Battle royale doesn't work really well with Pac-Man for a couple of reasons: Tetris 99 is quick, fast and so are the matches. Pacman 99 requires the player to spend a lot of attention and time for a single match, so it doesn't suit itself for long sessions. Not only that, but being attacked by another player directly slows you down, which affects the player's input and that's not fun.
It was alright while it lasted, RIP.
It was alright while it lasted, RIP.
A battle royale take on the most popular arcade game of all time. A very fun game if you enjoy the original Pac-Man. Unfortunately, the player base is rapidly declining (in most matches half the opponents are AI) and the game will be taken down permanently in October 2023. Worth playing while you still can. Comes free with Nintendo Switch Online.
Played all of 20 minutes before I decided I was largely off it as the game seemed to just be doing the same thing over and over, whereas at least the Mario battle royale game posed different scenarios thanks to the ways different stages would interact with different types of enemies mass-spawning.
More generally, I suspect the battle royale structure may just not be for me. Each battle is divided into an early portion that is trivially easy, an end portion which has to become obnoxiously hard to force eliminations, and then a middle portion that actually feels like the right level of fun and challenging; this means only a small portion of the gameplay is truly satisfying.
More generally, I suspect the battle royale structure may just not be for me. Each battle is divided into an early portion that is trivially easy, an end portion which has to become obnoxiously hard to force eliminations, and then a middle portion that actually feels like the right level of fun and challenging; this means only a small portion of the gameplay is truly satisfying.
Like this one a lot let less than the Tetris and Mario versions. While the general loop of keeping power pellets going, building ghost trains and grabbing fruit is quite fun, I feel like it ramps up WAY too fast. Ghosts speed up and revert back to normal faster after eating power pellets in just about a minute of gameplay. Add on to that the myriad of white Pac-Mans on the screen at once making it hard to track the ghosts, and even the red Pac-Man's that act as instant-kill obstacles (and those start moving on their own after a while), so games tend to last only a couple of minutes even for the winning players.
Not to mention that there's absolutely nothing to unlock without the DLC. All the themes are just paid for, and the profile pics either come with the theme, or are unlocked via the single player modes that need to be paid for. I really hope if they keep doing these battle royale games they go back to Tetris' approach, which despite its DLC still let other players have goals to unlock new profile pics, and tickets to unlock new themes.
Not to mention that there's absolutely nothing to unlock without the DLC. All the themes are just paid for, and the profile pics either come with the theme, or are unlocked via the single player modes that need to be paid for. I really hope if they keep doing these battle royale games they go back to Tetris' approach, which despite its DLC still let other players have goals to unlock new profile pics, and tickets to unlock new themes.
Eh. I felt about Pac-Man 99 almost exactly the same as I did with Super Mario Bros. 35 - it's a kind of neat idea, but far less intuitive and fun when compared to Tetris 99. It also loses out relative to Tetris 99 because its crossover re-skins were paid DLC rather than free updates. I got first place in Pac-Man 99 once and never really felt a desire to go back.