Pac-Man World 3 for the GameCube is on the showroom floor, but it doesn’t leave me smiling. At first, it seems like its excellent GameCube prequel: the demo has a decent Pac-maze level, and the platforming section’s controls are mostly unchanged. Pac-Man can eat a Classic Power Pellet to munch on ghosts, gobble up regular pellets, and hop around. Pac-Man can also jump off walls in a fashion vaguely resembling recent 3D Sonic games, bounce with the B button and rev roll, as he did in the last game.

What has changed is the level design. Only one 3D area is on display, and it has left me unsatisfied. Pac-Man World 2 was best known for its faster-paced, highly linear platforming. The Pac-Man World 3 demo puts the player in a more open area with little instruction. Besides eating some ghosts and pellets, there is little to do but climb up the city environment. A switch higher up turns off a fan, allowing you to reach a health item near the start, but I could not find anyplace else to go. Other players seemed to have the same frustrations (actually, most couldn’t see how to platform upwards). Hopefully, the game is very early on, and the level displayed really is as limited as I perceived.

If the vague environment shown accurately represents the game’s final level design, Namco has a real dud on their hands.