{"id":15489,"date":"2016-10-10T00:01:56","date_gmt":"2016-10-10T00:01:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/?p=15489"},"modified":"2016-09-14T12:42:06","modified_gmt":"2016-09-14T12:42:06","slug":"pac-man-pop-ios-android","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/2016\/10\/10\/pac-man-pop-ios-android\/","title":{"rendered":"Pac-Man Pop! (iOS, Android)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"POP_BOX\"<\/a>So what happens when you combine my all-time favorite video game (Pac-Man), with one of my favorite puzzle game series (Bust-A-Move\/Puzzle Bobble<\/strong><\/a>).\u00a0 You get Pac-Man Pop!\u00a0 It\u2019s a new free-to-play puzzler downloadable on iOS and Android devices (reviewed on iPad here).\u00a0 So you know I had to check it out!<\/span><\/p>\n

Gameplay is similar to many other bubble popping mobile puzzle games.\u00a0 Colored bubbles sit at the top screen, and you must aim and fire bubbles from the bottom to match three to make them disappear.\u00a0 If you run out of bubbles before the objective is cleared, it\u2019s Game Over.\u00a0 I have to wonder if Taito wishes they would\u2019ve had a stricter patent on their Bust-A-Move\/Puzzle Bobble franchise since most everyone has copied it by now.<\/span><\/p>\n

There are three ways to play as you move up the map.\u00a0 In \u201cSave Your Pets,\u201d Pac-Man\u2019s dogs are trapped in bubbles and you must match or drop them to set them free.\u00a0 When all are freed you win the stage.\u00a0 I love how Pac-Man\u2019s dogs look like Chomp-Chomp from the old Hanna-Barbera Pac-Man cartoon from the 80\u2019s.\u00a0 Namco may try and deny that the cartoon didn\u2019t influence the characters, but we know better.<\/span><\/p>\n

The other two modes are \u201cPop the Ghost\u201d where a giant ghost monster sits in the middle of the screen and you must hit it with a bubble to pop it.\u00a0 But bubbles surround the ghost that you have to clear, and you must do this three times, each time the ghost gets smaller and harder to hit!\u00a0 The last mode is \u201cCollect the Fruit.\u201d\u00a0 Here you must pop bubbles that have fruit in them by popping them with another bubble.\u00a0 But watch out because ghost monsters creep down from the top of the screen, and if they reach the bottom, they\u2019ll take away some of your moves!\u00a0 You can send them back up to the top by hitting them with a bubble that\u2019s the same color they are.<\/span><\/p>\n

If you can get three stars in most levels by reaching a certain score, you can enter Pac-Attack mode which is like a point-boosting bonus stage.\u00a0 Shoot bubbles at ghosts who are chasing Pac-Man around for points.\u00a0 You can also use power-ups to give yourself an edge in a particularly tough stage.\u00a0 Unfortunately, due to the free-to-play nature of this game, things get impossibly hard between stage 30 and 40 unless you start using power-ups, and eventually you have to start buying them with real money.\u00a0 Plus, the game gets kind of repetitive anyway.\u00a0 And it\u2019s hard to see the color bubbles that the puppies are trapped in.\u00a0 I will say, though, that I love the character designs of Pac-Man and the ghosts in this game.\u00a0 They\u2019re so adorable!<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\"POP_SCREEN\"<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

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

Aside from hitting ghosts with bubbles and making their eyes run away, nothing too terribly violent here.\u00a0 If you\u2019re OK with your kids playing the arcade classic Pac-Man, they\u2019ll be fine with this game, too.\u00a0 Reading skill is helpful for some of the text, and parental supervision is recommended for the in-game purchases.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So what happens when you combine my all-time favorite video game (Pac-Man), with one of my favorite puzzle game series (Bust-A-Move\/Puzzle Bobble).\u00a0 You get Pac-Man Pop!\u00a0 It\u2019s a new free-to-play puzzler downloadable on iOS and Android devices (reviewed on iPad here).\u00a0 So you know I had to check it out! Gameplay is similar to many […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":15478,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15489","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\/15489","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=15489"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15489\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15491,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15489\/revisions\/15491"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}