Hackman 3
by WisdomDude
Pacman clones are cool, especially in QB!
| Hack-man, AKA Pac-Man's future grandson, has been living happily on Jupiter. He has missed Pac-man so much, that he wanted to contact him with a CPU. When the "Universal Internet" came out in December 5, 2078, hack-Man bought himself a new computer... As he purchased a Pentium 9, 5000Mhz, 3.9 Terabyte HD, 800Mbps modem, CPU, he left the computer in his virtual living room. When he came back from the kitchen, getting a slice of pepperoni pizza, he noticed that his virtual desktop was empty! As Hack-Man dropped his large jaw to the ground, he saw out of his virtual busted window small ghosts take off with his most expensive computer. Since Hack-Man can't defeat the ghosts by himself, he decides to risk his life, saving his computer... When he started his space mobile, he noticed that he was being followed by powerful ghosts. He decides to take full speed on the space mobile so that he can get to the Ghost-Ship-Enterprise. As he gets there, he realizes that this is going to be hell! He decideds to make a plan to get through the labyrinth. Before he realizes it, he falls through a trap-door! Hack-Man cries, "All this over a computer!" Now that he is inside, he calms down and begins his journey. |
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| This game is an interesting twist on the Pacman engine. While the main idea is still the same (to get all of the pellets), there are some new ideas. Some levels are more than simply one screen. You have to go through stairs, tubes, and other things to get from one section to another. What I liked especially was the password feature. You can continue from any level...the only problem was that you can't continue past it. Apparantly through some quirk in the coding, the password treats the level you are trying to get to as level 1, and so after you beat it, you go to level 2....obviously not quite right. Too bad, but at least the gameplay is not boring enough to make you think that you do not want to play through again. Also, there are so many features in this game! You could change a lot of things, from how you control Hack-man to how the levels look to the difficulty. Sometimes it did not seem to make sense what did what, and it was a little overwhelming, but at least it was all functional. It was pretty cool to see how everything worked too. The levels seemed to have been designed interestingly enough, but there were times when it could have benefitted from an overall tweaking. This is partly included in graphics, but each game area starts slower because of the time it takes to draw all of the moving objects...I will explain below. |
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| Everything looked pretty cool at first, especially the intro sequence. I liked the attitude of this game, with the ghosts looking so menacing and the different areas having different tile sets. Unfortunately, the ghosts did not have much in the way of animation, but the rest of the game did. Obviously Hack-man is animated, but did everything else in the game have to be? The pellets, the walls, etc are all flashing on the screen. What I noticed is that this caused my 800Mhz Athlon to run more slowly than the 800Mhz Pentium where I work. I guess my video card was being taxed by this game, or maybe it has to do with the Athlon's architecture, or maybe it's something else about my computer. In any case, it seems to run perfectly fine on some computers but slows down on computers like mine. I do not know what the exact cause for this could be. If you can get it to run perfectly then you will not notice too much in the way of lag...however, it is still pretty uneasy to look at. | |
| Well, it shouldn't be too hard to play this game, but there are times when the controls are too sticky, the result of using INKEY$ in certain areas. Sometimes you meant to turn at a corner, only to find that you have missed it. The tile based movements only add to this trouble, but they are not too bad. | |
| This game uses a lot of .wav files for not only its sound effects, but its music as well. The quality of the sounds leaves enough to be desired. The music is not impressive either, since it is simply a looping .wav file. The sound effects can get in the way, but the chomping sound was kind of cool when you ate a ghost. In general, the game was kind of hard to listen to for an extended period of time. | |
| Each screen seems to only have one ghost, until you get to the later levels. Then you notice that while the first screen in a level has only one, the next might have two or even four! This can get difficult, especially if the playing area is minimized by walls. The AI of the ghosts is not that intricately designed. Sometimes it seems random, but if you are in a direct line of site, the ghost will usually go directly for you. The only bad thing about this is when you are at a dead end. I never really liked dead ends in Pacman games, since they seem to be a result of bad design, even if they weren't. What I mean is that if you played the game, you would see that it would be difficult enough to worry about ghosts coming from both sides, so that dead ends are not necessary. | |
| I found this game to be refreshingly different from most Pacman clones. I liked the graphics, to a point, and the different levels each had their own interesting quirks about them. The password feature would have been good if it was implemented correctly, but the game is fun on its own. | |
| Why does this not work correctly on my computer?! I was missing out on it, and luckily I always play the game while I am reviewing it so that I could see the difference as I sit here at work. B-) If the sound was tweaked and the graphics were more toned down, than I would have enjoyed this more. I would suggest this game to anyone who likes Pacman clones with a twist. Hopefully it will work for you. | |
| .zip file: 434KB | |
| V Planet! |