Pac-Man World 2
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 An awesome sequel to Pac-Man World.
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Pac-Man World 2 (パックマンワールド2, Pakkuman Wārudo Tsū) is a video game by Namco USA for Xbox, Nintendo GameCube, PlayStation 2, Game Boy Advance, and Microsoft Windows released in 2002. It is the sequel to Pac-Man World, and is the second/penultimate installment of the Pac-Man World Trilogy. Like the original Pac-Man World, the player controls the character of Pac-Man in a 3D platforming environment. The Game Boy Advance version is vastly different, with 2D characters moving in an isometric environment.
Plot
During a restful night in the Pac-Village, Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde sneak into the village. Reuniting at the village's Golden Fruit Tree, the ghosts pick off the five Golden Fruit off the tree. Pinky juggles the fruit, while Blinky, Inky and Clyde use the fruit like a football. Unaware to them, the sky begins to darken as the tree begins to violently shake. The ghosts, while initially distracted, realize this and witness a monster emerge from the bottom of the tree. The ghosts look in shock as the monster reveals himself to be Spooky, free from his century-long prison. Spooky recruits the ghostly quartet to hide the golden fruit to rid Pac-Land of the Pac-People.
Why It's Another World
- This is an awesome Pac-Man 3D platforming adventure sequel to Pac-Man World, as this is another Pac-Man platforming game while still feeling like a Pac-Man game.
- A much more balanced difficulty than it's predecessor, as here the game difficulty isn't as hard but it still is challenging, and unlike the first game, you doesn't had to collect anything to fight Spooky, which make it not frustrating and rather easy to access the final boss.
- Nicely designed worlds.
- Colorful and vibrant graphics for it's time, as the graphics are quite detailled for 2002 standards and had awesome characters models, also they are colorful to look at and the art style is faithful to the Pac-Man franchise.
- The Butt Bounce and the Rev-Roll form the first game return, which are both used a lot in this game.
- Nice new move, the Flip Kick, and nice new power-up, the Shrink Pallet.
- Lots of replay value, such as playing the Arcade games in the village, or trying to get the 100%, or even doing the whole game again.
- Power Pellets also return, which works just the same, using them to defeat regular ghosts.
- Funky soundtrack, which consist of mainly catchy musics and also had different sryle over the levels you play, in which they are rather fitting, and some of them sound quite epic.
- The main ghosts have decent boss fights, but then all come together for one awesome boss fight.
- Good voice acting from characters such as Professor Pac-Man and the ghosts themself, and while there isn't that many characters that talk, there's still a fairly decent number of voice actor for them, and not any characters had bad voice acting.
- Spooky is a very epic and enjoyable final boss who also has a fantastic design, also he a way better villain than the one of Pac-Man World 3, which was just a generic villain that is very unlikable (in a bad way).
- The Golden Fruit Tree is a nice new location.
- So many collectibles throughout the worlds.
- Sue’s Arcade is a nice new mode, where it has the mazes, the jukebox, the original Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man, as well as Pac-Attack and Pac-Mania.
- Variety of new mazes, it has a total of 16 new mazes in form of mini-games with and without obstacles making it pretty challenging.
Bad Qualities
- Some of the Maze mini-games use obstacles that require you to stop and wait while the ghosts are still chasing you.
- While the voice acting is really decent, unfortunately not a lot of characters talk, Pac-Man once again doesn't talk, and speaking of it, some of the languages didn't get a dub like in the first game, for exemple unlike the first game, no French dub is present.
- The GBA port of the game is a horrible port.
- While the boss selection is great, Blinky is considered one of the hardest boss fights of all time due to all of his attacks hurting you, however thanks to the wonky hitbox of Pac-Man, you can dodge all the projectiles by standing still.
- Speaking of Blinky (the red ghost), his name was mixed up with Clyde (the orange ghost).
- The PC port has slightly more washed out colors. It also has the infamous StarForce copy protection system, making it almost impossible to play on modern Windows systems.
- The GameCube version is missing some visuals (like the water puddles during the first boss).
Reception
Next Generation ranked it as the fifty-sixth highest-selling game launched for the PlayStation 2, Xbox or GameCube between January, 2000 and July, 2006 in that country. Combined sales of Pac-Man World games released in the 2000s reached 1.8 million units in the United States by July 2006.
The GameCube version of Pac-Man World 2 has an average score of 73.83% on GameRankings. The PlayStation 2 and Xbox versions each have an average score of 68.18% and 67.69% respectively. The GameCube version became a Player's Choice title, the PlayStation 2 version became a Greatest Hits title and the Xbox version became a Platinum Hits title. The game also has a score of 8.0 on GameSpot for the PS2 version, a 7.9 for the GameCube version, and a 7.5 for the Xbox version. The game's camera system received criticism, but the musical score was praised. NGC Magazine gave the game 70% rating, giving praise to the level and boss designs, although criticizing the poor camera system and the gameplay being similar to the Mario games. Pac-Man World 2 was nominated for GameSpot's annual "Best Platformer on Xbox" award, which went to Jet Set Radio Future.
The Player's Choice edition of the GameCube version included Pac-Man Vs. as a bonus pack-in in North America. Also for North America in 2008, Pac-Man World 2, along with Pac-Man World 3 and Pac-Man World Rally, were included in a 3-pack called the Pac-Man Power Pack for the PlayStation 2.
Trivia
- This is the last Pac-Man game to be developed by Namco Hometek prior to in-house development closing as part of Namco's restructuring in 2003.
- The PlayStation 2 version of Pac-Man World 2 sold an estimated 1.2 million copies in the US alone, as of 2007. When factoring in other regions and other gaming platforms, the complete sales are estimated to be around 2.5 million copies, which would make it the third best-selling console game in the Pac-Man series (only behind Pac-Man Collection and Atari 2600 Pac-Man).
- Blinky and Clyde's names are swapped in their respective boss battles (see Clyde and Blinky error).
- The Japanese version of the game makes use of a notable voice cast on a number of characters. Among the new voice cast, several new voice lines have been added throughout the game when a character communicates with Pac-Man during cutscenes, most especially during boss or level introductions; most of which are exclusive to the Japanese version.
- Hikaru Midorikawa voices Blinky (referred to as Clyde).
- Tamotsu Nishiwaki voices Clyde (referred to as Blinky).
- Junko Noda voices Inky.
- Sara Nakayama voices Pinky.
- Daisuke Gouri voices Spooky & Ghost Tree.
- Takeshi Aono voices Professor Pac-Man.
- Tetsu Inada voices Pac-Ranger.
- Pac-Man has many hidden animations that can be done by doing simple actions:
- Leaving him idle for long enough will eventually put him to sleep.
- Tilting the joystick slightly will make him walk or sneak.
- While Ms. Pac-Man herself does not appear in Pac-Man World 2, a frame of her can be seen in Pac-Man's house during the opening and ending cutscenes. The frame of Ms. Pac-Man originates from the opening for Pac-Man Fever, which released nearly 7 months after Pac-Man World 2.
- In Sue's Arcade, the Pac-Man World 2 Maze Mode machine uses a screenshot of Pac-Gal, a bootleg ROM hack of Ms. Pac-Man.
- For unknown reasons, some PC releases of the game have an ESRB rating of T [for Teen]; all other North American versions of the game, including other PC revisions, have an ESRB rating of E [for Everyone].