Pac-Man Championship Edition 2 Plus review: Flashing Lights

Pac-Man Championship Edition 2 Plus for the Nintendo Switch offers a great on-the-go arcade experience but is surprisingly lacking in options.

Title: Pac-Man Championship Edition 2 Plus
Developer: Bandai Namco
Publisher: Bandai Namco
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Release Date: February 22nd, 2018

The original Pac-Man is a fairly simple, but really pure gaming experience that has remained popular even over thirty years after its debut. You have some follow-ups like Ms. Pac-Man that iterated on the formula and are arguably better but were still basically the same game. There have been other incarnations, but only those that really stuck to the core of the original Pac-Man formula have really persevered and remained relevant long after their release.

Sometimes, there’s beauty in the simplicity and purity of something, and that works for Pac-Man; do you ever really need to change it? Would you be able to change it in a meaningful way that arguably improved on the original? I think that was answered in 2007 when Pac-Man Championship Edition was released for the Xbox 360. It was a glitzier, more colorful game that added a fantastic soundtrack and a simple, but game-altering twist in a wide variety of different mazes and trying to get a whole chain of ghosts chasing you before you consumed that power pellet and turned from the hunter to the hunted, all in five-minute sprints. Suddenly, Pac-Man wasn’t just classic fun, it felt really fresh for the first time in literally decades.

So how do you try and top that formula? With Pac-Man Championship Edition 2 Plus for the Nintendo Switch, the answer is to make it even flashier and play it with a friend. The original game launched in 2016 for PS4, Xbox One, and PC. What is special about the Switch edition is the 2-player co-op mode (hence the “plus”). And while Pac-Man Championship Edition 2 Plus delivers the high-adrenaline rush you’d look for in an arcade experience, it’s not the definitive Pac-Man experience I was quite hoping it would be.

Right up front, the biggest change in Pac-Man Championship Edition 2 Plus from any previous game in the series is that bumping into a ghost doesn’t instantly mean death. You can actually bump into a ghost multiple times before it can kill you, and ghosts in certain states (basically hollow ghosts that create chains of ghosts you can eat) you can bump into as much as you please. My only huge issue with this is when you a chasing a massive chain of ghosts while on a power pellet, you can’t simply hit any part of the chain; you must hit the head of it, and it can be hard to even tell where it’s going at times when the chain is massive. But otherwise, it’s a pretty welcome twist to the usual formula.

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Otherwise, most of the changes are cosmetic, but in a way that works really well. The combination of colors and music and even explosions and fireworks make pretty much every single session with Pac-Man Championship Edition 2 Plus a fantastic visual and audio feast that seems to hit your synapses just right and manages to be great for one or many quick sessions.

By far the main appeal of Pac-Man Championship Edition 2 Plus is “Score Attack Mode” where you simply try and score as high you can in five-minute bursts across a wide variety of boards, and your scores can be uploaded to online leaderboards. My biggest problem with this mode is simply that while the variety of boards is great, it seems super simplified by only allowing five minutes with no variations. You can’t change time, lives, anything beyond some cosmetic options. The mode is extremely fun, I just wish it was more customizable. That might make leaderboards more complicated, but you simply could not have them for anything other than the standard five-minute mode and that could have worked.

The weakest feature in Pac-Man Championship Edition 2 Plus is “Adventure Mode.” On paper, it’s not a completely terrible idea. You take the gameplay already present and add goals and even bosses to beat. The problem is the goal is the same on every single level (consume a certain amount of fruit) and it is under an incredibly strict time limit. You get a little more time with each piece of fruit you consume, but Pac-Man isn’t just about time-limits. “Adventure Mode” is where they really could’ve varied it up and it just fails hard at that.

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It just seems odd that there’s just no option to play regular old Pac-Man.

Exclusive to the Nintendo Switch version of Pac-Man Championship Edition 2 Plus is a two-player mode. You both eat pellets and avoid ghosts like usual, but when a fruit or power pellet appears, you must collide (essentially “kiss”) to get that item. This goes for chomping down ghosts as well, and you also fight bosses together. One person can get caught by a ghost but the other can free them before a meter runs out. This mode can be very chaotic, but also lots of fun. My only complaint is that is no online option for this mode. Granted, online is not the best on Switch, but there are plenty of solid online offerings on the system and this would’ve been a pretty solid addition to that.

Finally, it just seems odd that there’s just no option to play regular old Pac-Man. Maybe it’s an unlockable I’m not aware of (I am admittedly not good enough to unlock everything in the game), but I think it should be there, especially for anyone who might be picking up their first experience with this game in years or ever and see where the game came from and where it began. I know this isn’t some definitive collection or anything, but for a game with series with such a legacy, it seems like it should be an included option.

Pac-Man Championship Edition 2 Plus is an extremely solid choice if you are looking for great and quick arcade action for your Nintendo Switch. The gameplay is incredibly tight, the visuals are crisp and fun and it offers a welcome twist on a well-worn formula. It just feels like it could’ve been a lot more with just a little more customization added to it.

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A copy of this game was provided to App Trigger for the purpose of this review. All scores are ranked out of 10, with .5 increments. Click here to learn more about our Review Policy.