Er... Yeah.  He's okay.  I guess I'm not as big a Pac-Man fan as some other people.  Most of his games totally sucked, to tell the truth.  They were horrid 2D platformers and scary, undefinable genres at best, like Pac-Mania, Pac In Time and the especially shitty Pac-Professor, which I vividly remember playing in a cigarette-smelling arcade next to a Wonder Boy in Monster Land machine I'd rather be playing instead.  Combine that with the morbid image to the right, and you'd be surprised I didn't grow up a child molester, forced to enter the bareknuckle boxing ring for the $20 bills I'd soon be stuffing in the pants of an adorable 12-year-old...  But I'm getting off-subject.  What of the game, sir?

This game falls into the second category I listed up there.  Not the child molester, but rather the scary, undefinable genre that you would normally run from had you not spent an upwards of 20 dollars (!!!) on this game.  You don't control Pac-Man, but you do get to control a slingshot-wielding omnipotent presence over Pac-Man, which might not be a better choice, come to think of it.  As Pac-Man goes by his daily affairs, you're supposed to point him in the right direction.

Right:  By now you've stopped reading and begun thinking about Sexy Sexy Ridge Racer Lady, Namco's other marketable mascot.  Dammit.

Well, it isn't that simple, folks.  You get three functions:  One to shoot pebbles at stuff, one to shoot power pellets, and one to slap Pac-Man in the face and tell him to LOOK!!! Sometimes he doesn't respond to what you do, sometimes he's too busy milking the cow to pay attention to the small rocks you're launching in the general direction of his big yellow ass, and sometimes he ignores you completely while he walks happily into the spike trap.  If you play the game, these things WILL happen.  However, he doesn't get hurt or explode in a messy spray of yellow blood and internal organs, despite what Dave Grossmann might have us think.  He gets depressed as time goes on.  Nice job, Pac-Man 2! But could you have included a special "Happy Meter" that gets higher or lower like in Smurfs Adventure? Thanks!!!!!  P.S.  Enclosed are M&Ms!  I hope you like them!

Sometimes this game can really piss me off, though.  It took me 45 minutes to get through the minecart stage, and at the end I was rewarded with...  The starting screen for the mountains.  Whee!  I still haven't figured out the point A to C to Z to X to B train of thought that allows you to pick the flowers for Lucy yet, but I'm still trying.

SHOWN TO THE LEFT:  Instead of moving the couch in front of the TV like she's begging you to do, Pac-Man jumped on it for about ten seconds while Lucy stood there with a deadly grimace on her face.  This is the creativity I want, game designers.

In conclusion, this game is totally FUCKED UP.  I like dropping the hay onto the yammering farmer as Pac-Man tiptoes by.  I like shooting a kitty, causing it to chase Pac-Man offscreen into a crow I've agitated earlier.  I love all the different ways you can torture Pac-Man and all the people surrounding him, especially the cow.  But I'm a little perturbed, as I have no idea what to make of it all.  What the hell was Namco thinking when they released this?  Why a Pac-Man game and not a new, lovable mascot like Klonoa or that one guy from the Tower of Drugga?  This game is too confusing for its own good, and that's why I'm giving it a big fat 6.