So first blog post. Yay. Woo.

So anyways, who hasn't played Pac-Man? I feel right now that I must point out that at the time of my writing this, there are twenty reviews of the classic arcade booth, and there's only one score that is below an 8.7. And I feel it necessary to point out that his review was of an....online....version. Either the article writer was mistaken to think that arcade booths are somehow linked up to the internet (which isn't true at all), or he played the Xbox Live version and then reviewed the wrong one. Even then, an opinion is only worth two cents, and sometimes less.*

But I'm just nitpicking, and that stuff I wrote up there will come back to bite me at the end of this post. Even with that score it gets around (or above) a 9.0. And, as the same review points out, "who hasn't played pac-man before?" It pretty much goes without saying that you would be hard pressed to find someone, anyone, who hasn't at least heard of Pac-Man (unless you travel to some country that's really far out there).

But that's not the point of this post. The point of this post is to point out something very very critical about the game that, truthfully, I haven't seen or heard anyone point out: 28 entire years of video games later (with the exception of possibly pong), there really isn't anything that's come remotely close to having as....complex of an AI as Pac-Man.

Let me start with this: imagine a video game. Possibly one of the best games out there. Graphics are beautiful, everything is cold and calculated, infinite customizability (but not to where it bogs down the experience), perfect frame rates, excellent physics, amazing storyline and character development. Soundtrack is subjective; it allows you to set whatever you want as your soundtrack via the internet: from speed metal to acid jazz, and everything in between. Multiplayer is amazing, online co-op, online multiplayer....you get the idea. Now add in some God-awful AI. What do you have? Half a game. A marred experience. And millions of posts about how the game ended up disappointing.

This description is actually pretty applicable to most games at launch time: promising something amazing, then one thing goes wonky and the rest of the game seems to somewhat crumble down on top of itself.** There are very few games out there; and by very few I MEAN very few; that can claim that after a long, long time they are playable. Far less that can make this claim and say that their AI is up to par with most other games out there.

Pac-Man, as it were, is one of these rare games that can say that its AI is superior. I concede the fact that it's a simple game, but the fact that it has stood out for 28 years, with countless spin-offs, remakes, and fan garbage, is noteworthy.*** And y'know what? The reason it was so successful was (and is) because the AI is so ingenious. In the beginning, it's a cake walk (for the talented among us). Then level 2 rolls around, and you begin to get an eerie feeling. A feeling of being chased; no.....hunted. A feeling that pretty much no game has been able to replicate to this day.

Not to say that it can't be beaten. That takes talent (and time) to pull off. And there are 255 long, long levels to clear before the game pretty much crashes on the 256th level.

Oh, I forgot to mention Ms. Pac-Man and Jr. Pac-Man as well.

*I don't like GTAIV. I'm not buying it. I think all those perfect 10s were either hype or they were rounded up, so you can expect me to post something about it in a future blog post. Again, worth two cents or less because it's total opinion.

**i.e., games become over-hyped. This is exactly what happened to Fable. I was lucky that I didn't hear all the stuff that Molyneaux said about it, so I got to take it as it was.

***The word garbage was used in the most loving, polite, JEALOUS AND ENVIOUS way possible. I WISH I COULD DO SOME OF THE AWESOME STUFF THOSE AWESOME FANS PULL OFF! ....too bad I'm full of FAIL

also, if the links don't work correctly, I'm gonna be severely pissed.