PAC-MAN Mega Tunnel Battle: Chomp Champs

Took the money and ran, should have at least given us an offline mood after the shut down.

It was a decent game, nothing amazing but a bit of a competitive twist on Pac-Man as you had to complete various objectives before your opponent (which usually was bots since of course an online-only Pac-Man game never really took off) in a series of interconnected mazes a lot like the old arcade/Colecovision classic Pepper II. Then with points earned you could unlock different modes or put different hats on your Pac. Cheap, cute, worth a few bucks and an occasional play. It's always nice to see new Pac-Man art. For me, Pac-Man is video games' mascot, not Mario. And now it's nothing, just rapidly fading memories because live service is a garbage way to make video games. Ptoo on your grave.

This game is alot of fun but they are shutting it down, which is the reason for the negative review, leave the game with a open server or at least patch so the game can be played solo offline.

[h3]PAC-MAN battle royale is an interesting idea, and it certainly worked on paper, but lacked the marketing and player retention to keep it running. As of writing, the game is entirely unplayable, another casualty of the live service rot that plagues the gaming industry: No offline modes, no local co-op, no vs AI options. It's a dead paperweight and a total loss for buyers.[/h3] [h3]Pros[/h3] [list][*]Fun premise: Tunnel into other players' mazes to steal dots or chomp them with a power pellet. Makes for tense gameplay moments the original can't match [*]Great modern visual upgrade with unlockable skins [*]Character customization on PAC-MAN? You betcha. Goofy outfits [*]Crossplay - Supported PC / PS / Xbox / Switch [/list] [h3]Cons[/h3] [list][*]Low player population. The bread and butter of live service: Nobody online = bot games. Bots die quickly and matches didn't last long. [*]Unreasonably grindy achievements. And the best part? The "unlock all achievements" achievement was broken, so nobody could even 100% this. [*]Only one mode, no modifiers. No variety. Play one round, you've seen it all. [*]Zero end of life planning, making this game a pointless profile decoration [/list] Was this a brand new game or a repackage of the mobile PAC-MAN 99? Whatever the case, it certainly felt like a mobile product. It had good production value, and the battle royale concept breathed life into the retro arcade classic, but it just wasn't enough. Player population hit a peak of 50 on steam, if steamdb is to be believed, and who knows how many players on consoles existed. Of all the issues that I care about most, it's the achievements. This game wanted you to devour 1 million dots, which, if we're being conservative here, is somewhere north of 85 hours and that's not even accounting for empty mazes and enemy evasion. Anyone who actually bothered to get this would have naturally obtained the other insane goals like 10k ghosts eaten, and 100k warps used (going from left to right on the maze). Your reward for such hard work? As mentioned earlier, an impossible-to-unlock achievement for completion, barring you from the platinum trophy. Hooray! The devs couldn't even be bothered to fix this. There are so many missed opportunities here. Additional modes, offline play, local co-op ... I feel like this was all an exit strategy cash grab. Zero thought was put into end of life and game longevity. And this, dear friends, is the problem with live service products - rather than deliver you a functional product for years to come, the emphasis is to cut and run and move on to next product. Disposable gaming. I put around 30 hours into this before realizing the game was impossible to complete from other player reports, and quit. I liked the game, but without players what can you do? How easy it would have been to patch for offline and let us clean up against bots. Oh well. Goodbye Chomp Champs, we hardly knew ye. [quote][u]Achievement Hunters[/u]: Long, boring grind. VS bots was impossible to complete the maze captures and chomp 4 achievements, everything else was solo-able. Final achievement cannot be unlocked at all. ~125 hours to 97%[/quote]

I bought a key for 2 dollars just because I was curious. Obviously nobody should be buying this game right now as the servers are shutting down in 3 months. The game is barely worth 2 dollars, but it's not on sale and it most certainly is not worth 20.

So, we’re probably all aware that this game will soon be unplayable (thanks to the absurd choice of requiring the game to be always online - even when the game has always been populated by bots). Personally, I wouldn’t even care, I rarely, if ever, play online only games. This isn’t about money, it’s about control. If it was about money, they would’ve made a lot more by including a single player/offline mode - and I refuse to believe that this idea didn’t occur to them. So look forward to seeing this game popping up again and again for future consoles, only to be removed a few months later. In closing, I’d like to add - Stop being greedy, stop killing the gaming industry!

fun game and i did enjoy every detail of this game and i spent good time with friends its just the game will shutdown so soon and thats so stupid and silly it didnt even survive 2 years here :/