PS2 Game Recommendations | mariteaux

[#] Pac-Man World 3 (Namco, PlayStation 2, 2005)

Marvel hero Pac-Man? In MY PS2 game?

This is the only one of the cult favorite Pac-Man World trilogy to not be produced (or released) in Japan. Yeah, this was actually a Blitz Games special, Britisher developers of none other than Sneak King fame. Why do I bring up their nationality? Because I want you to expect a very...unique tone going in. If you've ever thought to yourself "hot damn, I wish Pac-Man was quippy", you're in luck! Better yet, it's somehow not a disaster! It plays pretty well, it's very short, and the quippy, bizarrely testy tone of the writing kept me and my stream chat amused as we worked through it.

On Pac-Man's 25th birthday celebration, a dweeb ghost named Orson kidnap teleports Pac-Man to a variety of incredibly not-Pac locales (cliff faces with windmills, rotting cities, and even his home world of the Spectral Realm) to defeat the chocolate-hating, kitten-detesting little person Erwin. Erwin threatens the Spectral Realm with his gigantic energy siphons, and dangerous ghouls named Spectral Monsters are stirred up to the outside world by the collapse of the realm. It's up to a confused and bemused Pac-Man, always with that stupid grin on his face, to team up with his ghost adversaries (!), save the Spectral Realm, and the less-spectral one as well.

All this story, and it is a pretty oddball but thankfully rather light story, justifies what's admittedly a pretty average 3D platformer with a nice Pac-Man skin. There are elements of the earlier Pac-Man World games here, notably the Pac-dot chains that send Pac-Man flying and unlockable mazes (along with pseudo-mazes worked into the level designs). Occasionally, you'll control the ghosts instead of Pac-Man, or pilot a giant fighting robot, but these are over as confusingly quickly as they come. Definitely one of the most bizarre games that's ever bore the Pac name, I heartily recommend this one to adventurous types.