It's like a live podcast, only you also get to watch a game while chatting with our awesome readers and viewers! We call this show Saturday Game School, because learning about new games is always fun.
Tonight on Mixer, we played Pac-Man Championship Edition 2, the newest entry in Bandai Namco's long-running arcade game series. Read on for quick impressions and contest winners.
Pac-Man Championship Edition 2
The original Pac-Man Championship Edition for Xbox 360 was praised for its neon-tinted modern revival of the classic Pac-Man arcade game. Bandai Namco soon followed it up with a DX version that tweaked the gameplay and added new levels – a trimmed down version of DX even came to Windows Phone!
Now the full-fledged sequel Pac-Man Championship Edition 2 has arrived on Xbox One. This installment brings a whopping forty levels of dot-munching gameplay in Score Attack mode, plus an unlockable Adventure mode with even more challenging gameplay. Clearing levels with high enough ratings will unlock new visual themes, music, and more.
Championship Edition 2 features fully 3D graphics and 2D gameplay. The emphasis in this installment is clearing paths of dots in an ever-changing maze as quickly as possible. After chomping enough dots and eating the fruit, Pac-Man will power up and get to eat the ghosts who pursued him. After the dramatic ghost-munching sequence, the maze changes and the process starts again.
It's all about playing as perfectly as possible within the fixed time limit to get a high score. The game tracks your progress throughout the session via graphs, allowing you to see just where you need to improve on each level.
Although some players favor Championship Edition DX over the latest installment, Pac-Man Championship Edition 2 is still a fast-paced, energetic sequel worthy of the Pac-Man name. It costs $12.99 on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Steam.
The Contest
We'll be streaming Pac-Man Championship Edition 2 for ~90 minutes tonight, starting at 9 PM Eastern (8 PM Central, 6 PM Pacific, 1 AM GMT). During that time, we'll be giving out a total of 10 game codes:
- 7 for Xbox One
- 3 for PlayStation 4 (North American accounts only)
See the contest winners at the end of this story.
How to watch Mixer livestreams
We stream exclusively on Mixer, Microsoft's interactive livestreaming platform (formerly known as Beam). It provides some welcome improvements over Twitch, such as a cleaner website layout, built-in stream interactivity, and extremely low latency.
You can follow our channel at Mixer.com/WindowsCentral. From there, you'll be able to watch the stream and participate in chat directly from any web browser, including the Windows Phone browsers.
To receive email notifications when our Mixer streams go live:
- First, follow our channel.
- Now select your profile from the top-right corner of the screen.
- Pick the Account option near the bottom of the menu.
- Go to the Notifications tab.
- Make sure Send me important email updates on the Mixer platform is enabled. This option is labeled deceptively, but it's required for all forms of email notifications.
- Click or tap the Email box next to our channel name until a check appears. That's it!
- We highly recommend that you set a recurring alarm on your phone. Our weekend stream always starts at the same time (9 PM Eastern/6 PM Pacific), so the phone reminder can be very helpful.
Mixer does not offer a Windows Phone app, so watching from the browser is the only option on Microsoft's mobile platform. But Mixer does offer apps on Xbox One, Android, and iOS.
Future streams
Want to know what's next for Windows Central's weekend Mixer programming? We stream a different game every Saturday (and sometimes Sunday). The stream always starts at the same time: 9 PM Eastern (8 PM Central, 6 PM Pacific, 1 AM GMT). Over the next few weeks, we'll be streaming the following (schedule not finalized):
- July 22: No stream because Paul will be attending his high school reunion. See you next week!
- July 29: SUPERHOT, the amazing first-person shooter in which time only moves when you do.
- August 5: Penarium, a sadistic 2D platformer from Team17 that takes place in a deadly circus.
We hope you'll tune in as often as you can! Set a recurring alarm on your phone so you'll always know when it's time for the stream to start.
Winners
These viewers are a-maze-ing!
Xbox One
- VanPsyche
- HahaImadeAfunny
- WIPEOUT_WARRIOR
- Link1207
- Jordan650
- Rumbull
- Beaststyle
PlayStation 4
- Dr_Mindbender
- TheCro
- WindWalkR
Tonight's prizes provided by Bandai Namco. Thanks also to our stream moderators for keeping the peace and giving away the prizes!
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