Nintendo and Hudson’s Mario Party is the standard, but Namco hopes to bring something new to the genre with Pac-Man Fever. Featuring Pac-Man and other popular Namco characters, players traverse a game board in hopes to be first across the finish line. The spaces range from free tokens (money) to shops to one-on-one battles, which give the boards some purpose, but they’re nowhere near as interactive as those in Mario Party 4. Boards are primarily a way to keep score, as movement is dependant on a player’s performance on the previous mini-game, which is at the start of a turn. This prevents players from suffering cruel fates based on bad luck…something I don’t like about Mario Party. Overall, I liked the general game layout.

But the mini-games are the bulk of any party game, and Namco seems to be aware of this. The mini-games I played in Pac-Man Fever are hardly revolutionary or terribly inspired, but the games are varied and fairly well implemented. Each board has its own set of mini-games centered around the board’s main theme, a feature I appreciated. I did find the analog control to be a little on the sensitive side in the mini-games, as making your character/icon move a short distance was difficult, but games were still playable. Some of my favorites are the Arcade-style shooting game and the kart game, where players collect fruit while avoiding obstacles. Namco does need to work on the visuals: textures are blurry and models are simplistic—the game looks last-generation right now. I couldn’t hear any sound during my time with the game.