This game is absolutly brilliant.
For a quick no nonsense look at Pac Man CE, watch this vid.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rprGC1eDSFw
(Ah...the video I saw has been removed, this one will have to do. 
)
The maze is split into two halves. To begin with you have dots on both sides of the screen. You eat all the dots and power pills on side...a fruit appears on the other. Eat the fruit and the dots appear back on the other side. Giving you this back and forth mechanic which continues for as long as you have lives and time left.
The more dots you eat, the higher they raise in points value and the faster the game becomes. But as ever, those pesky ghosts are out to stop you. This is another added layer to the CRACK levels of addictiveness of this game, is your ability to chain the effects of the power pill and the get a multiplyer bonus for each successive ghost you eat. From 400-3200.
Each time you eat the ghost, a high pitched shreik or "WRRRY" occurs, and my god its fantastic when you can manage to eat all the ghosts one after another. When eaten they get sent back into the central chamber, and this is when you want to be ready to eat another pill and send them back immediatly. ^___^
Sometimes when the maze changes shape, you can end up with 3 power pills on each side of the maze. It's here where you have to decide to carry on clearing the maze to get the dots\fruit\more dots...or die near one of the dots, and then clear up with a very possible x24 Ghost Combo!
The mazes get tougher the more you clear them, so you need to make sure you have the best possible eating patterns (XD) sorted for the maze, but you have to always be aware of the ghosts! It's really hard to balance, as leaving the power pill for later on when you need to go over the other side is works...but its when you least expect ghosts to hustle you and trap you, you wish you took the power pill a bit earlier. ;\/
I've played this game so much over the past few weeks, and even when I have a strategy it all goes out the window as I think it would be better to carry on going for the dots combo...but then I go for the power pills and ghost greedyness! Ghosts at that stage are moving pretty fast and I lose the momentum and effects of the power pill...and then comes the long series of deaths. xD
Probably one of the best games released on XBLA to date since Geometry Wars (Bomberman is ace too), and it really is worth everyones time to give it ago. I can't see how people won't get hooked on this after 1 or 2 plays. 
It's amazing that i'm playing Pac Man on a £300 console...and I love it!
Oh and the music... ^_______^
Sounds groovy. I like stuff like this where they've extended the concepts and tweaked it a little. Pac Man versus is a classic example of doing it right and this sounds like another cool reinvention of a game that has such massive enduring appeal. The ghost combo thing sounds like an extension of the original combo mechanic, but now you can chain up so long as you have the pills to do it. The split screen idea sounds cool too, but how do the levels ever end if you can keep replenishing the available dots?
All the game modes are restricted by time limits, so you carry on untill you have run out of lives or when the timer ticks down to zero. I've had this a few weeks, and I've not even tried the other game modes which have a different arrangment of mazes and speed. Sticking to the main "Championship Edition" mode for now, as I will find it hard getting back into the groove of that mode if I go mess about on the others.
Soon as I get it down as best I can, then I'll move over the other modes. Beat my high score yesterday, somthing like 290,400.
Want to try and beat my mate who has 350,00. ;/\
The live demo you get free is enough of a sample to get you hooked through Madbury.
Try it. 
You have done an amazing job of selling Pac Man to me with that first post Singho - I'll be trying that demo when I get in!
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When's 'Wii Carlton' coming out?
I would if I wasn't 6000 miles away from my 360
Yes you do that! *nods*
Only managed to push my score up to 296,920 tonight. This run was mad! I only died once and was gobbling up all the pellets, then in the last minute I kept getting caught out by the ghosts and lost valuable time. It's about roughly 3-5 secs to get Pac-man going again from death to ressurection. I was hoping to get the 2nd lot of keys to open up the 6 power pill maze pattern, but I pranged it up too hard, and only manged to fractionally beat my previous score. Urghh.
Better call it a night, otherwise I'll be dreaming about being locked in a darkened room with neon strobe lights eating pills...again. It's not even Saturday. ;p
I'M STRAIGHT EDGE , don't worry!
*Singho grabs the Smarties
I would if I wasn't 6000 miles away from my 360 :(
Is this not available in UK land?
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When's 'Wii Carlton' coming out?
Yeah, everyone should have this. After all the Pacman spin-offs this is finally the one that deserves the unofficial title of Pacman 2. I love it how you can 'grind' Pacman along the rails, making little sparks appear, meaning he can turn the corner faster.
Only had three goes as I'm totally addicted to WoW now, but my score gets better each time. \o/
Not much to add - this is fantastic! Bestest Live game evar!
To celebrate I got a bit carried away with the UFO machine at Namco Station yesterday:
Lookit him go!
You didn't...
Win all of those did you? Squiff must be chuffed I'm sure.
I see you have a double up on Pacman. If you need to find a home for the second ghost muncher drop us a line
.
I got the knack of the Namco UFO catcher for sure - 3 goes for a quid helped
I think we ended up with 10 of the bastards for about £15.
Three of them belong to JibberX.
Have you played Pac-Man CE yet? I only fired it up Saturday, and by heck it is good. The combo ghost muching is basically crack, and 5 minute Championship mode is as close to arcade perfection as you can get. It looks and sounds perky too
This game is worth a 2nd hand Core and a memory stick!
Must investigate... must rob a bank...
Seriously, this is THE game of XBLA... unless it appears on other platforms that is, Steam anyone?
Not yet. I'm still in Laos. Back tomorrow, so I will dl it then if I remember. I don't think I've got any points left, so will have to dig out the credit card
5 minutes sounds like my idea or gaming Nirvana. I need rapid games to keep me topped up life is just too hectic.
Thought!
Any word on whether this version will make its way to Pac Man Vs on the DS or is that being developed by Nintendo? Sounds like the perfect fit for the DS 2 screens, 5 minutes etc.
To celebrate I got a bit carried away with the UFO machine at Namco Station yesterday:
Lookit him go!
THAT is wicked! - I'm so rubbish at those machines, I wanted one of the Yoshis they had but I couldnt win one >_<
I even offered to pay for one if they'd let me buy it but noooo - they want to rinse manz for all they're worth on those machines.
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I once saw a Pikmin UFO catcher in Japan a few years ago. Oh how I tried and tried to rescue those beautiful Pikmin but, alas, I ran out of Yen and had to leave them there, trapped.
I also saw a UFO catcher with live lobsters in. Weird!
I love this game.
Got 70 points in the full 5 minutes Champ Mode but I reckon 10 points is possible.
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When's 'Wii Carlton' coming out?
I can't seem to break the 200K barrier on the 5 minute championship mode :s
Crazy:
http://www.clubnamco.com/product.php?productid=205&cat=255&page=2
Wicked, been back on this recently and loving it all over again. I've now got all the achievements bar the 400,000 point achievement. Hardest so far was getting the crown.
The way the pellets multiply up the longer you survive is pure class. I'll need a really good run to breach the 400,000 mark with fewer death.
Need to hook my box up to the net and update the ol' leaderboards.
Don't you need to be online for your scores to count?
No idea. Probably, but you can't take the achievements away
I assume it updates my gamerscore and achievement list the next time I connect.
I assume...
Good for you Mads, with my RRoD'd 360, once I get it back I'm gonna go back to basics and hit this one properly. It was one of the reasons I stumped up on the brick in the first place.
5 mins of pure gaming... well its one of those 5 mins X 10 attempts when you abort halfway through and try try again.
Shame Space Giraffe is such a time suck, otherwise I'd play that more, unfortunately that leaves you mentally crushed 3 hours later. And unable to use heavey machinery.
That's exactly it! I've clocked up 350k+ on a few goes, but eeeking it out over the 400k mark is going to be a challenge. Eventually you start to 'feel' the movement of the ghosts. Hopefully staying alive longer will be enough to tip me over the bar.
I've seen the pellets go up to 50 points a piece, not sure if they go higher than that.
That said getting a big score really comes down to chaining the ghosts together, which isn't all that easy as the game gets faster and faster.
I'm genuinely stunned with what they've done with this game. It simply is a brilliant version of Pac Man and a brilliant game period. The balance and game mechanics are superb. So simple and yet so addictive. Perfect.
True to my ramblings I hooked this up last night, having got my 360 back with a new motherboard, a patronising letter and a free month of gold membership.
Anyways, I after about 4 runs I started getting my groove back and because its such a well put together actual computer game, with actual gameplay, design and thought... It just freaks my brain out.
The intrinsic balance this game has with the core mechanics of just moving a blob around a screen and the flow and decisions that come about are mentally flowering.
Essentially I've got to the stage where I have be faster, better and more agile to get the continuous points and get to the mega bonus round power pellet stage nearing the end of the 5 mins....
Its great and so incrementally just within my grasp you simply cannot not play it!
Awesome. Have you got all the achievements yet? Or maybe your just playing for the points.
Cracked 200k, seems I need about 4 warm up runs to get those stupid theories out of my routine then I can manage a couple of competitive runs before I crash and burn badly and have to capitulate.
I tells ya, the balance between speed, aggression and luck is almost perfect... One thing that is slightly bugging me is the dead ghost back to base path finding logic that may or may not be a little too random to make the game totally completely fantastic.
Having that one element up to chance and outside of on rails arcade rule set is hmmmm.
Still there might be a quantifyable rule for their behaviour?
Good fun!