Pac'N Roll (Nintendo DS) - Review by Andrew

Introduction

It's hard to believe that in the DS' short life this is the second appearance by Pac-Man. The first was the ingenious Pac-Pix, which not only allowed you to design your own playing area but also Pac-Man himself. In fact this veteran star of video games is having his 'extra' fifteen minutes of fame at the moment and it's not just Namco who are aware of his obvious appeal with UK publishers, ZOO Digital also doing their fair share of Pac-Man releases. One thing we enjoyed about the last DS outing though was the unique way in which the user interacted with their gaming system and to date this has arguably been one of the better applications of this touch screen technology. We can only hope that this trend continues with all of Namco's DS titles but have they also applied it here?

Gameplay

Pac 'n' Roll does have similarities to the original Pac-Man in that you collect pills and devour ghosts after locating a power pill but that's really where it ends. The first notable difference is that rather than travelling around a maze you negotiate a variety of different worlds and the majority of stages are impassable until you unlock the gates. Instead of keys these gates require a pre-determined number of pills and once you have these, you're through. While this all sounds incredibly simple (and initially it is) problems arise because of the increasingly hostile environments. To give an example, the first few levels feature walled areas with some fairly passive ghosts patrolling the area. Further on though you'll encounter moving platforms with sheer drops and ghosts who appear to have nothing better to do than pursue you at all costs. That's before we even mention the arrows, lava filled rivers and disintegrating bridges. Each world ends with a boss battle and while the object here is to collect three power-pills in order to overpower the boss, the increasingly hostile environments stop it from being a walk in the park.

If this isn't enough (and trust us, it is) there's also a generous amount of extended gameplay to be unlocked as you progress through the game. There are two of these attached to each section, which tend to utilise both visuals and certain puzzles you've already encountered. The first of these is the self-explanatory time challenge and then there is a second mode, which presents you a range of conditions for each section. Fail to fulfil them and it's back to the start.

Controls

Like Pac-Pix this is almost exclusively controlled via the touch screen so if you want to know more just go down to the 'Dual Screen Use' section although we should mention that like Nintendo's 'King of Swing' it's worth taking a break every now and then to avoid that premature arthritis.

Graphics

Visually the game is really quite pleasing and it's clear that developers are now getting to grips with the system's 3D capabilities. There's even an option to rotate the camera but, annoyingly, only from left to right and because it's at a fixed height you can only see a short distance. Obviously this gets around the problems with draw distances but it can be irritating when you just need to look that bit further.

Sound

The soundtrack of Pac 'n' Roll isn't too bad so long as you are a fan of that type of cutesy arcade music. The voices, on the other hand, are likely to annoy you almost instantly with their high-pitched garbled nonsense. Do yourself a favour and skip it.

Dual screen

If you can recall the old Marble Madness arcade unit then you'll find the control system here very similar with a trackball controlling the action. The main difference is that it's a virtual track ball on the bottom screen, which is activated when you brush your stylus over it. Another major difference is the weighting and where the 'marble' only really struggles up hill there are a lot of collectables that alter the physics of the ball ranging from giving it tiny wings, so it can stay in the air longer, to transforming it into lead for salvaging underwater pills.

Final comments

When I first started playing this game I thought it was going to be yet another repetitive title with little depth and even less variety but the outcome was something else entirely. Although the levels are very similar, they are just different enough to keep you coming back for more. This is all down to a mixture of design and some ingenious puzzles. There's also a fair bit of extended gameplay to be had thanks to the bonus challenges but what the game really lacks is a multiplayer mode and if this had been included Pac 'n' Roll would be fast approaching full marks. Even without it though you are going to be playing his game for some time. Last of all it's confirmation that it was a good idea to buy a DS in the first place.

Pro: Challenging Gameplay
Con: No Multiplayer
Final score: 8.1

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