the arcade tokens that allow you to play classic Pac-Man arcade games in Pac Village. I always love it when older games are included as unlockables and it gives you a tangible reason to comb through every stage as you'll need basically every token to play Ms. Pac-Man. The last collectable is the Galaxian that unlocks classic style Pac-Man mazes in the 3D game engine. They're a fun change of pace but you definitely need to zoom the camera out to play them properly.
Pac-Man retains his butt bounce and rev roll from the original game. The butt bounce is mainly used for destroying enemies and jumping off trampolines while the rev roll is primarily used to zoom over ramps. Early on it's implementations are pretty basic but some of the later stages make interesting use of it. Pac-Man controls good enough being just a bit slippery but he has a generous ledge grab that helps stave off unfair deaths although I occasionally found myself having a hard time lining things up due to weird camera angles. Odd camera hiccups aside the level design is solid providing a balanced game experience that never feels unmanageable. The further you go into the game the whimsical music becomes more adventurous and booming, my favorite track accompanying the spooky haunted boardwalk stages.
In addition to normal platforming there are also a few gimmick levels. My favorite was easily the skating stages which put you on a set track as you navigate ramps and obstacles but it's incredibly under utilized only appearing in 2 stages despite being featured on the front cover. Then there's the swimming levels that are clearly just aping the under water levels from Crash Bandicoot Warped. Aside from being in 3D it controls the same, has a lot of the same enemies like mines and electric eels, you even get a spin attack. Heck World 2 also takes the run towards the screen while being chased level idea from Crash as well. The last gimmick level is easily the worst part of the game, the submarine levels are dull, murky and despite only being 2 levels feel like they overstay their welcome.
The bosses are another low point, with 3 of them simply being different variations of the same fight only slightly changing the arena. Some of the hit boxes are a bit wonky and Blinky's boss fight has these weird jank rev roll ramps that would sometimes have me zoom to my death because I wasn't aiming dead center while being fired at. The final boss fight with Spooky is simple when you know what to do but it took me a while to figure out I needed to use the flip kick, a move that hadn't been used for combat until this point.
Pac-Man World 2 while flawed is a fun experience that accomplished everything it sets out to do relatively well. You can either bang it out in an afternoon, master stages for that legendary 100% run or spend way too long trying to beat your personal Pac-Man arcade high score like I did.
