You Get What You Pay For
If it wasn't for some of the Live Arcade games bundled here, this would easily get a star-lower grade. But there's such great value here that I can't ignore, even if it's at the cost of accessibilty.
I remember the old Namco Museum days, where you would actually go through a 3D museum of arcade classics; you could read up on the history of the games, or look at unused art or whatever. That was a creative and entertaining way to show you the work that went into these classics, not to mention a cool way to actually get you to the game without just going through a lame menu.
Obviously this game ignored my sentiment, because this has to be one of the worst, most user-unfriendly menus I've used in a game, ever. Persona 4 has a less confusing menu-system, and it looks better to boot. As soon as you start the game, you choose from two options- the Xbox Live Arcade Museum or the Namco Museum. The XBLA museum has the games that you can download, yet they're all unlocked as long as you keep the game disc in your drive. You have your prerequisite Pac Man, Ms. Pac Man, Dig Dug along with the excellent Pac Man Championship Edition, the solid Galaga Legions and the underwhelming Mr. Driller Online, along with a few others. These games have full 200 achievements and work well for the most part. But there's no easy way whatsoever to exit and start a new game. Instead of bringing you back to a main menu where you can pick the game, you're forced to the XBLA menu, where you must choose the game and boot it up again. It's even worse if you want to play a game that's not on the XBLA menu. You have to start up the disc again and choose the other option for Namco Museum, then choose a game from a list, then boot it. And guess what, after you lose or want to quit that game, you're booted to the menu for said game, so you can't immediately restart the game without a load screen. That sucks and is a horrendous excuse for a menu system- this wouldn't stand 15 years ago, and it certainly shouldn't stand now. Oh and the games aren't completely unlocked/downloaded for your console. If you want to play an XBLA game from this disc, you have to keep the disc inside your console. Smooth move, Namco.
Otherwise, this is just Namco Museum again. No frills. Some great games (Metro Cross ftw!), some OK ones (Rally-X), some bad ones (pretty much any game that you haven't heard of before this collection). In all honesty, if you're jonesing for a couple of these games, and you don't mind the inconvenience of the menu system, it's a solid purchase. I just wish that Namco spent more time making the presentation and accessibilty better instead of cramming the game with obsecure "classics".
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