So, a friend of mine sent me an image today which brings up a very important point in regards to Pac-Man (and also is relevant to the second part of this post); Pac-Man is a survival horror game.
Ok, so, there are two points here, one, Pac-Man is a survival horror game. Think about it. You're trapped in a maze (much like how most survival horror games are in maze like environments where areas are closed off and you have to find weird round about ways to get where you're going) while being chased by ghosts, while trying to collect all of the pellets. The ghosts are super terrifying most of the time because you can't do anything to them, you can only run (survival horror-esque), but, every now and then you can turn the tables on them via Power Pellets! But, like any good horror monster, they just keep coming back!
With my brief explanation of how Pac-Man is already a survival horror game, let me sell you on this idea - Remake Pac-Man, as a 3rd person survival horror game (that is more adventure game-y than 3rd person shooter.)
The above picture is the inspiration for this stupid and crazy idea. Pac-Man is actually a man on a space station, or a base on another planet or something, where he has to deal with these four ghosts that suddenly attack the station/building. Each ghost is unique - Blinky (red ghost) bled to death (thus a red suit) and kills people in as bloody of a way as possible. Clyde (orange ghost) burned to death and is still constantly on fire (thus a red suit) and spread fire wherever he goes and burns his victims to death. Inky froze to death and his suit is covered in ice and...you get the idea from the other two. And Pinky suffocated to death and will find ways to cut off the oxygen to areas (suit wouldn't need to be pink, but she would be female, and being able to cut off the oxygen to areas would be somewhat reminiscent of Pinky's 'ambush' nature from the standard Pac-Man games, and for that matter you could make little quirks like that applicable to all of the rest of the ghosts, by setting up how each one attacks the player; straightforward, getting easily distracted/wandering off, things like that.)
You wouldn't be able to stop the ghosts by any normal means other than to simply run away and find ways to potentially delay them (escaping to a different area, for example), but you could work in some kind of special medicine or something (the power pellet) that you can use in an emergency and will cause the ghosts to disappear from around you, but, they will still come back eventually and you only have a set number of them.
As for the objective of the game, you could be going around trying to salvage what you can from the station; maybe you need to make an escape but you have to gather enough food so that you can survive after leaving the station, or maybe that's how it starts, but then once the ghosts show up you have to start figuring out how to get rid of the ghosts.
The game could end in a ridiculous plot twist of Pac-Man actually being in a padded cell on earth and is just crazy and the ghosts are people that he has killed while having fits of insanity (but then they could leave you with one last moment of 'but maybe it IS all real and him in the padded cell is just the ghosts having defeated him in the REAL world and then you can't tell what is real and what isn't.)
By the way, I don't ACTUALLY think that this is something that should ever be done, because it would be awful, I just had this idea due to the picture and decided to share my super dumb idea so that other people can share in this... ....whatever the hell you want to call this dumb idea for a Pac-Man 'remake'.
Log in to comment