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[Draugoth]

 

[Punished Miku]

lol

 

[Giallo Corsa]

Matt Damon

 

[Muffdraul]

 

[ReBurn]

Is that a Pac-Man metroidvania?

 

[JaksGhost]

Is that a Pac-Man metroidvania?

Watch the Secret Level Pac-Man episode and it will all make sense.

 

[ReBurn]

Watch the Secret Level Pac-Man episode and it will all make sense.

I'll do that, thanks

 

[Holammer]

Looks like the Langoliers, Pacman by Stephen King.
This is what you get when you give an IP to a bunch of hack frauds.

 

[PanzerCute]

Matt Damon

 

[ReBurn]

Watch the Secret Level Pac-Man episode and it will all make sense.

Ok, that was weird.

 

[Heart_Attack]

Fuck it. I'll play it. Looks like Ghost Song with some Pac Man stuff added in. $30 seems about right.

 

[KungFucius]

Holy fucking weird.

 

[NeoIkaruGAF]

This doesn't make any sense.
Looks interesting, ngl.

 

[SmokedMeat]

 

[coffinbirth]

To essentially open the show with this really fucked my head up. I was thinking about it the whole time. It's deffo on a very short list of things shown that I'm actually interested in.

I'd really love a sequel to Pac-Man 256 or something similar though.

 

[diffusionx]

Same vibes

 

[lughnasadh123]

My main "holy shit wtf" moment there beyond more Ninja Gaiden.

 

[near]

I'm interested.

 

[kevboard]

the only issue I have with this so far is that the animations look weird and cheap.

the bosses seem to use a puppet system where limbs are just rotated, which looks super cheap and I dislike this style of animation in generall in games.

 

[Mister Wolf]

I don't think the creator would like that they turned his son into an eldritch horror.

 

[FunkMiller]

This has strong 'my Batman would get raped in prison' vibes.

 

[struggler_guts]

Holy shit that's awesome, I'm interested

 

[Revolutionary]

The Secret Level Pacman episode is one of the lamest and corniest reimaginings of Pac Man that I've ever seen, and it turns out it's based on an actual game that was in development....

I hope for their sake that the game is a 10/10, otherwise it's going into the history books as another Bomberman Act Zero.

 

[BlackTron]

We've come a long way since Miyamoto's "why aren't they cheering?" moment revealing Pac Man VS for Gamecube, haven't we?

 

[kevboard]

 

[Mister Wolf]

Extended gameplay footage.

 

[Punished Miku]

I will get this eventually. I just have a pile of metroidvanias I already own that I haven't had time to play so this will be one I get on sale. Looks good though.

 

[touchfuzzy]

Looks cool and I've got it on my wishlist. Just comes out the day right after Donkey Kong Bananza so may have to wait a bit.

Interesting that two of gaming oldest franchises are launching reboots a day apart in 2025.

 

[Diseased Yak]

Me: Oooh, a new game coming out called SHADOW LABYRINTH, sounds creepy as hell! Is it some dungeon crawler horror game where you play a nameless wandering soul untimely ripped from his sorrowful life and forced to battle endless hordes of the damned in order to have a chance at redemption????

Devs: That's the best part, you play as PAC-MAN!

 

[Arsic]

I'm currently playing Metroid Dread and loving it. This got thrown into my YT feed today and now it's on my radar for sure.

If it reviews well and I'm done with dread I may pick it up.

 

[Gamer_By_Proxy]

Today is release day! In about 7 hours. Someone do a Review Thread. I'm too lazy

 

[DragoonKain]

9/10 from NoisyPixel

 

[touchfuzzy]

Glad the first review is good cause my copy already shipped!

 

[Jinzo Prime]

Shadow Labyrinth OT | Pac in Black

 

[touchfuzzy]

Shadow Labyrinth OT | Hollow Bite

 

[Boo Who?]

Does the Switch version come with an actual physical copy of the game?

 

[Punished Miku]

I'm intrigued, but I don't need it right this second.

 

[touchfuzzy]

Does the Switch version come with an actual physical copy of the game?

Yes.

And Switch 2 upgrade is free on the eShop.

 

[Boo Who?]

Yes.

And Switch 2 upgrade is free on the eShop.

Excellent. I was debating what I wanted to get this on. It was between Steam and Switch since this seems perfect for portable. Switch 2 sounds like it is a solid version.

 

[Yoshichan]

So what's our opinion folks? Anyone got to play it yet?

 

[Bumblebeetuna]

Bought on Xbawks. Will post impressions later. Reviews seem good.

 

[Kacho]

Even though I got Patapon last week I'll probably cop this tonight on Steam. Bamco has been putting out cool shit lately.

 

[Gamer_By_Proxy]

Bought on Xbawks. Will post impressions later. Reviews seem good.

Still adding to your Xbox digital library?

 

[TerribleAtThisGame]

What in the attempted edgy franchise revive did I just watch?

I did laugh though so...there's that?

 

[ResurrectedContrarian]

the only good Pac-Man innovations, post Ms. Pac-Man:

Pac Man Vs

Pac Pix

Pac Man: Championship Edition

all the other times I've seen this IP try to be resurrected in platformers and whatever else, it's simply awful

 

[Deerock71]

It goes against my better judgement, but this game looks all right.

 

[coffinbirth]

the only good Pac-Man innovations, post Ms. Pac-Man:

Pac Man Vs

Pac Pix

Pac Man: Championship Edition

all the other times I've seen this IP try to be resurrected in platformers and whatever else, it's simply awful

Pac Man 256 is pretty fucking good too.

 

[touchfuzzy]

I did get this and play a couple hours in between Donkey Kong sessions on the weekend.

It's... fine? Very bog standard dark Metroidvania. I have some annoyances with the checkpoint system already, and the story is pretty much lore-heavy nonsense. We'll see how long I stick with it.

 

[DragoonKain]

So when I saw Noisy Pixel gave it a 9 I got pretty excited. Granted, I think NP gives out high scores pretty often, but still. I started this last night, and I gotta say this game is very disappointing. It feels really low budget, I don't know how else to say it. The controls really leave a lot to be desired. It has some SUPER annoying things like in the checkpoints that in virtually all Metroidvanias fully replenish all of your health and healing items, in this checkpoints don't do it. Only save points. In this game those are not one and the same. There are save points that are the main ones that do everything for you. And they fully replenish everything. Then there are checkpoints, which are like mini save points that heal you, but don't refill your healing items. One time already there was only a check point before a boss, not a save point. So I couldn't refill my healing items before fighting it, unless I trekked all the way back to a save point. Then had to make it all the way to the boss having to heal. Incredibly irritating. Totally unacceptable for a Metroidvania. I suspect this won't be an isolated occurrence.

Also when you turn into the Gaia, which is a main mechanic of this game, you're encouraged to do it a lot. But you need to fill your Gaia meter to use it. But to fill your Gaia meter, you need to kill normal enemies, then before they disappear, you have a short window to grab them and consume them by hitting the R stick. And you need to consume like 10+ of them to refill your meter. There's no other way as far as I know. Save points and checkpoints don't refill it. So after you use this power once, you need to basically grind to refill your meter. Every. Single. Time.

Also, buying things from vendors requires both money and materials. The only way to get materials is to consume enemies with Gaia the same way. So this game basically forces you to consistently grind and hurts the pacing.

This game is pretty linear too. It feels like there are a lot of branching paths, but they almost always lead to the same end point. And in the occasion there are some paths that actually go somewhere, so far for me, 99% of them go to a dead end that is clear will eventually become a shortcut later from the other side that I can't get to yet. Only a few times that I've explored so far have actually led me to items.

But it just doesn't feel right overall when playing. Not as responsive or fluid as most high quality Metroidvanias. No idea how NP gave this a 9. To me it's like a 6 at best so far. And this is a genre that I adore.

One thing I'll give it though... when you get hit in this game and take damage, you don't get knocked back like 99% of Metroidvanias. You just take damage, but don't move. I can't tell you how much of a relief that is, I FUCKING HATE the knock back shit in games. The number of times I leaped to a small ledge, got hit, and then got knocked back into spikes only to die drives me up a fucking wall. This doesn't have that. But the funny thing is, just based on playing the game, I think it was more of an oversight than a design choice because like I said, the game just feels cheaply made. Like it wasn't polished up during development.

I'll finish it, but a handful of hours in so far, a very big meh. It doesn't even look as pretty as it did during trailers and review clips.

 

[John Bilbo]

Just a wedge of cheese