Slow down, Pac-Podcast!
Welcome back NOCLIP Pocket! Today, we’re going to be talking about Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures, which is among the stranger entries in the Pac-Man franchise. In Pac-Man 2, you guide Pac-Man around a world map to accomplish goals, most of which are mundane chores, by shooting at things with a slingshot or directing his attention, making the game a sort of second-person adventure game. You’ll need to identify objects that will help you and avoid the ones that won’t while managing both Pac-Man’s attention as well as his mood. This makes the game fluctuate between being a colorful shooting gallery where you’re often surprised by the results of your actions and a kind of tedious experience once you figure out what needs to be done and just need to make it happen through all the curve balls the game throws at you. Despite this dichotomy, this is still an extremely unique game that uses a familiar character in an extremely unexpected way and is worth taking a look at, particularly if you’re interested in the history of games. We’re going to be talking about the amount of environmental interaction the game encourages with its systems, the strangeness of the concepts and mechanics and we crack into the real Pac-lore this game sheds light on.
Thank you for joining us again this week! This was the game that actually inspired “Fan-bruary” a few months back and we felt like we should definitely do an episode on it even if we didn’t manage to squeeze it in back then. It certainly is an odd one and is appealing in that "you don’t see that very often” kind of way. Have you played this game? Or even heard of it? Let us know in the comments or over on Discord. Next time, we’re going to be talking about Solar Ash, the third-person platformer (kind of?) from the creator of Hyperlight Drifter, so be sure to check back then.