Pac-Pix (Nintendo DS, 2005)

Pac-Pix for the Nintendo DS branches Pac-Man once again into unfamiliar territory. While the gameplay is initially appealing, due to it's unique use of the Stylus as its sole control scheme, it is this very unique quality that ultimately leads to the games downfall.

Like Kirby's Canvas Curse, Pac-Pix is controlled entirely with the stylus. Unlike Pac-Pix, you actually draw Pac-Man into the game itself. The game takes your (usually embarrasingly shoddy) Pac-Man drawing and animates it, sending it across a blank page, munching up various monsters and ghosts. Again, like Kirby, you do not control Pac-Man directly, but instead draw lines on the screen that send him off in what ever direction you drew the line. Pac-Man can be drawn just about any size on the screen, but he moves much slower the larger he is, faster the smaller he is. You can draw as many Pac-Men on the screen as you want at any time, though you're limited on how many Pac-Men you can draw total. So, each time you die, you have to draw another Pac-Man, which basically takes one "life" away.

Other moves are added to mix up gameplay. Flying ghosts have to be taken down by drawing an arrow, certain obstructions have to be blown up by drawing a bomb with a fuse. Here's where the game shows its most glaring issue. While the game allows you to draw a horrendous, barely recognizable Pac-Man to awkwardly gobble its way across the screen, it's very particular when it comes to drawing the arrows and bombs you must use to take down certain enemies. Often, the game requires you to draw, re-draw, then draw an arrow again before it finally fires off, which is severely costly in levels where you only have a few seconds to accomplish a challenge. Add this in to the fact that if you fail a mission, you start the entire "world" (each world is a series of several short levels) over from the beginning.

The graphics are cartoony (mimicking a sketchbook with crayoned in ghosts on the page), but mostly pretty bland, as every environment is meant to look like, well, a blank piece of paper. Not very exciting stuff, but not offensive either. Sound and music are light and fluffy, pretty what you'd expect from a modern Pac-Man game.

I really wanted to enjoy this game. I loved being able to draw an abomination of a Pac-Man, watching it come to life and proceed to eat everything on the screen. It's unfortunate that the controls when it came to drawing the weapons, the game became so unforgiving and frustrating. I'm not saying that there's no one out there that would enjoy this game. Maybe my reaction times are just too slow, or maybe I just really suck at drawing, but even when I seemed to draw it perfectly, it would rarely take on less than three or four tries, and would inevitably force me to replay the entire world. Repeat that a few times, and well, you have a unique but frustrating game that gets a 2 out of 5 from me.