PAC-MAN WORLD 2 Re-PAC

PAC-MAN WORLD 2 Re-PAC was provided by Bandai Namco for review. Thank you!

Following on from PAC-MAN's previous 3D platforming adventure, PAC-MAN WORLD 2 is the next to get the "Re-PAC" treatment. Having never played the original, I didn't go into this one with any nostalgia, but I found it a pretty decent platformer in its own right.

PAC-MAN WORLD 2 begins with our gang of ghosts being up to no good. Stealing the Golden Fruit from the tree in Pac-Village, awakening Spooky, a more powerful ghost who now leads the ghosts in terrorizing the land. It's up to Pac-Man to retrieve the Golden Fruits and save the day! It's about as generic as it gets, but you aren't playing a Pac-Man game for the story, thank goodness!

Sounds like the perfect setup to split the game into neat little worlds, doesn't it? Well, that's exactly what PAC-MAN WORLD 2 does, with the game taking place across six different themed worlds. This gives a nice variety to the game, as each new environment tends to introduce new mechanics and objects to interact with to keep things interesting.

To keep you engaged, Re-PAC has added additional objectives to each level, giving you challenges beyond just finishing the level. These can range from beating the level without dying, to collecting all the collectibles, to beating the level in a certain time. Given that the game is only around 4-5 hours long, it's good that we have some side objectives to encourage replaying levels if you want to get all the achievements, plus you get some in-game cosmetics and bonuses to use by completing them.

But, PAC-MAN WORLD 2 Re-PAC is a platformer, so how does the actual platforming hold up? Well, for the most part, I did enjoy it. The controls are pretty smooth, air control is great, which is important as most of the platforming involves bouncing around and jumping between floating platforms. Pac-Man also has a variety of moves, such as bouncing, rolling to gain speed, and ledge-grabbing.

Ledge-grabbing was actually my pet peeve here. Sometimes, Pac-Man didn't seem to want to grab hold of ledges, resulting in me sliding down the side of a ledge and falling to my death. It was my main source of frustration on some levels. Unfortunately, the game tends to introduce a new enemy or mechanic and then overuse it in the next few levels. If you encounter an enemy or mechanic you aren't keen on, you should expect to be dealing with it for the next few levels.

There is a reasonable variety of enemies, but many of them are throwaways. You can even easily ignore most enemies and continue with the level just fine. There are only two attack methods you'll use in the game: jumping and rolling, and many of the enemies will die in 1 hit and barely affect the game. The bosses at the end of each world are by far the most interesting enemies; the boss levels were my favorite levels in the game.

As for difficulty, the game starts easy; you might even think that it is designed for younger children during the first world. By World 4, however, the game has ramped up the difficulty, becoming more akin to other platformers of the late 90s and early 00s. It's not overly difficult, but you're quite likely to die at least a few times when platforming around environmental hazards.

Visually, the game isn't special; it's serviceable, but I wouldn't say it's technically or artistically impressive; it just does the job. The music and sounds aren't the best either. We do have some classic Pac-Man sound effects when we collect some pick-ups and beat a level, but certain sounds, such as footstep/movement sounds, just began to grate on me and get repetitive. There is limited voice acting in the cutscenes, and I found the voice acting to be pretty decent as a whole.

PAC-MAN WORLD 2 Re-PAC - Steam Deck Performance

PAC-MAN WORLD 2 Re-PAC is a joy to play on the Steam Deck. It supports 1280x800 resolution, so there are no black bars. It has great controller support, and performance is pretty much as good as it gets.

There aren't many graphical options in the game, but for me, the game defaulted all options to their highest settings, and I recommend that you keep them there. The game could nearly always hold 90 FPS on the highest settings on my Steam Deck OLED, with only occasional stutters affecting the frametime, usually when a UI pop-up occurs or an object spawns.

Power draw was in the 12-14W area for the most part. So even with these higher settings, expect around 4 hours of battery life on a Steam Deck OLED and around 2.5-3 hours on a Steam Deck LCD. Given the game's relatively short length, I think this is adequate.

If you do want to save some battery life on the OLED, lock the FPS to 60 in SteamOS, and you'll gain a few extra minutes.

Accessibility:

There aren't many accessibility options in PAC-MAN WORLD 2 Re-PAC, but the game does subtitle all dialogue. There is also a "Fairy" difficulty setting, which prevents PAC-MAN from taking damage from enemies or getting game overs, and would be ideal for younger or more casual players.

Conclusion:

It's hard to say whether I recommend PAC-MAN WORLD 2 Re-PAC. Thankfully, the game has been priced at a pretty low point, and that makes me more inclined to say that if you are intrigued by it, it's probably worth checking out. The platforming is decent for the most part, and I did enjoy the boss battles at the end of each world, but the mechanics can get repetitive, and those ledge-grabs will haunt me.

Steam Deck performance is pretty much spot-on. Even on the highest settings, the game barely budges from 90 FPS, and the controls work perfectly well. You can't really fault how it runs on the device.

Our review is based on the PC version of this game.

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