{"id":12097,"date":"2014-07-11T00:01:30","date_gmt":"2014-07-11T00:01:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/?p=12097"},"modified":"2014-07-05T09:08:47","modified_gmt":"2014-07-05T09:08:47","slug":"pac-man-monsters-ipad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/2014\/07\/11\/pac-man-monsters-ipad\/","title":{"rendered":"Pac-Man Monsters (iPad)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"PACMON_BOX\"<\/a>The last thing we\u2019ll look at in our \u201cNutty Namco Week\u201d is a free-to-play game for mobile devices (reviewed on iPad here), starring Namco\u2019s most popular icon: Pac-Man.\u00a0 But this time he\u2019s being featured in a pretty unusual game.\u00a0 One popular genre of tablet games that have really taken off are RPG puzzle battle games.\u00a0 Most use the similar match-three Bejeweled format to select your attacks, and then you can view the outcome on the top part of the screen.\u00a0 Probably the most well-known of these is Puzzle and Dragons, and I reviewed a similar one a while back called Monster Match<\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0 Now Pac-Man is getting into the fray with his own spin on the puzzle battle RPG craze.<\/p>\n

The story is simple.\u00a0 Monsters are taking food from Pac-Land and now you must help Pac-Man and his friends stop them.\u00a0 You first pick your team of monsters and can earn more later.\u00a0 Some look like Pac-Man dressed as a knight or archer, while others are ghost monsters or other critters.\u00a0 You\u2019ll fight typical RPG beasts like bugs and dragons and fairies.\u00a0 Each monster is associated with an element like fire or water, and are strong and weak against other elements so you must pick your team and attacks carefully.<\/p>\n

Normally in these types of games you choose your attacks by matching certain gem colors in a match-three Bejeweled style puzzle game, but in Pac-Man Monsters, things are a bit different.\u00a0 Colored dots encased in blocks fill the bottom screen, and you must trace a path until you run out of moves.\u00a0 Then Pac-Man will follow the path and whatever color dots he eats corresponds to an elemental attack.\u00a0 Then your monsters on the top screen will attack, depending on what colors you ate.\u00a0 Eat the same colored dots in a row to make combos for more powerful attacks, and eat power ups like bonus fruit to heal your party and boost your stats.\u00a0 Sometimes ghosts will block your path, so eat a power pellet to chomp then and enter a fever mode to increase your attack.<\/p>\n

While I do like the art style, this game really isn\u2019t as fun and engaging as other puzzle RPGs.\u00a0 And all the music is just recycled from a DS and Wii game called Pac N Roll.\u00a0 Plus they don\u2019t explain certain gameplay aspects very well, so I\u2019m not sure how to do things like combine eggs and evolve monsters properly.\u00a0 There\u2019s a whole bunch of icons on the left side of the screen that I have no idea what they do either.\u00a0 Plus the beefs I have with free-to-play games run rampant full force in this one.\u00a0 But if you\u2019re still curious, this game is free so it won\u2019t hurt you to try it out.<\/p>\n

Really the only reason why I still play this game is to see the classic Namco game cameos.\u00a0 Every day you can tap a power pellet icon for a super attack, and it\u2019ll list names of classic Namco characters as a giant Pac-Man zips by.\u00a0 The eggs you collect in the game are called Wonder Eggs, which is a reference to a Namco owned arcade and amusement park in Japan with the same name (not sure if it\u2019s still there).\u00a0 Every so often, they change optional bosses and special quests, and some of them revolve around enemies and characters in other Namco games like Spooky from Pac-Man World 2, Pac-Land fairies, Genji and Heike Clans, Galaga, and Tower of Druaga.<\/p>\n

\"PACMON_SCREEN\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Kid Factor:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Even though this game is all about battling, I really don\u2019t consider Pac-Man Monsters very violent.\u00a0 When you attack enemies, a still picture of your character just hops over to the monster, and they disappear when defeated.\u00a0 Reading skill is a must for all the text, and even then it sometimes doesn\u2019t make any sense.\u00a0 Parental supervision is recommended since it has in-game purchases.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The last thing we\u2019ll look at in our \u201cNutty Namco Week\u201d is a free-to-play game for mobile devices (reviewed on iPad here), starring Namco\u2019s most popular icon: Pac-Man.\u00a0 But this time he\u2019s being featured in a pretty unusual game.\u00a0 One popular genre of tablet games that have really taken off are RPG puzzle battle games.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":12093,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-game-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12097"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12097\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12100,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12097\/revisions\/12100"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}