{"id":14485,"date":"2016-02-03T00:01:51","date_gmt":"2016-02-03T00:01:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/?p=14485"},"modified":"2015-12-20T05:23:27","modified_gmt":"2015-12-20T05:23:27","slug":"pac-man-256-ios-amazon-google-play","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/2016\/02\/03\/pac-man-256-ios-amazon-google-play\/","title":{"rendered":"Pac-Man 256 (iOS, Amazon, Google Play)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"PAC256_BOX\"<\/a>Pac-Man 256 is another new free-to-play Pac-Man game, but this one\u2019s actually really good. It\u2019s available for download on iOS, Amazon, and Google Play, but reviewed on iPad here.\u00a0 I believe it was also made by the same folks who did the popular Crossy Road mobile title.\u00a0 So what is the significance of the number 256 and Pac-Man?\u00a0 Well, in the original arcade game, there was a glitch where if you got to maze 256, half of the screen would mess up and make the game unplayable. I guess the makers of Pac-Man didn\u2019t think anyone would get that far!\u00a0 But what if you could try and outrun the glitch before it engulfed the whole maze!\u00a0 Well that\u2019s what Pac-Man 256 is all about!<\/p>\n

At first the game looks like a regular Pac-Maze, but viewed at a slight isometric perspective. Move Pac-Man around by swiping on the touch screen in the direction you want him to go.\u00a0 But your goal isn\u2019t to eat all the dots this time; your goal is to keep moving upward, avoiding the ever-approaching glitch that is devouring the maze from the bottom!\u00a0 As you scoot about the maze, there are dots you can eat for points, and the way the points work is similar to how it is in Pac-Man Championship Edition.\u00a0 Each dot you eat in succession is worth one more point than the last, so if you keep on eating them right in a row without turning around or going down a maze path that has no dots, your score will get exponentially higher.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s not as easy as it sounds, though, because you also have to watch out for ghosts. If they get you, or if you get run over by the glitch, the game is over.\u00a0 Similar to the original Pac-Man, each ghost has a different way of moving.\u00a0 Clyde the orange ghost will always move downward and won\u2019t chase you.\u00a0 Inky the light blue ghost won\u2019t chase you either; just follow a set path around a block in the maze.\u00a0 Pinky sits in one place, but if she sees you, she\u2019ll charge forward.\u00a0 Blinky the red ghost you\u2019ll encounter later on, and he\u2019ll moves like Clyde but will chase you upward, too, if you get close.\u00a0 Other green and purple ghosts move back and forth in rows, and sleeping grey ghosts won\u2019t move unless you get close and wake them up, and then they\u2019ll chase you.<\/p>\n

Luckily there are power-ups that can give you an edge. Gobble up a power pellet and you can eat the ghosts for a short while, just like in the arcade game.\u00a0 Bonus fruit will give you a score multiplier for a limited time.\u00a0 There are also a bunch of other crazy power-ups that you earn by eating Pac-Dots, and you can equip three to appear in the maze as well.\u00a0 These include the ability to shoot lasers, grow big, leave a trail of fire, and much more!\u00a0 By completing certain objectives you can earn coins, which can also be found on the maze as well.\u00a0 You can use coins to upgrade your power-ups so they\u2019ll last longer.<\/p>\n

As a free-to-play title, there are some typical nuances of this type of game that I\u2019ll tell you about. When you spend coins to upgrade your power-ups, you\u2019ll have to wait a while to use them or upgrade them further.\u00a0 Also, if you want to play with power-ups, you\u2019ll have to use credits, which refill over time (up to 6).\u00a0 But the good thing is the wait time for both of these things isn\u2019t very long at all.\u00a0 And you can always play at any time with just power pellets only.\u00a0 You only spend credits if you want to play with the other crazy power-ups.\u00a0 You can also view videos if you want more coins, and you can use credits to continue as well.\u00a0 The game also gives you the option to have unlimited credits for just five bucks, and 99 cents gets you a classic-themed Pac-Man maze skin.\u00a0 So the free-to-play wait times and things didn\u2019t really bother me at all here.<\/p>\n

The game has some small problems, though. One nitpicky one is that the orange fruit in the original game has a higher point value than the strawberry, but in Pac-Man 256, the strawberry gives you a higher point multiplier.\u00a0 A more important problem is that sometimes the swiping controls didn\u2019t always work the way I wanted them to, which can be annoying if you\u2019re trying to stay in a path of dots for a high score.\u00a0 But other than that, this is a really good Pac-Man game and one of the better free-to-play titles I\u2019ve ever downloaded!<\/p>\n

\"PAC256_SCREEN\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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

The game is no more violent than the classic arcade title, and I grew up on that and turned out OK. Reading skill is helpful for some of the menus and text, and parental supervision is recommended for the in-game purchases.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pac-Man 256 is another new free-to-play Pac-Man game, but this one\u2019s actually really good. It\u2019s available for download on iOS, Amazon, and Google Play, but reviewed on iPad here.\u00a0 I believe it was also made by the same folks who did the popular Crossy Road mobile title.\u00a0 So what is the significance of the number […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":14471,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14485","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\/14485","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=14485"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14485\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14487,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14485\/revisions\/14487"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}