Arcade Game Series: Ms. Pac-Man Review (PS4)

I was first introduced to Ms. Pac-Man when my dad came home one day with the Sega Genesis version. While I had heard of the game before then, I didn’t live under a rock, I really didn’t get a chance to actually have a Ms. Pac-Man experience. Needless to say, I feel in love with the game and spent thousands of hours playing. When I first heard that a Ms. Pac-Man game was coming to the PS4, I had to have it day one. Did this new version live up to my Ms. Pac-Man expectations? Keep reading to find out.

While some may say that there is no story with Ms. Pac-Man, there actually is. After completing a certain amount of levels you get a little cut scene, can you believe it a cut scene, that shows Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man meeting, falling in love, and having Junior. If you ask me, I call that a story. Other than that you basically spend level after level eating dots, eating random fruits, being chased after ghosts, and eating power pellets before chasing the ghosts yourself. It’s a wash, rinse, and repeat formula that doesn’t get old.

As eager as I was to play, I had a really hard time getting into this version of the game. It seemed like everything I had learned from my Sega Genesis version of Ms. Pac-Man was thrown out the window and I was shoved into a world I knew nothing about. After losing all of my little Ms. Pac-Man’s on the first level, the first level people, I knew that I wouldn’t be spending thousands of hours playing this game. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still Ms. Pac-Man, but it just wasn’t what I was really expecting.

While there were no game breaking bugs or glitches in this game, which I was extremely happy with because if you screw up a game like Ms. Pac-Man there has to be a problem. It’s like that time Ubisoft totally screwed up Tetris for the PS4. Anyway, the only problem I had was with the controls and this is a pretty major problem. You can only use the left stick or the D-pad to navigate Ms. Pac-Man through maze after maze, but for some reason neither seemed to work for me. Ms. Pac-Man would constantly get stuck in a corner or not go in the direction that I had told her to time after time after time which was why I ended up dying as much as I did. When you’re stuck in a corner pressing up on the D-Pad it would help if you actually moved up instead of being stuck in a corner and then being attacked by a ghost. Checking to make sure it wasn’t my worn out white PS4 controller, I tried another controller and had the same exact problem.

The graphics for this game are what you would expect for a Ms. Pac-Man game. The boards are simple in a nostalgic kind of way and although I’m not a fan of the screen within a screen type of layout, this worked for me this time. I enjoyed having the smaller screen in the middle of the TV and then having what would have been the outside of the arcade machine surrounding the screen giving you that arcade feel at home.

Let’s not forget to mention that there are trophies for this game. You totally read that right, trophies. There are a total of 21 trophies, including a platinum and they aren’t that hard to get. While they aren’t hard, I would say that they are challenging and require some practice and some grinding. If you’re going for the platinum be prepared for some controller breaking moments, which at that time I would say it’s time to turn the game off for a while, sit back and relax before coming back.

Kudos: Not a lot of games get this lately, but those trophy images for the game are pretty damn cool looking. I love that they’re simple yet retro and are basically what Ms. Pac-Man is all about.

While there is no multiplayer for this game, I was surprised that there wasn’t even a couch co-op experience. This is one of those games where I had wanted a couch co-op, but sadly there was none. There is a high score leaderboard though that I would rather not discuss since my high score was pretty damn pathetic.

Overall I give this game a 3 out of 5

What’s Great:
+ It’s the original arcade version of Ms. Pac-Man!
+ Cool retro trophy images that are fitting to the game as a whole.
+ While the graphics are unchanging and are the basic Ms. Pac-Man graphics, it’s what works because to see something different would have been a disappointment.

What’s Not So Great:
– Glitchy controls that don’t do what you want them to do causing you to die over and over again when you didn’t have to.
– No couch co-op which I think was a big mistake when it came to this game.

If it wasn’t for the glitchy controls, I could have seen this game getting an easy 4 or 4.5 out of 5. When you’re only objective is to move around the board, the controls have to work, and there is no getting around that. Ms. Pac-Man needs to be responsive and not have a delay or get stuck while you’re mashing the button or moving the left stick to get her to move. While this isn’t the best version of Ms. Pac-Man, for that I’ll hook up my Sega Genesis every once in a while and play that, it’s not the worst either. For $3.99, it’s not a lot of money to drop on some nostalgic retro gaming on a current generation console. If you’re a Ms. Pac-Man fan I would say go ahead and get it knowing that you’ll probably have some problems with the controls, but if you’re not a Ms. Pac-Man fan or have no idea what Ms. Pac-Man is you’ll probably want to skip this one.