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This dog is free from fleas
by RevStu (October 29th, 2010 at 10:22 pm)
…is the only sense in which the word “free” is legitimately applicable in Namco’s new App Store blurb for Pac-Man Championship Edition (“NOW FREE: CHALLENGE MODE! NOW FREE: ALL 30 courses and 120 missions!”), as in “this game is now free from in-app purchases”.
What’s actually happened is that Namco have effectively made the game more expensive, by putting everything from the expansion pack into the normal edition and charging the previous full price of both of them (£2.99/€3,99/$4.99) for the new unified app. Previously you had the choice of just buying the base edition – which contained enough content for many players – and adding the expansion pack later, whereas now you have to buy it all straight away.
(Actually, if you previously bought the base edition and didn’t buy the DLC, this update WILL give you it for nothing – Scrupulous Fairness Ed)
But Pac-Man CE is great, and will inevitably be reduced in price at some point in the near future, and the updated version has a new virtual-analogue joypad option and incorporates GameCentre achievements and leaderboards, so we’re giving it another mention anyway. Call us old softies.
I have the iPhone version of “regular” Pac-Man, but I had no idea CE had been released for the iPhone. The Xbox 360 version is one of my favourite “What could I do to fill the next five minutes?” games, and the idea of having a portable version is, now I think about it, a worrying one – goodbye free time and so long productivity.
It’s a lot more than a portable version of the 360 game – it has vastly more content. Bad luck.
Man. I lost so much time to this last year. A fantastic game.
What control system are you lot using? ’cause I want to like this, but experiencing a lot of that familiar ol’ iOS “NEEDS PHYSICAL, DIGITAL CONTROLS” frustration.
Swipey swipey, using cunning ‘deal with direction before next corner’ expertise, as with all Pac-Man games, right back to the first one.
Natch, but when you want to whip around a single square block at high speed, swipe-swipe-swipe-swipe is a pain.
I use Type 3, but I don’t actually use my thumbs, I just swipe with an index finger.