Ms. Pac-Man: Quest for the Golden Maze

Moby ID: 5570

Critic Reviews add missing review

Average score: 54% (based on 6 ratings)

Player Reviews

Average score: 2.6 out of 5 (based on 6 ratings with 1 reviews)

Power-ups are available to make life easier. Use them.

The Good
Ms. Pac-Man: Quest for the Golden Maze is another PC-exclusive title where Ms. Pac-Man has to search for the mysterious Golden Maze. To do this, she must complete a series of mazes, by gobbling up the dots while avoiding the four ghosts. Unlike the previous games in the Pac-Man series, the ghosts are much tougher. Two or more of them are more likely to trap you in a corner, but you have the usual option of getting a power pellet and gobbling them up while they are blue. There are warp rooms located on each side of the maze, where you can make a quick escape if the ghosts all gang up on you in the one spot.

But in addition to this, you can gobble up the baby ghost floating around. This will make your life easier, as by doing so, power-ups appear at the center of the maze. Power-ups have a variety of effects such as making ghosts turn blue and stay still, causing ghost versions of Ms. Pac to run around and chomp as many ghosts in their paths. You also can speed yourself up or become invincible. I like taking the time gobbling up the baby ghost as many times as I can, as doing so helps me complete the maze faster.

There are about seven areas in the game, and just before each one, detailed cut-scenes appear, consisting of hand-drawn backgrounds and Ms. Pac leaping her way to point a to point b. I was impressed at how Infogrames put these cut-scenes together. While you are playing, I like making use of a feature where you can change the camera angle to suit your needs. You can even view a top-down perspective of the maze that the original game had. The graphics look amazing when you are playing, even if it has that Egyptian theme to them.

The music on the title screen starts out with a retro-like melody that plagued earlier games, but it changes to a cool detective-like music. The music while you are playing is repetitive but not annoying. The music gets excellent when you finally reach the Golden Maze, which is the last level of the game. The sound effects in the game are similar to those of the original game, but are given a bit more oomph. I like how there is a sound in the game that increases in pitch after you get a power-pellet.

As I mentioned before, the game gets difficult with tougher ghosts that can lose you a life when you touch them. But you can set the number of lives before you start a new game (all the way from the beginning). Even if you happen to lose all your lives, you can continue at the level where you left off. Of course, more lives can be earned by gobbling as many dots as you can without losing one of them, and by trying to get three of the same fruit so that you can enter the warp rooms where the aim is to get as many fruit as you can for double the points, before time runs out.

The Bad
An introduction sequence that run just before the main game would have been nice, which would show Professor Pac and Ms. Pac-Man discussing the Golden Maze, but for some reason, Infogrames decided against it. There are two files on the CD-ROM in the INTRO95 folder. I assumed that you could access the introduction from there, but it turned out that one of the files contain the company logos, while the other displayed a warning.

I cannot understand why the action is not presented in full screen, like in Pac-Man: Adventures in Time. Sure, the arcade version of Ms. Pac-Man had you playing the game in a vertical display. I just felt that it is inconsistent with later Pac games where the action is in full screen. Full screen would have greatly enhanced the game.

The level select screen only has the maze number, which you could play. It would have been nice if you had a thumbnail for the maze, so people can see what they can expect. There is also the lack of fun mini-games that were available in Pac-Man: Adventures in Time

The Bottom Line
Ms. Pac-Man: Quest for the Golden Maze is an enhancement of the original game. It has the same gameplay as the original, but includes some bonus rooms which can only be entered by collecting three of the same fruit. The sound effects have been updated to blend in with the games of the millennium. There are some good cut-scenes that can be viewed just before each new area. Losing all of your lives in one go does not matter, as you can continue at the level where you left off. Since the protagonist is Ms. Pac-Man herself, the game is considered a bit gay for some people, particularly men. If you are one of her fans, then this game is worth a shot. Suitable for everyone.

Windows · by Katakis | カタキス (43092) · 2007

Contributors to this Entry

Critic reviews added by Kabushi, Scaryfun.