Pac-Man and Galaga Dimensions

Genre: Compilation / Arcade

Players: 1, Online Leaderboards

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Review:

Pac-Man and Galaga Dimensions, released on Nintendo 3DS in 2011, is a Compilation of three games from each respective series. This includes a version of the original Arcade games, the Xbox Live Arcade reimagined sequels, and two entirely new games created specifically for this Compilation.

Here’s what I thought of each of the included games:

Game	Genre	# of Players	Grade	tl;dr
Galaga	Shmup	1, Online Leaderboards	C	Galaga is a classic shmup, although by today’s standards it is frustratingly slow and limited.
Galaga Legions	Shmup	1, Online Leaderboards	A-	Galaga Legions reimagines the classic Arcade Shmup by making it about strategic placement of stationary helper ships against forecasted swarms of hundreds of enemies. This is an absolutely inspired take on both the original game and the genre as a whole, and while it can get repetitive at times, this is nevertheless one of the best games the genre has ever seen.
Galaga 3D Impact	First-Person Shooting Gallery Game / On-Rails Shooter	1, Online Leaderboards	C-	Galaga 3D Impact bears only the most remote superficial likeness to its predecessors. On its own, this wouldn’t be damning, but unfortunately even in its own right this is a pretty mediocre take on the genre that seems like it was designed primarily to take advantage of the 3DS’s gyroscopic motion control. While players can opt to use traditional gamepad controls instead, this nevertheless makes everything feel gimmicky and not especially compelling.
Pac-Man	Arcade	1, Online Leaderboards	C+	Pac-Man is a classic Arcade maze game, and it still plays great. However, unlike Ms. Pac-Man, you’re stuck with just the one opening level, so the game gets repetitive pretty quickly.
Pac-Man: Championship Edition	Arcade	1, Online Leaderboards	A	This neon-infused, pulsating reimagining of Pac-Man as a fast-paced, intense, score-focused race against the clock is absolutely inspired. It’s just a shame there’s no multiplayer mode here, unless you count leaderboards.
Pac-Man Tilt	Platformer	1, Online Leaderboards	B+	With bright neon visuals like Pac-Man is jumping across an abstract take on the Vegas Strip, this game doesn’t resemble the classic Arcade game very much, but it is nevertheless a very good Platformer and while the use of gyroscopic motion control to incorporate a “tilt” function into the game’s world could have been gimmicky, it actually makes for a pretty unique and fun take on the genre.

In short, I thought the real highlights of this Compilation were the Xbox Live Arcade games, though Pac-Man Tilt is a surprisingly excellent and original Platformer as well. Meanwhile, the low point here has to be Galaga 3D Impact, which neither capitalizes on its source material nor crafts a particularly compelling new experience. However, overall I feel like there’s some pretty good variety in this package, and even games within the same genre and series still feel significantly different enough that they’re wholly different experiences.

The presentation for these games is about as good as one might expect, though this does mean that some of the games suffer a bit due to the limited screen size of the Nintendo 3DS. In particular, I noted that this was an issue for Galaga, Pac-Man, and Pac-Man: Championship Edition, making finer detail harder to see, and particularly making it harder to make fast precision turns in the Pac-Man games. I can’t very well fault the game for this, as it’s just doing what it can with the hardware, but it deserves mention in any case.

A bit less forgivable is the way this game handles its leaderboards, not only requiring players to stop and wait for the game to connect online to access them, but not even including these leaderboards within the individual games themselves – to view them, you need to log out of the games and go into a completely different selection on the main menu. Frustrating.

As for bonus content, there’s really only one to speak of here, and that is the “Pac-Man 3D Movie”, which seems to be a promo movie or concept work (or perhaps pilot) for the series Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures. This is mildly amusing, but not something I think anyone’s likely to watch more than once before moving on.

Overall, Pac-Man and Galaga Dimensions is a somewhat uneven package. Of the six included games, three of them are great and three of them are somewhat middling, and some of the games are hurt by the need to squish them down onto the Nintendo 3DS’s tiny screen. However, the games that are good here are very good, and just those few great games make this Compilation more than worthwhile.

tl;dr – Pac-Man and Galaga Dimensions is a Compilation that includes Galaga, Galaga Legions, Galaga 3D Impact, Pac-Man, Pac-Man: Championship Edition, and Pac-Man Tilt. Of those games, the real stars are Galaga Legions, Pac-Man: Championship Edition, and Pac-Man Tilt, with some of the included games suffering a bit due to the limited screen size of the Nintendo 3DS. While this makes for a somewhat uneven Compilation, I would still argue that this Compilation is more than worth getting for the good games in the bunch.

Grade: B+

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