Many of the tracks have obstacles that are practically – or actually – impossible to avoid. This leads to my chief complaint with the racing in Pac-Man World Rally: Due to several interruptions, you never find a great rhythm within the tracks. When I'm falling off of a course at the same spot on 90% of the laps, I have to doubt that it is entirely an issue of skill. I don't get the impression that any pre-release play-testing led to significant track revisions. This is just one of many instances I noted in which the tracks fail to come off as user-friendly. One bordered section of the track features enough right turns in rapid succession to send you head-first into a handful of walls. Conceptualized as a spiritual successor to (or clear rip-off of) Rainbow Road of Mario Kart fame, Funhouse of Terror challenges gamers to stay on the floating track despite a bevy of tight turns. One track worth noting for its extreme obnoxiousness is Funhouse of Terror, the penultimate course in the Melon Cup.
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If the creativity (and license milking) of these three tracks had been used more liberally, Pac-Man World Rally would be a much more interesting experience. Retro Maze is set within the borders of an old-school Pac-Man maze, complete with blue walls and giant, pixelated ghosts. King's Kourse digs into the Katamari Damacy universe yet again for my favorite track, a sparse street course with a key distinction: the giant ball of nonsense rolling in the opposite direction along the road. Galactic Outpost kicks things off with an outer-space romp inspired by Galaga. The best tracks in Pac-Man World Rally come in the Classic Cup, which bases its three (why not four?) courses on classic and contemporary Namco favorites. Considering the brevity of most tracks, Smart Bomb should have considered varying the course layouts a bit. For example, the first course (Cloud Garden) conjures up some serious déjà vu by reusing the same bridge design several times, along with many similar turns. Granted, it's probably tough to come up with unique course designs in such a packed genre, but the tracks themselves are repetitively designed. There's the haunted estate (Ghost Mansion), the slippery circuit (Arctic Iceberg), and the volcanic enclosure (Molten Mountain), among others. The courses are generally fine, though they tend to follow the generic molds established by similar titles.
Just 15 tracks are available in Pac-Man World Rally, divided into cups (shocker!) named after fruit. Honestly, the unlockable characters are more interesting than the starting cast, especially The Prince of All Cosmos from Katamari Damacy. The most bizarre entry is Pac-Devil, essentially a demonic, red-tinted Pac-Man on a chopper. Remember Toc-Man, Spooky, and Erwin? Yeah, I didn't think so. They pretty much have to be, as the rest of the cast is filled out by bit-players from the Pac-Man World games. Pac-Man, Pac-Junior, and the four colorful ghosts, Pinky, Inky, Blinky, and Clyde. Despite the previously mentioned spin-offs, the Pac-Man franchise has birthed just a handful of notable characters: Pac-Man, Mrs. The quality of any character-driven go-kart racer is typified by the strength of the license that spawned it. Pac-Man World Rally is the same – distinct mostly for being derivative, but still enjoyable while it lasts. Its characters had no business in a racing game, let alone an unremarkable one, but it still made for a good time. Pac-Man World Rally is the 2006 equivalent of Chocobo Racing, the 1999 non-classic that defied both common sense and logic. Mario Kart is the obvious example, but I am more inclined to dig a bit deeper.
Don't be fooled though it may be the first Pac-branded racing title, it treads largely familiar ground. So here it is: Pac-Man World Rally for PlayStation 2. Namco co-developed 2005's Mario Kart Arcade GP and apparently got the idea that if Mario can do it, then certainly their yellow puck could. But I'd be remiss to chastise only Namco Bandai for these indiscretions the Sonic the Hedgehog, Crash Bandicoot, and Shrek franchises have all intruded into such territory.
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The Pac-Man World series of platform titles may not be the most obvious example, but what about Pac-Man Fever? Without Mario Party, the Fever never hits bargain bins across America. This shouldn't shock anyone – Namco's been aping Nintendo's franchise character for years, releasing uninspired knock-offs that never quite feel like the real thing.