Note I wasn't lead programmer of this game at the start, I was brought back in when the project got into trouble. What happens is I told Jesse that we couldn't finish PacManWorld 2 for Christmas so he put me on other projects. Then the next year the game was in trouble and past the deadline and I was brought back. I tried to bring some of the original features back, but I got to say that not having Scott Rogers was a big impediment. I would have preferred a side camera like in the original on most of the areas but too many levels were already created when I came back to the team so we could not use the side camera editor I had made for the original game.
Yeah, mostly linear, corridor-like levels seem to work with either a camera on your back, a-la Crash Bandicoot, or on the side, Pac-Man world style. It's kind of interesting however, how Crash also has the side camera, but its only used for 2D side-scrolling platforming stages, while Pac-Man World used it in conjunction with the z-axis, as well as some changes of the angle of the camera, and we got something really neat as well. The levels may be simple, but I find a good amount of charm in that simplicity, and having these side levels alongside wider, slightly less linear levels, which would benefit a lot more from the free camera, would make for a great experience!
I recently replayed this whole series, though I didn't finish PMW and PMW3 until I was 18 years old. It's a great nostalgia hit for me and one of the better PS2 platformers. I do have to agree on the collect-a-thon sadism and lack of play-testing in that regard. As someone who has a save file with all 189 tokens, I can confirm there is no overall '100% bonus' and that several level bonus objectives are sheer violence against the human soul. All auto-scrolling levels count, as does Pac-Village for having rolling jumps requiring a specific pitch and distance to reach the tokens. Ice River Run clearly didn't have the pac-dot arc play-tested and will require a half dozen jumps repeated in order to reach 100%. I probably would have to retry Blade Mountain over 20 times to flawlessly collect every dot. The entirety of the Ghost Island level set also suffers. Haunted Boardwalk and Ghost Bayou both have static pac-dot lines on collapsing piers that become completely impossible to backtrack to, and Night Crawling, I kid you not, hides the final apple inside a bat above a gratuitously large bottomless pit that you have to flipkick. The entire Ocean level set is auto-scrolling and unbelievably hard to complete in full, but the worst is Yellow Pac-Marine, in which the level itself is entirely randomized, including fruit that can appear in any destructible mine or enemy. If you drop a bonus pickup and are too far down screen to collect it, too bad. It won't respawn and you have to either commit suicide and revert to a checkpoint or replay the whole level for a lion's share of ten minutes. This is not even close to the hardest game I've ever played, but all 189 tokens has to be one of my greatest bragging rights accrued in a videogame. It's a shame that not many people will appreciate this underrated title and understand the otherwise great experience.
Agreed, Definitely the best video game ever in my opinion, The soundtrack, The levels, Everything about it is just great, Plus i have memories of playing it with my brother, When i was little, So i have kind of a soft spot for it
@@kieranstark7213 well, the camera doesn't seem to be that much of a problem as he makes it to be, given how open the levels seem to be. Except maybe the chase levels, with the camera in front of Pac-Man, rather than behind, although that could be fixed with better visual cues as to where the pits will appear.
@@Mike14264 Yeah, when it comes to the criticism of the imperfect camera of Pac-Man World 1 & 2 (non-handheld version), it sounds more like an excuse for people to nitpick it, to make it look like even if it’s mostly a good game, it’s nowhere near one of the greatest video games up to the ranks of my other favs like Sonic 3 & Knuckles, Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong-Quest (especially the SNES version, Super Mario Bros. 3 (especially the Super Mario All-Stars version) and etc when it could actually be just as phenomenal since while the camera might as well be the weakest aspect of the game (that is, if you choose not to mention the GBA version of the Pac-Man World games), it’s only the worst thing that could be said about this amazingly adventurous experience. Even Yoshi Player, a RUclipsr we’re glad to know, was guilty of it.
I think it's cool that the forest world in PW2 was set in the canopy of an evergreen forest rather than just being a standard platforming level with a woodland aesthetic. It feels like the designers took advantage of the theme better than many other games do.
7 years ago, I bought this game at Walmart since I liked the first one. But when I bought this game on PS2, it was packaged as a box set with Pac man World 3 and the mascor racing game. It was only $15. Bargain!
That's crazy. I got World 2 standalone and it was our favorite game for several years. I played the living daylights out of this game with my two sisters whom NEVER play videogames mind you!
this was a pretty good review but there was one key mechanic you missed (to be fair the game doesnt really explain it though) if you kickflip, it stops your vertical momentum, allowing you to control your jump height. the kickflip is a lot more useful than you think with levels like ghost bayou and haunted boardwalk.
2 things: This video inspired me to finally get 100% for this game. Now that I got 100% here's some tips: generally look around a lot to make sure you got everything, for auto moving levels collect everything then hit a checkpoint so that gets saved. For blade mountain there's actually 2 areas (one to the right of the jump and one to the left near the ridiculous jump to get a token) where you can walk on the snow or keep pressing a and b at the same time (gamecube) to go a bit faster until near the end where you walk so you don't slip go a decent distance and then turn around for enough speed to attempt the jump again for if you missed some pellets. In I believe avalanche alley (the one with the falling snowballs onto the bounce pads) there's an apple you need to rev roll to get. Pac submarine isn't actually too difficult just keep track of what you have, there are 20 cherries (all no need to blow up any mines) 6 oranges (these all are from the enemy submarines), and 2 apples (somewhat out of the way usually but if you miss one just intentionally take damage to restart at the last checkpoint you hit.) In Night crawling there are 3 somewhat difficult fruit to get you get 1 from the spiders in the maze, 1 apple from a bat that you flip kick over a bottomless ravine (it's the 1st one with moving platforms with the bats), and 1 easily missed strawberry at the end area. The haunted boardwalk is difficult and easy to miss 1 pac pellet so stock up on lives in butaine paine in the hidden area and you'll be good probably. Ghost bayou had 1 token that looked too far away from where I was but a kinda tricky rev roll there and back reaches it. For time trials (that's the 2nd bonus) make sure you getting the time saves actually does spend less time overall or else you'll make it way harder than it needs to be. Otherwise with all this and looking around a lot you should be able to get 100%. The first and 2nd swimming levels require a lot of restarting the level for 100% though. Oh also forgot to mention that for any level the tokens don't contribute to getting to 100% so feel free to redo the stage to single out tokens and that'll also make it much easier with some stages like blade mountain, the water stages, etc.
I remember when I was a kid asking for this game. My friend got me Pac-Man world 3 thinking he was doing me a favor. No, I asked for THIS game. I get he was trying to do me a favor, but I didn’t ask for that. I didn’t have fun with it either. Never got to play this game much as a kid, because of that.
Great review King K.:) I will say, I agree 100% with this video. While I like this game I still prefer Pacman World 1 because I find it a better designed game in general. World 2 is great for what it is but I feel like definitely there were a lot of ways to improve the game. Such as 100% completion. To me I don't feel like most of the levels were designed properly with that collectathon mindset. And in many areas I could see it.(Such as the snow levels and the last level before you fight Spooky.) Also, yeah that example you used with the pellet was me too also. I had that same exact issue too weird. The music I will say is excellent and does it's job fantastically for each level. No complaints there for me. And yeah, again, I had that same issue with the bug where Pacman keeps grabbing instead of pulling himself up.(I swear it's almost like we had the same experience with this game.) And as for the boss battles I also definitely prefer the ones in 1 over 2. I have the same exact issues with them (besides Spooky) as they're just repetitive,samey and in general a piss poor challenge. To me, when you design a boss battle in a platformer I think it should challenge and even test your abilities of what you learned from the other levels. Games like Galaxy 1 & 2 I argue did this well by showing you the gimmick ahead of time and basically testing if you know how to do it by the time you fight the boss battle. In World 2 however to me they seemed like an after thought. And the only one I like is Spooky but that's because he's actually challenging and I find a decent challenge even if I prefer Toc Man in terms of how I think a final boss battle should be. And honestly it's a great game but I can't say it beats World 1 for me. In many regards it does things better and others it seemed like they fell flat by a bit. This to me like your Pacman World 1 review is probably the best review I have seen on this game on RUclips. It's that great to me. Keep up the great work Dan.:)
I remember playing pacman world 2 as a kid at a family friend's house. I never got too far in to the game, but level two with the bounce pads in the treetops is still one of the few things I vividly remember from that game. it was such a fun and interesting place to bounce around in, even if it wasn't particularly hard even as a kid
Such an underrated game. I went out of town to my grandparents and they had a game cube with a Harry Potter game, A Series Of Unfortunate Events, and Pac Man World Two. I stated the game expecting the worst and was totally surprised to have a blast with it. Thanks for giving this game some deserved shine.
Speaking of games… Coming from a complete fan of Pac-Man World 2, one of the problems KingK has with PMW2 is that coming from a fan of Yellow Pac-Marine (invention/level) “It’s a poor man’s StarFox in every sense of the word.” reminds me, well, to be fair, while Assault and StarFox 1 & 2 kicked ass, it’s definitely one of Nintendo’s weakest franchises with games like Adventures, Command and Zero (which is a poor man’s StarFox 64).
Yeah... I heard it's literally a nothing level. That's the problem with most water levels, since you have control of the entire space defined by the 3 axis (as opposed to a regular stage, where you stay mostly on the ground and jump to avoid pits, where gravity is an enemy in itself), there should be something more interesting in these stages to make them both more fun and challenging. And no, not just an air meter. I don't remember anyone being fond of those.
Before I had ever made it to the ocean section, I expected it to function more similarly to Pac-Dot pond-swimming. Of they had done one of the levels like that, and then at least given the sub-level more cool shit in the background to look at, the section would have been way more awesome. Although now I'm picturing a level, probably the first level of that ocean-area, where it's night, and you are platforming around docks and boats and stuff. But there are sections of water you can swim around in, pac-dot pond style. Eventually at the end, it's all underwater, and you end the level by getting the scuba gear for the next stage.
While Pac-Marine may be overly long and repetitive as a level, everything about it outside of the gameplay is actually a lot of fun, from the ghosts in crab outfits, to the opening cutscene with Professor Pac-Man, to the yellow Pac-Marine itself to the soundtrack. To be frank, though, the other water levels in PMW3 are actually pretty damn good because they are something levels with a lot of atmosphere in Scuba Duba/Shark Attack and badass Megawhale theme, “All of Pac-Land is counting on you!” cutscene and boss defeat that YPM was lacking of (like I said, except for the cutscenes).
Thank you for opening my eyes on these problems and when I look back on them, they really could have been handled better. Nostalgia goggles are powerful, so the one thing I must Express is... Pac-Man controls so WELL! I don't know why I love how he moves, it just feels good to control.
I was a bit upset that I never completed the game or got to experience Haunted Boardwalk, but the tiny little platforms in Magma Opus gave me hell as an 8 year old kid. Seeing all the complaint about 'Clyde', he would have drove me absolutely crazy so maybe that was a blessing.
I find it funny how you mentioned those pac pellets on sinking boardwalks in Ghost Bayou. Cause I recently did a clean run of the game and as you said "by some miracle"... I managed them and somehow still had enough time to make the jump to the next platform. The craziest part is, I did it on the one time I wasn't even trying.
oh my god the theme song though, i have to admit, not being a huge pac man fan myself; this theme song was sooooo damn good. ANYTIME i hear the tune it reminds me of the old days with my gamecube, ya know back when multiplayer games werent as much of a staple against single player adventure titles.
oh my god that water level at 27:00 -spin attack -boxes -chained bombs -electric ell coming from hole in a wall exactly like those underwater levels in crash 3
It's cool to see you did a retrospective on this. This was one of the games I owned when I had gotten a GameCube for Christmas as a kid (Hot Wheels Velocity X and Mario Party 4 were the other games I had gotten).
Pacman World 2 being one of my most special childhood games made me a bit sad that you didn't enjoy it as much as I'd hope but the points you raise are fair, I just wish Namco would give the world series another chance in the spotlight
I agree MOSTLY with this retrospective. The kickflip can be used to kill bats, though that's minimal application. Also you can see how many fruit you have collected in the pause menu (PS2) but not how many left.
I love that they did the camera differently, it feels more real. It was annoying when it got stuck but you get past that eventually. The game is my favorite and super nostalgic.
Not sure if you commented on this but I always loved how this game used a repeating leitmotif for all the game music, where ever level has the same melody but played at a different tempo, with totally different instruments. Gives the game a distinct feel.
Man, if I had ever reached Night Crawling as a kid it would've scared the sh** out of me. I hate spiders, always have, and these ones are built and move pretty realistically. Kinda freaks me out even now.
Looking at your videos Im surprised you didnt do ms pac man maze madness. I feel its a a bit underrated than again I was much younger when it came out and I almost loved any game I had lol
This is one of those games that had its flaws but the nostalgia factor makes it flawless to me. It’s the first video game I explicitly remember playing
I remember not wanting to 100% Pac-Man World 2 just because at times the game itself was hard enough without dealing with that. But I was also a kid, so who knows.
I will never get over how they mixed up Blinky and Clyde. Clyde in the Caldera is actually Blinky in the Caldera and vice versa because their models are swapped.
The collectibles in this game kinda follow the high score philosophy I guess. I have the most fun in pac-man from collecting the fruits I can get and eating the ghosts that are immediately around me. But I never try to eat all 4 every time and get both fruits for a max score. And in PCW2, I collect what I can, but never worry too much about 100%. Really bizarre thing, but very (not modern) Namco.
I really loved this game as a child, last year attempted a 100% run I almost gouged my eyes out at blade mountain because: 1. collecting both tokens and fruit are practically impossible on a single run. 2. there is a way to backtrack but it involves zigzagging trough the ice in a precise manner and if you miss by a pixel yo slide and end up in a worse position. 6 hours later, I completed the level and stopped playing the game for a week.
We're all sitting in a yellow submarine, We didn't like yellow so we painted it green, We didn't like green so we painted it red, But red ain't water proof so now we're all died!
Seems I may've started a trend, what with the "Let's stop the review for a minute or three to listen to some of the best pieces in the soundtrack," bits, haha. Anyway, great review. These games have more to them than I thought. Still not amazing games, but good enough. Still think Maze Madness is the best.
Despite PMW: 2's very simple plot, I felt the Ghost Island stages only existed just to pad out playtime. Even from a story perspective it makes no sense to visit them because for one thing, it's established that Blinky, Pinky, Inky & Clyde steal 5 Golden Fruit (not 6, but we'll get to that shortly) from Pac Village's tree and your goal is to retrieve them all from each themed area. Then literally after beating the Megawhale boss fight and collecting the 5th & last Golden Fruit, you then transition to the Ghost Island stages by force. It's especially frustrating because there's no major reward after treading the haunted boardwalks or going through the trauma of Wormwood's maze in Ghost Bayou and it gets you thinking "What was the point of going through the Ghost Island stages if there's not another Golden Fruit to collect?". More importantly. After the Megawhale boss fight, there was nothing preventing Pac-man from taking a detour back to Pac Village from the underwater stages in his submarine (btw, Pac Village is literally located next to the coast on the overworld map) and restoring the village tree to its original state without ever visiting Ghost Island. It's a huge plothole and I'm surprised the people who love this game haven't called attention to that. So yeah, that's my major issue with the story of PMW: 2.
A simple twist of the ghosts snatching all the fruit to take to WormWood to the island making his appearance justified, so he could “spoil” them, would’ve easily justified the reasoning for heading there.
You can see how the 3D platformer genre kinda died out. 1) Serious camera problems. Enemies attacking you from out-of-frame, backtracking forcing you to walk towards the camera, camera getting stuck on geometry. Frequent problems that didn't really get fixed until games like Mario Galaxy started using more rigidly scripted cameras and made them part of the level design. 2) Underdeveloped mechanics. Compared to 2D platformers like Donkey Kong Country Returns and Rayman Origins, the game mechanics of each level are mostly for spectacle and they don't have a strong progression of introducing a mechanic, escalating the difficulty, and mixing in other mechanics. 3) This doesn't really become a problem until Pac-Man World 3, but a shift in focus to combat was terrible for many platformers. Like obviously it can work great if done well, like in Kirby games, but too often the mechanics were too simple and repetitive for how often you were forced to stop moving and clear a room of simple health sponge enemies.
Hey big fan! please know that this is coming from a place of love, next time when you make a video could you please lower the bass a little? my speakers are causing my table to shake xd otherwise great video :)
The part where he said that the camera freaks out in Magma Opus is the one where he was controlling it. How can the camera tilt so fast? He's the one controlling it.
Fun Fact: Did you know there are cheat in this game there are only 4 but they can only be activated by the wooden platform in Pac-Village Cheat #1 Unlock all levels cheat Cheat #2 Unlock all mazes cheat Cheat #3 Gives you 20 or 10 lives Cheat #4 This one is the best useful one gives you 10 tokens each time you put the code in
Great review - actually all of your reviews are outstanding, you’re possibly the best game analysis channel on RUclips, almost pure objectivity, and what you can’t be objective about you admit to, and you don’t soften your criticisms to appeal to the masses. However, the political comment at the end was completely unnecessary. Doesn’t add to the video or discussion at all, and just proved to be an aside that no one asked for. You’re a fantastic content creator, I’ve personally probably binged your videos on Zelda and Sonic at least five or six times at my nine to five. But don’t put politics in arbitrarily. It’s a recipe for completely destroying your channel, as well as just dating the video when it should have been timeless. Otherwise you’re awesome, love your content, and be sure to have some well deserved fun today.
Well, at least Spooky to their credits got _kinda_ more scary looking as ghost after leaving their 'Jumpscare Mansion', eh? (only to be trapped by new roots instead, lulz) Going to ever do anything for that game?
I feel like the Pacman franchise was harmed somewhat with their mascot having a less personable 3D character design compared to Mario and Sonic. I feel like they should have maybe been less faithful to the original 2D design to make him look cooler. Sonic's cool 3D design has pretty much carried his reputation because a lot of the 3D titles have been lacklustre.
Note I wasn't lead programmer of this game at the start, I was brought back in when the project got into trouble. What happens is I told Jesse that we couldn't finish PacManWorld 2 for Christmas so he put me on other projects.
Then the next year the game was in trouble and past the deadline and I was brought back. I tried to bring some of the original features back, but I got to say that not having Scott Rogers was a big impediment. I would have preferred a side camera like in the original on most of the areas but too many levels were already created when I came back to the team so we could not use the side camera editor I had made for the original game.
But some of the levels were made to work with the new camera system
I just want to say thank you for this amazing game, pac Mac world 2 was my childhood, thank you
Yeah, mostly linear, corridor-like levels seem to work with either a camera on your back, a-la Crash Bandicoot, or on the side, Pac-Man world style. It's kind of interesting however, how Crash also has the side camera, but its only used for 2D side-scrolling platforming stages, while Pac-Man World used it in conjunction with the z-axis, as well as some changes of the angle of the camera, and we got something really neat as well. The levels may be simple, but I find a good amount of charm in that simplicity, and having these side levels alongside wider, slightly less linear levels, which would benefit a lot more from the free camera, would make for a great experience!
Holy crap Gil Colgate! I can’t believe you watched this!
@@gilcolgateatdeepmap1680 he did say "most"
The soundtrack was indeed done by David Logan. He was my Music and Audio Design instructor in college, and yeah, he knows his stuff.
That's awesome.
Holy shit
Wow that’s fucking awesome 😃
Did he ever bring up his credited roles in class?
If you count him composing Pitfall 3D then that means he has probably met & worked with Bruce Campbell.
'Theres a cool mechanic in Volcanic Panic' - Straight BARS, my dude
I recently replayed this whole series, though I didn't finish PMW and PMW3 until I was 18 years old. It's a great nostalgia hit for me and one of the better PS2 platformers.
I do have to agree on the collect-a-thon sadism and lack of play-testing in that regard. As someone who has a save file with all 189 tokens, I can confirm there is no overall '100% bonus' and that several level bonus objectives are sheer violence against the human soul. All auto-scrolling levels count, as does Pac-Village for having rolling jumps requiring a specific pitch and distance to reach the tokens. Ice River Run clearly didn't have the pac-dot arc play-tested and will require a half dozen jumps repeated in order to reach 100%. I probably would have to retry Blade Mountain over 20 times to flawlessly collect every dot. The entirety of the Ghost Island level set also suffers. Haunted Boardwalk and Ghost Bayou both have static pac-dot lines on collapsing piers that become completely impossible to backtrack to, and Night Crawling, I kid you not, hides the final apple inside a bat above a gratuitously large bottomless pit that you have to flipkick. The entire Ocean level set is auto-scrolling and unbelievably hard to complete in full, but the worst is Yellow Pac-Marine, in which the level itself is entirely randomized, including fruit that can appear in any destructible mine or enemy. If you drop a bonus pickup and are too far down screen to collect it, too bad. It won't respawn and you have to either commit suicide and revert to a checkpoint or replay the whole level for a lion's share of ten minutes.
This is not even close to the hardest game I've ever played, but all 189 tokens has to be one of my greatest bragging rights accrued in a videogame. It's a shame that not many people will appreciate this underrated title and understand the otherwise great experience.
Pacman World 2 is actually my favorite game so this was pretty interesting to watch
Agreed, Definitely the best video game ever in my opinion, The soundtrack, The levels, Everything about it is just great, Plus i have memories of playing it with my brother, When i was little, So i have kind of a soft spot for it
Yeah, I don’t see what KingX was complain about in this game. I much prefer his review of its predecessor.
@@kieranstark7213 well, the camera doesn't seem to be that much of a problem as he makes it to be, given how open the levels seem to be. Except maybe the chase levels, with the camera in front of Pac-Man, rather than behind, although that could be fixed with better visual cues as to where the pits will appear.
@@Mike14264 Yeah, when it comes to the criticism of the imperfect camera of Pac-Man World 1 & 2 (non-handheld version), it sounds more like an excuse for people to nitpick it, to make it look like even if it’s mostly a good game, it’s nowhere near one of the greatest video games up to the ranks of my other favs like Sonic 3 & Knuckles, Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong-Quest (especially the SNES version, Super Mario Bros. 3 (especially the Super Mario All-Stars version) and etc when it could actually be just as phenomenal since while the camera might as well be the weakest aspect of the game (that is, if you choose not to mention the GBA version of the Pac-Man World games), it’s only the worst thing that could be said about this amazingly adventurous experience.
Even Yoshi Player, a RUclipsr we’re glad to know, was guilty of it.
@@kieranstark7213the game is too easy,also it frustrates me that its imposible to collect everything. Those are two big turn offs
I think it's cool that the forest world in PW2 was set in the canopy of an evergreen forest rather than just being a standard platforming level with a woodland aesthetic. It feels like the designers took advantage of the theme better than many other games do.
It’s basically a LITERAL escalation of the first world, not to mention, the sunset to night transition really adds that cohesive element.
7 years ago, I bought this game at Walmart since I liked the first one. But when I bought this game on PS2, it was packaged as a box set with Pac man World 3 and the mascor racing game. It was only $15. Bargain!
That's how I got it too.
That's crazy. I got World 2 standalone and it was our favorite game for several years. I played the living daylights out of this game with my two sisters whom NEVER play videogames mind you!
We need a Pac-Man World trilogy remaster
Yes!
Joshua99v like the crash and Spyro ones
Literally what I just commented on another video lol
AGREED
No, REMAKE!
You're voice sounds so professional, so it's so jarring (but also funny) to hear you just casually drop the F bomb every now and then.
this was a pretty good review but there was one key mechanic you missed (to be fair the game doesnt really explain it though)
if you kickflip, it stops your vertical momentum, allowing you to control your jump height. the kickflip is a lot more useful than you think with levels like ghost bayou and haunted boardwalk.
It's also for taking out bats.
I didn't know that.
I have 100% on about half the levels in this game and never knew this lol. Will try it next time I have to control my jump height
"There's a cool mechanic in volcanic panic" .... yes
The fact that I can still enjoy this game 16 years later is a testament to this game's development.
yes i love this game still
2 things: This video inspired me to finally get 100% for this game.
Now that I got 100% here's some tips: generally look around a lot to make sure you got everything, for auto moving levels collect everything then hit a checkpoint so that gets saved. For blade mountain there's actually 2 areas (one to the right of the jump and one to the left near the ridiculous jump to get a token) where you can walk on the snow or keep pressing a and b at the same time (gamecube) to go a bit faster until near the end where you walk so you don't slip go a decent distance and then turn around for enough speed to attempt the jump again for if you missed some pellets. In I believe avalanche alley (the one with the falling snowballs onto the bounce pads) there's an apple you need to rev roll to get. Pac submarine isn't actually too difficult just keep track of what you have, there are 20 cherries (all no need to blow up any mines) 6 oranges (these all are from the enemy submarines), and 2 apples (somewhat out of the way usually but if you miss one just intentionally take damage to restart at the last checkpoint you hit.) In Night crawling there are 3 somewhat difficult fruit to get you get 1 from the spiders in the maze, 1 apple from a bat that you flip kick over a bottomless ravine (it's the 1st one with moving platforms with the bats), and 1 easily missed strawberry at the end area. The haunted boardwalk is difficult and easy to miss 1 pac pellet so stock up on lives in butaine paine in the hidden area and you'll be good probably. Ghost bayou had 1 token that looked too far away from where I was but a kinda tricky rev roll there and back reaches it. For time trials (that's the 2nd bonus) make sure you getting the time saves actually does spend less time overall or else you'll make it way harder than it needs to be. Otherwise with all this and looking around a lot you should be able to get 100%. The first and 2nd swimming levels require a lot of restarting the level for 100% though. Oh also forgot to mention that for any level the tokens don't contribute to getting to 100% so feel free to redo the stage to single out tokens and that'll also make it much easier with some stages like blade mountain, the water stages, etc.
I remember when I was a kid asking for this game. My friend got me Pac-Man world 3 thinking he was doing me a favor. No, I asked for THIS game. I get he was trying to do me a favor, but I didn’t ask for that. I didn’t have fun with it either. Never got to play this game much as a kid, because of that.
I might use this video to help me fall asleep, so soothing
This game was my childhood, I got so nostalgic watching this video. Great job!
Great review King K.:) I will say, I agree 100% with this video. While I like this game I still prefer Pacman World 1 because I find it a better designed game in general. World 2 is great for what it is but I feel like definitely there were a lot of ways to improve the game.
Such as 100% completion. To me I don't feel like most of the levels were designed properly with that collectathon mindset. And in many areas I could see it.(Such as the snow levels and the last level before you fight Spooky.) Also, yeah that example you used with the pellet was me too also. I had that same exact issue too weird.
The music I will say is excellent and does it's job fantastically for each level. No complaints there for me. And yeah, again, I had that same issue with the bug where Pacman keeps grabbing instead of pulling himself up.(I swear it's almost like we had the same experience with this game.)
And as for the boss battles I also definitely prefer the ones in 1 over 2. I have the same exact issues with them (besides Spooky) as they're just repetitive,samey and in general a piss poor challenge. To me, when you design a boss battle in a platformer I think it should challenge and even test your abilities of what you learned from the other levels.
Games like Galaxy 1 & 2 I argue did this well by showing you the gimmick ahead of time and basically testing if you know how to do it by the time you fight the boss battle. In World 2 however to me they seemed like an after thought. And the only one I like is Spooky but that's because he's actually challenging and I find a decent challenge even if I prefer Toc Man in terms of how I think a final boss battle should be.
And honestly it's a great game but I can't say it beats World 1 for me. In many regards it does things better and others it seemed like they fell flat by a bit. This to me like your Pacman World 1 review is probably the best review I have seen on this game on RUclips. It's that great to me. Keep up the great work Dan.:)
Namco : Ok David, its just a 3d game about pac-man, you don't need to go that hard on the ost
David Logan :
I remember playing pacman world 2 as a kid at a family friend's house. I never got too far in to the game, but level two with the bounce pads in the treetops is still one of the few things I vividly remember from that game. it was such a fun and interesting place to bounce around in, even if it wasn't particularly hard even as a kid
I love that Pac man's flip kick made it into his smash Bros moveset. Gotta love that Pac man world representation
Could have been more World love in Smash, tbh.
Such an underrated game. I went out of town to my grandparents and they had a game cube with a Harry Potter game, A Series Of Unfortunate Events, and Pac Man World Two. I stated the game expecting the worst and was totally surprised to have a blast with it. Thanks for giving this game some deserved shine.
Speaking of games…
Coming from a complete fan of Pac-Man World 2, one of the problems KingK has with PMW2 is that coming from a fan of Yellow Pac-Marine (invention/level) “It’s a poor man’s StarFox in every sense of the word.” reminds me, well, to be fair, while Assault and StarFox 1 & 2 kicked ass, it’s definitely one of Nintendo’s weakest franchises with games like Adventures, Command and Zero (which is a poor man’s StarFox 64).
About the Pac-Marine level. Not only is it boring tedious and stupid but it's nearly EIGHT MINUTES LONG. WHY IS IT EIGHT MINUTES?! WHY?!
Yeah... I heard it's literally a nothing level. That's the problem with most water levels, since you have control of the entire space defined by the 3 axis (as opposed to a regular stage, where you stay mostly on the ground and jump to avoid pits, where gravity is an enemy in itself), there should be something more interesting in these stages to make them both more fun and challenging. And no, not just an air meter. I don't remember anyone being fond of those.
Before I had ever made it to the ocean section, I expected it to function more similarly to Pac-Dot pond-swimming. Of they had done one of the levels like that, and then at least given the sub-level more cool shit in the background to look at, the section would have been way more awesome.
Although now I'm picturing a level, probably the first level of that ocean-area, where it's night, and you are platforming around docks and boats and stuff. But there are sections of water you can swim around in, pac-dot pond style. Eventually at the end, it's all underwater, and you end the level by getting the scuba gear for the next stage.
I never liked the water world.
While Pac-Marine may be overly long and repetitive as a level, everything about it outside of the gameplay is actually a lot of fun, from the ghosts in crab outfits, to the opening cutscene with Professor Pac-Man, to the yellow Pac-Marine itself to the soundtrack. To be frank, though, the other water levels in PMW3 are actually pretty damn good because they are something levels with a lot of atmosphere in Scuba Duba/Shark Attack and badass Megawhale theme, “All of Pac-Land is counting on you!” cutscene and boss defeat that YPM was lacking of (like I said, except for the cutscenes).
Its literally the best level of the whole game
Thank you for opening my eyes on these problems and when I look back on them, they really could have been handled better. Nostalgia goggles are powerful, so the one thing I must Express is...
Pac-Man controls so WELL! I don't know why I love how he moves, it just feels good to control.
I was a bit upset that I never completed the game or got to experience Haunted Boardwalk, but the tiny little platforms in Magma Opus gave me hell as an 8 year old kid. Seeing all the complaint about 'Clyde', he would have drove me absolutely crazy so maybe that was a blessing.
I find it funny how you mentioned those pac pellets on sinking boardwalks in Ghost Bayou. Cause I recently did a clean run of the game and as you said "by some miracle"... I managed them and somehow still had enough time to make the jump to the next platform. The craziest part is, I did it on the one time I wasn't even trying.
Man I remember playing this game on the gamecube when I was little. Good memories!
Remembering what it was like trying to platform in this game when i was 9 is giving me heartburn. This video took a year off my life. Great review!
just something abt the atmosphere in this game just makes it so cool to play it’s nostalgic just looking at it
oh my god the theme song though, i have to admit, not being a huge pac man fan myself; this theme song was sooooo damn good. ANYTIME i hear the tune it reminds me of the old days with my gamecube, ya know back when multiplayer games werent as much of a staple against single player adventure titles.
Oh man this was my first game i got for my ps2. So many memories and it's still one of my favorite 3d platformers.
ME TOO SAME
oh my god
that water level at 27:00
-spin attack
-boxes
-chained bombs
-electric ell coming from hole in a wall
exactly like those underwater levels in crash 3
It's cool to see you did a retrospective on this. This was one of the games I owned when I had gotten a GameCube for Christmas as a kid (Hot Wheels Velocity X and Mario Party 4 were the other games I had gotten).
Pacman World 2 being one of my most special childhood games made me a bit sad that you didn't enjoy it as much as I'd hope but the points you raise are fair, I just wish Namco would give the world series another chance in the spotlight
Fuck Japan, they nerfed this game and hated it
This was one of my childhood games and I love it so much. I got 100% twice
I agree MOSTLY with this retrospective. The kickflip can be used to kill bats, though that's minimal application. Also you can see how many fruit you have collected in the pause menu (PS2) but not how many left.
Pac-Man Word Re-Pac updated the original game with modern features. Hopefully a remake of the sequel will fix the 'no-death' 100% completion issue.
And keep the same character designs as the console version!
I love that they did the camera differently, it feels more real. It was annoying when it got stuck but you get past that eventually. The game is my favorite and super nostalgic.
So cool to see others talk about a somewhat (oddly enough) obscure game I loved as a child and still love today (:
Not sure if you commented on this but I always loved how this game used a repeating leitmotif for all the game music, where ever level has the same melody but played at a different tempo, with totally different instruments. Gives the game a distinct feel.
Plus Pac-Man music really is about leitmotifs
Nice Review it is refreshing for once to see some one talk about the clyde fight without having a aneurysm
Are you referring to Factor5Fanatic's video?
The volcano world was a difficulty spike when I played it as a kid.
Man, if I had ever reached Night Crawling as a kid it would've scared the sh** out of me. I hate spiders, always have, and these ones are built and move pretty realistically. Kinda freaks me out even now.
I don’t care what you guys say pac man World 2 is the best pac man game ever
“Hello, based department?”
PW2 needs a remaster and a few touch ups to really elevate it. PW Re Pac gives me hope!
I grew up with this game and it will always be immaculate to me
Looking at your videos Im surprised you didnt do ms pac man maze madness. I feel its a a bit underrated than again I was much younger when it came out and I almost loved any game I had lol
Loved this game as a kid as it got me into OG pacman I loved unlocking the classics in the arcade in this game.
I loved this game. I remember the final boss being super hard to me as a kid!
This is one of those games that had its flaws but the nostalgia factor makes it flawless to me. It’s the first video game I explicitly remember playing
legit this game used to scare me cuz of how big the world was. i had never played anything like it before
OH MY GOSH IM SO HAPPY TO SEE ONE OF THESE DONE ON THIS GAME
I remember not wanting to 100% Pac-Man World 2 just because at times the game itself was hard enough without dealing with that. But I was also a kid, so who knows.
I will never get over how they mixed up Blinky and Clyde. Clyde in the Caldera is actually Blinky in the Caldera and vice versa because their models are swapped.
You can thank the cartoon for bleeding into the series, and Arrangement for starting this trend
The collectibles in this game kinda follow the high score philosophy I guess.
I have the most fun in pac-man from collecting the fruits I can get and eating the ghosts that are immediately around me. But I never try to eat all 4 every time and get both fruits for a max score.
And in PCW2, I collect what I can, but never worry too much about 100%.
Really bizarre thing, but very (not modern) Namco.
You also get extra lives for every 25K point
This game was so fun as a kid. I remember getting 100% on Blade Mountain as a kid. I'd like a remaster of the trilogy.
I really loved this game as a child, last year attempted a 100% run I almost gouged my eyes out at blade mountain because:
1. collecting both tokens and fruit are practically impossible on a single run.
2. there is a way to backtrack but it involves zigzagging trough the ice in a precise manner and if you miss by a pixel yo slide and end up in a worse position.
6 hours later, I completed the level and stopped playing the game for a week.
i used to fucking love this game
SAME
I still do.
Excellent Job! Pac-Man World 2 is my favorite of the Pac-Man World Trilogy!
Great game. Lots of nostalgia for it in my teen years surprisingly. I kinda live in nostalgia.. Hence my channel name 😅 love your videos dude!
I loved this game so much as a kid!!
29:12
When I was a kid I can't complete this game only for that section.
I was stuck on that level for half an hour until I figured it out.
I still say B-Doing woods should've been a stage in Smash Bros. And he should have gotten attacks from this game aside from just the flip kick.
Yes
We're all sitting in a yellow submarine,
We didn't like yellow so we painted it green,
We didn't like green so we painted it red,
But red ain't water proof so now we're all died!
Good video overall, but there is a mistake here: getting high scores DO grant you extra lives. You get an extra life every 25,000 points in a level.
YES THANK YOU!
Seems I may've started a trend, what with the "Let's stop the review for a minute or three to listen to some of the best pieces in the soundtrack," bits, haha. Anyway, great review. These games have more to them than I thought. Still not amazing games, but good enough. Still think Maze Madness is the best.
NickonAquaMagna It may or may not be an excuse for me to listen to the music instead of editing.
I see it as providing examples of the soundtrack is good to give the audience an idea of what it sounds like and why they like or dislike it.
World 2 is probably my favorite
The first video game i ever played and i still love it
Tbh a Submarine PAC-Man Star Fox game would be pretty fun if they fixed it up a bit.
This game was a bitch to 100% but I did it as a kid and when I replayed recently.
I perfer this to world 1 honestly
People seem to forget you can kill bats with the flip kick
Despite PMW: 2's very simple plot, I felt the Ghost Island stages only existed just to pad out playtime.
Even from a story perspective it makes no sense to visit them because for one thing, it's established that Blinky, Pinky, Inky & Clyde steal 5 Golden Fruit (not 6, but we'll get to that shortly) from Pac Village's tree and your goal is to retrieve them all from each themed area. Then literally after beating the Megawhale boss fight and collecting the 5th & last Golden Fruit, you then transition to the Ghost Island stages by force. It's especially frustrating because there's no major reward after treading the haunted boardwalks or going through the trauma of Wormwood's maze in Ghost Bayou and it gets you thinking "What was the point of going through the Ghost Island stages if there's not another Golden Fruit to collect?".
More importantly. After the Megawhale boss fight, there was nothing preventing Pac-man from taking a detour back to Pac Village from the underwater stages in his submarine (btw, Pac Village is literally located next to the coast on the overworld map) and restoring the village tree to its original state without ever visiting Ghost Island. It's a huge plothole and I'm surprised the people who love this game haven't called attention to that.
So yeah, that's my major issue with the story of PMW: 2.
A simple twist of the ghosts snatching all the fruit to take to WormWood to the island making his appearance justified, so he could “spoil” them, would’ve easily justified the reasoning for heading there.
it really feels the need the remind you its pacman, could replace the character with any other and people would never think for a moment about pacman
I got 100% on this game back in February.
FYI David Logan did the soundtrack for this game
the camera is such a turn off, I hope they will fix it for the eventual remake
i felt scammed as a kid after buying the third installment. pac man world 2 is one of my favorite childhood games
Did you know this game had several revisions? The Greatest Hits version for example, is actually easier than the original release (in USA)
It's so weird coming to your old videos and hearing you swear.
Not offended, just shocked considering how you don't appear to now.
Nice Plug For Retropolis Zone, His Videos Are Just As Awesome👍
Very in-depth review. You echoed my exact same thoughts. Gotchu a sub.
Great review and after finishing the game 100% about a week ago and I can confirm it was a nightmare
I wish you’d get a ranking out of ten or a ranking among other games in the series kinda like in chance time
I remember this game. It’s a knockoff Sonic Adventure. Charge your roll, butt bounce, touch a dot/ring path and you automatically trace it...
Butt Bounce wasn’t made by Sonic fuck off, also Sonic Adventure rip off? That’s complete bullshit
3:56 Are you SUPOSSED to rev roll onto that thing? I always butt-bounced on it.
Did....did crash bandicoot really look that bad? 😦
It still looks ok, and even if it does, the N Sane trilogy absolutely lifted it.
Crazy I just beat this one again and pmw3 crazy fun games
PS1 era Spyro says hi.
Well, at least Pac-Man World never got an animated series a la Donkey Kong Country!
That's a negative tbh, the donkey Kong country cartoon is godly
I spent all my time on this game playing Pac-Mania
You can see how the 3D platformer genre kinda died out.
1) Serious camera problems. Enemies attacking you from out-of-frame, backtracking forcing you to walk towards the camera, camera getting stuck on geometry. Frequent problems that didn't really get fixed until games like Mario Galaxy started using more rigidly scripted cameras and made them part of the level design.
2) Underdeveloped mechanics. Compared to 2D platformers like Donkey Kong Country Returns and Rayman Origins, the game mechanics of each level are mostly for spectacle and they don't have a strong progression of introducing a mechanic, escalating the difficulty, and mixing in other mechanics.
3) This doesn't really become a problem until Pac-Man World 3, but a shift in focus to combat was terrible for many platformers. Like obviously it can work great if done well, like in Kirby games, but too often the mechanics were too simple and repetitive for how often you were forced to stop moving and clear a room of simple health sponge enemies.
The submarine level would work better if it was a little prettier.
And shorter like 3 minutes
Hey big fan! please know that this is coming from a place of love, next time when you make a video could you please lower the bass a little? my speakers are causing my table to shake xd
otherwise great video :)
SidDoesStuff I can do so. Although it's hard for me to notice because I use headphones.
i doubt many people are using my setup (i have my desktop connected to my TV) so nevermind, keep up the good work :)
I have an audio engineering set up and I can say the Bass isn't too bad. Maybe a bit bass heavy in the voice over
The part where he said that the camera freaks out in Magma Opus is the one where he was controlling it. How can the camera tilt so fast? He's the one controlling it.
Because the camera fucking sucks
Fun Fact: Did you know there are cheat in this game there are only 4 but they can only be activated by the wooden platform in Pac-Village
Cheat #1 Unlock all levels cheat
Cheat #2 Unlock all mazes cheat
Cheat #3 Gives you 20 or 10 lives
Cheat #4 This one is the best useful one gives you 10 tokens each time you put the code in
Yes
BOUNCEPAD!
Great review - actually all of your reviews are outstanding, you’re possibly the best game analysis channel on RUclips, almost pure objectivity, and what you can’t be objective about you admit to, and you don’t soften your criticisms to appeal to the masses. However, the political comment at the end was completely unnecessary. Doesn’t add to the video or discussion at all, and just proved to be an aside that no one asked for. You’re a fantastic content creator, I’ve personally probably binged your videos on Zelda and Sonic at least five or six times at my nine to five. But don’t put politics in arbitrarily. It’s a recipe for completely destroying your channel, as well as just dating the video when it should have been timeless. Otherwise you’re awesome, love your content, and be sure to have some well deserved fun today.
I’ve seen some great reviews, and his are certainly great, but I wouldn’t call them the best.
What do you call the noise Pac-Man makes when he gets injured? Aka lose a health wedge
Am I the only one that wasn't an enemy of the game's camera?
I’m voting for Darren Bailey governor of Illinois
Well, at least Spooky to their credits got _kinda_ more scary looking as ghost after leaving their 'Jumpscare Mansion', eh? (only to be trapped by new roots instead, lulz)
Going to ever do anything for that game?
What?
I feel like the Pacman franchise was harmed somewhat with their mascot having a less personable 3D character design compared to Mario and Sonic. I feel like they should have maybe been less faithful to the original 2D design to make him look cooler. Sonic's cool 3D design has pretty much carried his reputation because a lot of the 3D titles have been lacklustre.
PMW3 gave Pac-Man a personality and a voice. I liked his new character, but the game itself was not worth it.
But Sonic’s redesign is terrible?
I don't know, Pac is so timeless and iconic.
You do realize his design has been the same since the original Japanese artwork?
*I JUST GAVE THE 1K LIKE*