I had a longer post about Pac-Man: Championship Edition written on Thursday and I managed to destroy it before posting (sigh). I didn't have time to write another on Thursday, and honestly my patience level with recreating it isn't high. So I'll summarize. I expected to not be super-impressed with Pac-Man:CE, in part because Microsoft has been so heavy-handed with the marketing message. They keep saying that it's a "great gift to the world" which is such hyperbole as to be insane, and also that it's the first Pac-Man with different maps. The latter is somewhat true I suppose, but only in a hyper-technical sense. Every time I saw something about how it had "different maps" I would mutter "Great. Here on Planet Earth we've had Ms. Pac-Man for over twenty years." and ignore the rest of the blog post or whatever.

Well Pac-Man:CE's maps don't work at all like Ms. Pac-Man and they are pretty neat. The map is split into two halves and when you clear all the dots in one half a fruit appears in the other half. When you each the fruit the clear half-map changes to a new map and repopulates. So it's a much more dynamic experience than Ms. Pac-Man cycling to a new map every two-three levels. If you've been ignoring Pac-Man:CE because you've had enough Pac-Man, or because Microsoft dialed the hype machine to 11 give it a look-see. It's not earth-shattering, but it is a lot of fun.

Also, I got all the achievements in it so now I have two games I've maxed the achievements on. (I talked briefly about maxing Worms before.)

In other XBLA news I picked up Band of Bugs and like it so far. It screams "Final Fantasy Tactics", but there's nothing wrong with FF:T, and 8 player online multiplayer tactics is something I can get into. I suspect that next week I'll be lobbying for some multiplayer Band of Bugs on the gaming nights.

technorati tags:Xbox360, Pac-Man, BandOfBugs

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