Game:

Pac-Man 99 (2021)

Duration: 3:01:26

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Okay, that's also overly dramatic. It is NOT senseless... inasmuch as any of these large-scale multiplayer survival scenario games are concerned, anyway.

There IS a lot to make sense of, though... and that's not even taking for granted the inherent weirdness of an ambulatory mouth chasing and being chased by ghosts in a maze.

It's apparently completely standard operating procedure for these things to come with no internal documentation or even a quick explanation of even the most basic gameplay elements... I can't say as I agree with this practice, because the difference in knowing and not knowing the particular peculiarities in play is an unreasonable amount of leverage and power over as many as 98 other people at a time.

The most obvious departure, besides the stated number of participants, is that you'll be sending scribbly-looking PAC-JAMMERS to your opponents for eating ghosts. White ones will delay and slow the player's PAC-MAN on contact... and red ones are instantly lethal if touched.

This "battle royale" in particular has twice as much agency located totally outside the set dressing of the main game's setting. You have your usual four targeting modes, roughly analogous to the ones you'd come to expect after Tetris 99 and Super Mario Bros. 35... but there's a whole extra quartet of options on top of that... and the implications are not at all obvious based on their simple descriptors.

For one thing, they're special boons imparted ONLY under the effects of a Power Pellet, normally already its own bizarre reward as the tables are turned and your deadly enemies become ready victims for the chomping... but, depending on the mode you choose, you can opt into one of four incomparable bonus effects.

Standard is the only one that makes automatic sense, assuming you understand WHAT is being standardized. It makes your Power Pellet a middle-of-the-road experience, balanced in all things with no unusual additional effects or drawbacks.

Speed is the next most easily understood. When you're under the influence of the Power Pellet, your PAC-MAN will travel faster. The unmarked side effect is that you'll send fewer PAC-JAMMERS to your opponents.

Train sounds particularly weird for a PAC-MAN game, but it relates directly to the basic mechanic of adding extra Sleeping Ghosts behind one of the regular enemy ghoulies as you collect them from the side aisles of the maze adjacent to the wraparound alleyway connect the left and right halves. The part where gameplay alterations come in us that being under the influence of a Train-infused Power Pellet is that any Sleeping Ghosts you collect will cause ghosts to chain up at an accelerated rate per each one you pick up off the maze floor. In exchange, you will inflict PAC-JAMMERS on your own maze every time you do.

Stronger makes your Power Pellet experience more generally severe all around. It'll be shorter, but in exchange, your attacks will result in harsher JAMMER activity inflicted upon those you target when you chow down on ghosts. However, this one has the steepest price to pay written absolutely nowhere, even in fine print (if in fact there was any!): merely activating this one will immediately and permanently lower the player's Speed score by one!

...wait, I never mentioned anything about score or player speed! Come to think of it, neither did the game!

As it so happens, eating all the dots in the maze will increase your PAC-MAN's base movement speed... which is very important, because your game field will generally speed up every time you eat a Bonus Fruit, increasing your Round counter by one. Therefore, it's imperative you clean your plate as often as possible early on, before the maze gets a little too deadly, increasingly littered with faster ghosts and am ever-increasing number of red PAC-JAMMERS.

As a result, one of the biggest possible plays of the game can be a timely switch over to Stronger when you're already running for your life from many deadly obstacles, sacrificing precious movement speed just barely keeping you alive... to dump a huge assault on any hapless goes you happen to be targeting.

I had absolutely zero KOs the whole last round in the stream... but the hammer I dropped near the end with a Stronger move and a full Train of ghosts was powerful enough to obliterate PAC-FOUR before it was even halfway munched, and I got all his badges for myself.

Then I made a wrong turn and I gave them up to our eventual PAC-ONE in the making. Neat!

... ... ...I still don't totally know how I feel about this one, but there's definitely more "game" built on top of its source game than I imagined likely from first glance and first blood.

(If only I had any natural PAC-aptitude.)

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