One of my favorite platformers growing up.

Admittedly, I don't remember much about this game other than what I've seen in reviews on YouTube and stuff.

I remember I really enjoyed playing it tho and I actually got pretty far until I decided to drop it for some reason.

Will probably revisit it some day, hopefully they make a remake of this one as well.

I've recently picked up Pac-Man World 2 again out of nostalgia just to see if the game really is as good as I thought it was when I was really young. I've never in my life been a Pac-Man fan, but for some reason this game was really important to me as a kid for whatever reason. Unfortunately, the game is nowhere near as good as I thought it was.

Pac-Man World 2 is a basic 3D platformer in which you play as Pac-Man, and your main objective is to retrieve golden fruits that were stolen by the four ghosts in order to seal away a monster that was kept locked away. It's as good of a storyline as you're gonna get in a game revolving around Pac-Man, but I don't think anyone is playing this for the story anyway.

The game's visuals are incredibly charming and cartoonish, and being paired with (now) old hardware doesn't take away from that whatsoever. Harsh shadows and vibrant colors make the game look a lot more dynamic than it actually is, whether its for better or for worse. One of the biggest reasons I picked the game back up was just to see how the lava looks again, because for whatever reason seeing that texture as a child really stuck with me, and boy lemme tell you, that lava did NOT disappoint (specifically the level Volcanic Panic).

Unfortunately, a clean visual style can't exactly keep your attention away from its core issues for long, since the negatives with the game are constantly present, though they vary depending on the area/level you're on.
A general negative with the game is the camera system. I cannot tell you how many times I've fallen down a pit or missed a jump because the camera was either getting stuck in places it shouldn't be, other props were blocking the camera completely, or that the camera moves so unfathomably slow that by the time you need to see where Pac-Man needs to land in order to avoid certain death, you've already died. It's an issue that you learn to circumvent over time, but having to compromise with a core mechanic shouldn't be something you should have to do.

Another glaringly obvious issue (if you can even call it that) is the games lack of depth. Your main objective is to get from point A to point B while collecting as many fruits and coins as you possibly can before you reach the end, but the placement of the power pellets and fruit can be... tedious at best. For example, near the ending of the level B-doing Woods there is an entire section dedicated solely to collecting fruits, though entirely optional. It would only take around 3-4 minutes extra to collect all the fruit, but why should you? The inclusion of randomly added sections like this persist throughout the entire game, which can make attempting 100% runs a lot more tedious than it needs to be, and only looks like it was a lazy afterthought from the developers just so you have more unnecessary things to do. You can probably chalk it up as the developers are encouraging you to explore different levels to see which secret paths you can find, but it gets to a point where I'd rather just finish the level early than to spend even more time collecting fruits.

Another issue with the game is the snow regions level designs (excluding the starting snow level, Ice River Run). The 2nd half of the level Avalanche Alley is a typical "run from the giant boulder (in this case, snowball) chasing you" as it appears in other media like Indiana Jones and Crash Bandicoot, but the issue with Avalanche Alley is that the course Pac-Man runs through is designed entirely against the intentions of the player, and can only truly be completed through trial and error. At the end of both sequences in which you're running from the snowball, Pac-Man is meant to leap into a red power pellet and fly away to safety. Unfortunately, the distance where you're safe to jump into it is not exactly clear, so you'll end up jumping directly into the bottomless pit beneath the red power pellet, forcing you to restart the entire sequence for no reason other than that you missed.
The ice that you're meant to jump over is also very bothersome. For instance, if you accidentally jump a few pixels too early, Pac-Man will play a slipping animation and be stunned in one position for a few seconds. It does make sense for that to happen, yes, but when the detection for whether Pac-Man slips on the ice or not is as inconsistent as it is, the entire sequence feels like a headache to go through, considering if you slip up you'll just end up restarting the snowball sequence again.

Though those complaints may seem pretty detrimental to your playing experience, the game itself is pretty fun to play. I've never been a fan of platformers, but I still found myself enjoying completing each level at the cost of total completion rate.
Something I find incredibly charming about playing new levels is seeing the different custom loading screens each level has. It's something I wish more games did, it really did feel like you were progressing through your journey to collect all the golden fruits, because you can see Pac-Man himself venturing forth.

Something the game also provides for each region is an in-game maze game, similar to the original Pac-Man game that released in 1980. The layout, environment, and music choice are all completely customized per maze, which is something I'm really glad the developers took the time to do.

All in all, Pac-Man World 2 delivers a pretty expansive platformer, at the cost of a few gameplay mishaps that usually go over most players heads. Should you go in expecting a completely fluid experience would be a foolish thought, but so long as you understand the negatives, the positives come shining through.

Everything from the level select map, the home hub, the in game arcade where you can unlock old pacman games, music, level design. It's by far peak Pac-Man outside of arcades. The way it's all presented just adds a lot to the universe in a way no other game in the series really does for me. It's a completionist's nightmare but I wouldn't have it any other way. Not often does it feel this good to actually find everything in a level.

The auto scrolling underwater shooting level is absolutely miserable. It single handedly destroys the pacing near the end of the game. If you're thinking about putting a ten minute long auto scroller in your game, I urge you to reconsider. I'm usually a big defender of water levels in games but EESH.

Difficulty balancing gets a bit inconsistent near the end which I can see bothering a lot of people but I can't say I mind very much. It's funny how dramatically the challenge in bosses changes between worlds. One guy will likely slay through dozens of lives and the next will be a pushover. I'm just glad one of these Pac-Man World games has some teeth, there's something to really dig into and enjoy and overcome here. 1's just so standard and 3's a joyless husk. This one's sick tho.

Would love to see some of the arcade classics try their hand at adapting to the modern era like this more often again. They all had a pretty spotty track record in doing so but when they hit they go hard.

Joguei esse jogo quando eu era criança. Comecei achando que eu era uma criança idiota, mas eu estava errado.
As primeiras fases são muito tranquilas, mas quando começa as da neve, o jogo vira um inferno.
Os bosses são incrivelmente desbalanceados, muitos projeteis, mas tem como matar rápidos.
Level design porco, não tem muito planejamento em muitas.
É um jogo muito paia.

One of the first video games I was able to fully grasp as a child. A lot of fun mechanics wrapped into a great little platformer game. Plenty of level variation ranging from things like ice skating through various tunnels on a mountain to exploring an ancient underground lava temple. Boss fights are pretty fun albeit a bit repetitive with each one being a "variation" of a boss fight involving a large mechanical ghost (with the exception of the first and final bosses). The game doesn't necessarily do anything revolutionary but is still enjoyable.

This game is categorically worse than Pac-Man World 1 in almost every single way. That's the take-away from this.

It's a good game in its own right, and it pretty much follows the exact same design philosophy the first game does, with a emphasis on precise platforming, and step-by-step processes to getting items, often triggering switches and backtracking (Bit of a surprise considering one of the big sells of the game is more open 3D environments, and this game uses its openness in a fine way.) It manages to do some things that Pac-Man World 1 simply wouldn't have been able to do.

But I think everything Pac-Man World 2 tries to do, Pac-Man World 1 succeeds better. Pac-Man World 1's more theatre-stage (I call it 2.5D) type levels and camera lends the game a level of density that highlights all of that game's strong suits. Precision Platforming is far harder and more engaging in that game, and the levels are a lot more multi-layered and interesting in terms of the things you need to do to gather all the items.
(Edit: I wanna give a big example to look out for in 2, by the way. Notice how little the game asks you to find a particular type of fruit in order to open a treasure chest. The doors in Pac-Man 1 are one of the defining pieces of its puzzle, and Pac-Man World 2 uses its equivalent so rarely, especially since it's clearly uncomfortable putting switches inside)
The level themeing is worse. It's like Pac-Man World 1 already used a lot of the cool go-tos, so Pac-Man World 2 had to scratch its head a little. Snow and Volcano back to back is kind of a smoking gun.
And the soundtrack in the first game kicks ass compared to this one.

The game had some promise to me when I was in the forest levels, which are really creative and fun and instantly stop messing around like in the first World, with death pits littered around. But... After that the Snow and Volcano levels are just a lot more linear, boring, and standard, and it kind of highlights why the new perspective the game uses to me is really just a concession for people who are a lot more comfortable with a game like this. If you're going to do a change like that, why not use it more by making cool, actually open levels instead of easy-peasy hallways?

A lot of little things add up too. Like the camera itself in this game for instance is shockingly terrible, it's baffling how how many times you have to make a bad or blind jump because it won't turn the way you want it to.
Or in the Volcano there's a lot more times where you feel like you want to die or death abuse on purpose because you messed up a step to get a item (and the game barely gave any lives before the Snow area for some reason).
The bosses are terrible, especially Blinky.
Or the fact that there literally doesn't seem to be a reason to collect items and go for completion; It's fun anyway, but at least PW 1 gave you lives based off your score, and it had the locked up family members which meant that you needed to do a lot of completion at least for some levels to beat the game.

It just doesn't feel like a very noteworthy game. Most other platformers I've played are a lot more exciting than this in one way or another. This is just about as average as average gets, with a good few warts included.
If you can't tell I did stop after the Volcano as well, and I'm not in a rush to finish. But I will soon. If the Water levels somehow blow me away as hard as Down The Tubes in Pac-Man World 1 did, I'll eat my hat, but I needed to talk about this now.
EDIT: Oh my good lord, the water levels are terrible. And the last levels aren't exactly spectacular by any metric either.

I hate giving this a low score because I have a huge, huge sense of nostalgia for it being the game I'd frequently rent from our local grocery store when I was 6 or 7 (yes that was a thing). As an adult, though, it's impossible to look past the jank and (clearly) rushed development. About half of the game is simple, solid action platforming that borrows heavily from the likes of Crash Bandicoot. Then you get to Blin-cough-Clyde in the Caldera and the game goes downhill from there. You're faced with a badly designed boss (protip- get the greatest hits version if you're gonna play as there are more 1-ups) followed by three incredibly drawn out underwater stages. The game goes back to being semi-decent once you reach Spooky's turf, but it never quite hits the sweet spot that the first half did.

World 1 holds up significantly better, and Re-Pac improved upon that installment heavily. I would love to see a remake of this game that makes the second half better. Heck, you can swap out the swimming and submarine levels for the gameplay style that this actually does well enough and nothing of value would be lost.

I have no idea why this is considered "the good one", this is so horribly designed compared to World on PS1 which was a decent little platformer. What happened?? First thing you realise is the view is no longer fixed to the side and you are immediately hit with the worst free camera possibly ever. Initially the levels seem a bit more open, trying to be more like Mario with the metal cap and underwater stuff, or Crash Bandicoot with levels that have you running towards the camera. After the 2nd boss the quality goes down the toilet and you are surrounded by bottomless death pits at all times, either trying to find your way through confusing pitch black mazes or just going down a straight line jumping over more death pits / swimming on rails. Very boring level theming all round. 100%ing this could pass as a form of torture