Pac-Man Championship Edition 2

At its core, Pac-Man Championship Edition 2 is still Pac-Man. You still run around a maze eating dots, and when you eat a power pellet, it’s time to go to town on some ghosts. But the Championship series tinkers with everything else core to the experience, modernizing the game to fit current standards of arcade fun. Championship Edition 2 further messes with the Pac-Man formula, modernizing the series yet again while proving its timelessness.

Boasting a wealth of challenge and a litany of well considered changes, Pac-Man Championship Edition 2 feels like a Grandmasters Tour of series architect Toru Iwatani’s magnum opus. Accessible and compelling, Pac-Man Championship Edition 2 is one of the finest arcade games you can buy on PS4.

Reigning Champ

Pac-Man Championship Edition 2 is everything you may want out of a puzzle game and more. It looks simple at first glance, but there’s a surprising amount of depth. It can be annoying have to jump through so many hoops to unlock that content, but the jumping is very entertaining. If you don’t come into this expecting to just beat levels, and instead want something you can spend days or weeks trying to master, you’re in for a great time.

Adds a lot of excitement to an already fast paced game that makes Pac-Man Championship Edition 2 a very worthy follow-up on its predecessor.

An unexpectedly brave attempt to once again rewrite the rules on Pac-Man, resulting in another near-classic arcade experience.

Over a year after its initial release, Namco's latest maze muncher is now on Switch with a cool new multiplayer mode. However, is that enough to warrant another purchase if you already own the vanilla version?

I had a good time with Pac-Man Championship Edition 2, even if it meant I had to wade through a lot of white noise to find it. For every excellent addition like being able to jump back to the start of a map, there are a few that aren’t as well thought out and feel more like limitations than tools for expanding your options. Figuring out the fast-paced puzzles based around all the new tweaks is still a good retro-arcade challenge, but it doesn’t come close to recapturing the magic of the first Championship Edition.

It might be a case of sky-high expectations, but this sequel doesn’t live up to its sublime predecessor Pac-Man Championship Edition DX+. Still, I’m not so sure it ever could — that game was damn near perfect, putting Bandai Namco in a tough spot when creating a follow-up. Pac-Man Championship Edition 2 is worth playing for its frenetic new style and ruleset, but it’s no replacement.

The sound in Pac-Man Championship Edition 2 is exciting but largely forgettable. While the electric and fast-paced music fits the visuals as you play, you won’t remember the vast majority of it once you turn the game off. On the other hand, the refreshingly vintage sound effects are as memorable as ever, which adds a layer of excitement to an already speedy game.

While not without a few minor sound problems, Pac-Man Championship Edition 2 is the definitive evolution of the Pac-Man series, adding enough new mechanics while improving the main game so much that the title is worth a purchase from any arcade game or Pac-Man fan. While some series veterans might not be a fan of the radical changes to this game's gameplay, Pac-Man Championship Edition 2 shows that there is still a lot of life and innovation to be found in this 36 year old series. This game was truly the power pellet that the entire series needed, and now that it has been rejuvenated, I wouldn...