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Pac-Pix Review - DS

The Nintendo DS has a lot to live up to these days. it's been nearly half a year since it's arrived on our shelves down under, and we've been confronted with fairly average touch-screen diversified games. Nearly all the games on DS so far have either been shoddy movie-to-game titles or remakes of Nintendo classics. Luckily Pac-Pix is a game that could never be replicated on anything without a touch screen, and for any Pac-Man fan it's a sure hit.

Gameplay

There's a pretty simple story for this game. The ghosts have been unleashed and spread amongst all the 'books', however Pac-Man has been off at work rounding up all the ghosts, and now they simply rest inside one book. Pac-Man however has been attacked and can no longer do anything to get rid of the ghosts – that's where you come in. Pac-Man asks you to round up and destroy the remaining ghosts in the final book, consisting of 12 chapters, or as gamers would much prefer to call them, levels. Each level has several levels inside it, which are of course the pages that make up the chapters, and as you progress through the game, each chapter becomes harder.

At the beginning of the game, you're taken through a tutorial on how to control your Pac-Men. it's a very interesting and unique thing too. You have to draw a Pac-Man facing whatever direction. If you successfully draw it, it begins to move around the screen. You must then draw wall lines in the direction you want the Pac-Man to travel in order to kill the ghosts that are constantly on the move in random directions. If you draw a big Pac-Man, it moves a lot slower than a small Pac-Man. Sound easy? If you have no drawing skills, you may find Pac-Pix quite a challenge. This game definitely exploit's the wonders of the Nintendo DS as you're constantly using the touch screen to win, and there's no need to use any of the actual buttons.

As the learning curve takes it's spikes, you'll find Pac-Pix may be a lot more than you bargained for. Although there are only twelve chapters, if you're not up for some intensely insane action, Pac-Pix may be too much for you. Throughout the game, you have the main gameplay action on the touch screen, and all of the stats on the top screen. This means the bottom screen is free of any information and you can concentrate purely on the gameplay without having to worry about other things changing on the screen that really don't matter much at the time. The top screen shows how many Pac-Men you have left to draw, how many ghosts you have left to eat, and how much time you have left. It also shows your score and what level you are up to.

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