Pac-Man World 2 Re-Pac’s Weird Sonic DLC
All right, look here. The PlayStation State of Play, the Japanese one, came and went, and it was it it was okay. Uh, like my favorite announcement was was probably seeing II in Sonic Racing Crossworld. That looked pretty cool. Of course, seeing Tangle and Whisper is good. And, you know, Knights, you know, was on the back of the box. Finally seeing them in game. Really cool. But, brother, they also shadow dropped the Sonic DLC and Pac-Man World Repack 2. Oh, I’m so happy. If you if you’re a fan of little guys going on little adventures and that’s like a whole genre of fascination with you, then this is a good day. A combination of Sonic and Pac-Man. What a Oh man, what a time we live in. I got to disclose this as well. This is on top of Namcore Bandai being generous enough to give me the base game a while ago before release. It also came with the digital deluxe upgrade. Whatever exact words you want to use with it. It’s kind of weird. So, the base game $30, the digital deluxe version $40. If you got the physical of the game and want this extra downloadable content that’s all Sonic themed, it’s $12 on top of the base game. So, it’s it’s it’s a little pricey. I’m not going to lie. So, I’m coming at this from two different angles. One of the angles immediately being this probably ain’t worth this probably ain’t worth the money, folks. I’m I’m just going to tell you that straight up. Probably not worth the money. But since I did have it, I I ran through it. Let’s talk about it. The setup is pretty enjoyable. You boot back up into the game and then it turns out you have a letter in the mail from one Sonic Maurice Hedgehog wishing you a happy birthday. And just as you’re about to read it, Sonic shows up. I It kind of defeats the purpose of the mail that you delivered if you’re going to just show up 10 minutes after the fact, but okay, sure, whatever. Sonic was gracious enough in this very moment to also deliver a bunch of presents. And those presents being a Sonic outfit, an arcade machine that transports you to the Sonic levels of the game, a Sonic figurine, as well as a Goshapon station to collect even more Sonic figurines. So, this Egoomaniac was like, “It’s your birthday. Here’s a lot of me. I I appreciate that. Oh, the ego on this boy is crazy.” It’s almost a shame that they went with the different universes coming in the form of an arcade machine kind of idea because obviously that kind of lends itself to maybe doing more of these collaborations in the future, but I’m pretty sure Sonic is the only one for this. It’s whatever. It’s just an observation I had when I first started this cuz I wasn’t sure how they were going to lay this out. It’s just a completely separate menu. You just go in the arcade machine. Well, well, okay. You put the Sonic outfit on first, like of course, and then you go into the arcade machine and then you get a a whole brand new little world here. Southpack Island. Adorable. So, for this little mini adventure, you’re presented with three levels. And yes, it’s only three, but each one does provide a different main gimmick. The first one, Rolling Around on the island, is a just fairly typical 3D platforming level. The big Sonic things being it’s in Green Hill Zone. And if you’re an astute Sonic fan, which I’m going to assume you are, this this is just modern Green Hill Zone from Sonic Generations down to the music just being the modern version of Green Hill Zone from that game. Obviously, the level design is different. It would be one of the most baffling things on the planet if it was actually lifted level design. But no, this is this is brand new level design, but if you’ve played Sonic Generations a million times like I have, this is all like very very familiar. But seeing Pac-Man Sonic going across the dash pads and then you get the ramps and then boom, look at that. He did the Sonic Adventure pose. That’s kind of sick. all my like actual criticism kind of goes out the window because this is just this this this first romp at least that I took with these stages just filled me with so much joy. Like it it was so neat. I do wish the music was different cuz I am just getting really tired of hearing Generations remixes over and over again. And it would have been really cool if they just went ahead and they they moved forward with reusing Generations assets and gave us Chemical Plant and Angel Island, but whatever. when it comes to actually playing the game. I mean, Pac-Man already has a spin dash. Like, this kind of works. And Crater Weirds do. The level is actually fairly lengthy. You know, despite being a Sonic themed thing where the whole idea is to go fast, there’s actually a decent amount of level design here. Even though a lot of it you can just speed through with the dash pads, if you’re trying to go for every single thing, which by the way, not only are the rings here as a life system, so you’re collecting the rings and then yes, you’re able to take hits because if you take damage, boom, rings fly all over the place. There’s also five hidden red rings in the levels. That’s cute. So, like the base Pac-Man World Repack 2, it does reward a little bit of exploration. And while the bulk of this level is just a straight line, I mean, you can see there’s stuff kind of going on all over the place. And if anything, it’s kind of baffling seeing level design like this with the Sonic coat of paint because Sonic is not built to have all this multi-layered stuff. So, it’s really kind of cool to see this this level theme that I’ve seen a million times over be a little bit expanded upon. It’s cool. I was almost hoping they were going to give Pac-Man a homing attack on this instead. A lot of the times the the more strict platforming requires you to do the perfect butt bounce. Uh which I mean to be fair, Sonic did have in Sonic Adventure 2. So I maybe that’s a reference I guess. I don’t know. But the strict timing of the butt bounce is definitely showing to be a little more annoying as time goes on. I’m sure once again it’s something that I can I can just fine-tune and get really used to, but it’s been a minute now since I played the game. So it took a little bit to get used to that again. But there are like a bunch of boxes floating around and sometimes you got to do specific platforming on buzz bombers with the butt bounce. It was just kind of tough. Which honestly that kind of goes in line with the rest of Pac-Man World 2 because the game does get shockingly difficult at times. This is on the more difficult side of things I would say. Not on a just a casual run, but collecting everything for sure, dude. And then they they put you in a sidescrolling segment. There are zero sides scrolling segments in Pac-Man World 2. Okay. But they introduced them for Green Hill Zone because Generations Green Hill had sides scrolling. And now we have a Pac-Man sidescroller. Haven’t had one of those in god, how long was it like the Pac-Man tilt on the 3DS or Ghostly Adventures? I don’t know. It’s It’s been a while since we had Pac-Man in the sides scrolling space. So that’s kind of cute to see. The second level, the Super Sonic Tricky Railroad, is more different because they added a grinding mechanic. Pac-Man can grind now. This is This is an This is an insane thing to witness. There’s new music for this, too. This is more of what I wanted. It’s like a guitar remix of the basic Pac-Man World 2 theme. So like the guitar that you would normally expect to hear in some Sonic music is now a remix of a Pac-Man World 2 song. Perfect. I just wish there was more of that cuz I’m sick of the Generations Green Hill Zone. So this level’s more reaction based because you’re jumping around rails and you can see shortcuts with these dash rings. It was a fun time. It was a shorter level, but there were still diverging pathways every so often that would give you, you know, the collectibles that you need. And I didn’t mention this before, but uh you can turn supersonic. If you get the power pellet, you turn super. And uh before you think that, oh man, without the Chaos Emeralds. No, if you look real close, oh no, Pac-Man got the Chaos Emeralds. This level is a lot more fun than the first one, I would say. The only downside being there’s a few of these areas with these really slowm moving platforms. That kind of sucks, but I’m sure if I lock in, speedrunning is going to be very much possible. I just got to I just got to get better at it, you know. And then level three, 300 IQ Evil Genius, is a boss fight against Dr. Eggman. And it’s just it’s all it’s all just playing the Death Egg Robot remix from Generations once again. Heaven forbid we get some more new music. I’m I’m just saying. But you know what? All my sarcasm aside, it’s a brand new boss fight using the ball from Sonic 1, the very first ever Robotnik machine. And seeing it used in a bit of a clever way because Pac-Man is inherently so much slower than Sonic, this actually allows for some good opportunity for that ball to be a menace. The boss fights in Pac-Man World 2, trying to, you know, not die during them, are no joke. Uh, they actually get very difficult. Once again, people have played the game know that the game can get difficult. This is tough because this is a three-phase boss fight, and one of the missions is, of course, beat the boss without dying. That’s tough. I eventually learned that all you got to do is spin dash out of the way. But the timing, it’s fairly tough. I’m not going to lie. But you dodge the ball and then you have like almost a Sonic Advance 2 kind of autor running segment and you’re just trying to dodge when the platform gets destroyed by this buzzsaw and then he’s throwing stuff at you and that’s a mechanic from the base game. So that’s that’s fine. It actually works well for this fight. And then you go on to phase three and there you go. There’s the death egg robot. And this fight is actually somewhat reminiscent of the fight from Sonic Generations in the sense that he will shoot his hand over and then you got to hit the hand and then eventually you can jump on the hand, hit his head. It’s it’s just a remodified version of the fight from Generations. But in in Pac-Man now it’s neat. This is like I do wish that there was a little more creativity put into this whole DLC. I’m not going to lie. Like honestly hearing the music alone is is very upsetting cuz Pac-Man World 2 has some really good jams. Hearing more Sonic arrangement stuff like they did in level two would have been cool, but the platforming is fun. It’s really challenging. The missions are really tough to go for to get every single item and then do the boss without dying. The boss is a pain in the ass, but will be very satisfying to actually get those missions done. But uh yeah, you do that. Uh Sonic helps out at the very last minute. This part was in the original trailer, but you here it is. Uh and then I got a couple screenshots and the credits rolled and then it started playing the classic Green Hill Zone remix from Sonic Generations. I’m so tired. I’m so tired of this. Any of my nitpicking all comes down to just very clearly I’m annoyed with Sega just really wanting to reuse Sonic Generations assets until the sun blows out. But at the very least, this not being a Sonic game. It’s all recontextualized in a brand new way. So, all of that like annoyance aside, it makes sense why it’s Green Hill Zone because this is not for the Sonic audience. It’s for the audience of another bright, colorful platforming guy. It’s fun. It’s a fun little DLC. But once again, $12 and then the collectible figurines. Like it’s cool that yeah, you can you can now litter Pack Village with a few Sonic icons and that’s neat, I guess. But $12 or $10 if you got the digital deluxe pack. That still seems a little stiff. I remember when they initially said there was crossover content coming, I was assuming it was going to be like three different crossover things and they would get one level each, but instead it’s just Green Hill Zone kind of three different times. The Sonic costume is cool, but I mean, Pac-Man World 2 repack is a great game. I definitely recommend it. But this is just pushing it a little much, but not like it really matters because the hardcore Sonic fans, I don’t think are going to care about the cost. They’re just going to buy the DLC anyway. I mean, that’s that’s just what it is. It’s giving me big uh when they added Sonic to Lego Dimensions vibes. Like, it got Sonic fans who probably wouldn’t care about the game to to look twice over at Lego Dimensions, and that almost feels like the same thing here. It’s cool. I mean, Pac-Man’s coming to Crossworlds, and that looks sick. So, whatever mutual partnership we got going on, I’m all about it, man. Uh, Pac-Man World 3 tends to be the darker game of the trilogy. Maybe we can cross over with Shadow and give him a gun. You know, I’m thinking I’m thinking evil Pac-Man and Shadow with the gun going to hell fighting ghosts. Listen, Namco, hit me up. If I got a good idea for you,
Finally, the crossover some of us wanted. To celebrate Pac-Man’s birthday, Sonic decided to make it all about him! Let’s talk about all the Green Hill Zone stuff in Pac-Man World 2 Re-Pac.
Edited by: @KanesTheName
▶ Consider becoming a member!: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjPe1_yPOKmrDpS4YEEJFrQ/join
▶ Enjoyed the video? Subscribe!: http://www.youtube.com/@AntDudePlus
▶ Check out my main channel: http://www.youtube.com/antdude92
▶ Follow me on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/antdude92