App of the Week: Pac-Man Championship Edition DX review

The blue ghost diet

The more you manage to not die, the faster the game gets, eventually maxing out at breakneck pace. As you zoom about, making split-second decisions regarding whether it’s a really bad idea to squeeze between a couple of especially irate spectres, you hope the swipe controls won’t let you down; they almost never do, but the same can’t be said of your reactions.

Naturally, power pellets still exist in this Pac-Man universe; when consumed, they faithfully temporarily turn the ghosts blue. If you’ve built up a chain, you can perform a speedy U-turn and ronch dozens of the blighters in seconds, racking up huge bonus scores. If there’s no nearby pellet to chow down on and you’re in a tight spot, a pinch gesture unleashes a bomb, sending the ghosts to the centre of the maze, but simultaneously depleting your speed multiplier.

Perfectly tuned

As you work through the many challenges — typically time-attack and ghost chaining runs — and the varied mazes, it becomes clear how finely tuned this game is. Some mazes are devious, sending you the wrong way with an unexpected dot pattern and scuppering perfect runs because you took your eye off the screen for a fraction of a second. ‘Dungeon’ in particular requires dedication to pull off perfect runs, with walls and corridors that keep reconfiguring as you play.

It’s testament to the quality of DX that its tardy appearance on iOS and Android (it debuted on XBLA several years ago) hasn’t resulted in a dated game. It still feels fresh, essential and utterly compelling on mobile — the kind of update to classic arcade IP that you wish every company would develop, rather than stuffing IAP down the throats of much-loved characters. For this — and everything else to do with DX — Namco should be congratulated. In short, buy this one now.

Download Pac-Man Championship Edition DX for Android, iPhone or iPad now.