The idea behind the TouchArcade Game of the Week is that every Friday afternoon we post the one game that came out this week that we think is worth giving a special nod to. Now, before anyone goes over-thinking this, it doesn’t necessarily mean our Game of the Week pick is the highest scoring game in a review, the game with the best graphics, or really any other quantifiable “best" thing. Instead, it’s more just us picking out the single game out of the week’s releases that we think is the most noteworthy, surprising, interesting, or really any other hard to describe quality that makes it worth having if you were just going to pick up one.

These picks might be controversial, and that’s OK. If you disagree with what we’ve chosen, let’s try to use the comments of these articles to have conversations about what game is your game of the week and why.

Without further ado…

Pac-Man Championship Edition DX

It’s astounding that 35 years later Pac-Man is still bringing it in the world of video games. Oh, don’t get me wrong, there are a fair share of absolutely terrible Pac-Man games, but there are some truly incredible ones too that both use the Pac-Man character in fun ways and expand on the original arcade game’s gameplay in interesting ways. A perfect example of this is Pac-Man Championship Edition DX ($2.99), which surprise launched this week after originally soft-launching as a free to play game more than a year ago.

First let’s talk about the game itself. You might be thinking, “didn’t a Pac-Man Championship Edition launch on iPhone way back in 2009?" Yes, it did. This is a quasi-sequel to that game, as it includes all the original boards from that first game plus many, many more. It’s also optimized for all the different iOS screen sizes and resolutions, and has tons of options and additional modes. The first game hasn’t been updated in 3 years. So if you owned and loved the original iOS version of Pac-Man CE, and you’re wondering if you should buy this one, the answer is yes.

The gameplay is classic Pac-Man dot-and-ghost-eating but with a massive twist. Each board is essentially split in half, and once you’ve eaten all the dots on one side a fruit will appear. Collect the fruit and it “resets" the side of the board with new dots in a new configuration. As you progress, more and more ghosts appear to try and stop you, and the game speeds up. Each round is timed and your goal is to get as high a score as possible by the time the clock runs out.

Now, here’s where things get really interesting. Placed along each board are “sleeping" ghosts, and if you buzz right by them you’ll wake them up, and they’ll begin following you. These are separate from the normal ghosts who patrol around using their own paths, as these awakened ghosts will follow Pac-Man’s exact movement. Since this is a high-scoring game, you can continue collecting all the sleeping ghosts, then collecting all the dots, then resetting the board with new dots and ghosts, and then collecting THOSE ghosts, and so on and so forth.

If you’re good enough you can get a massive line of ghosts behind you, and when the time is right, gobble up a power pellet and turn on the entire lot of them, eating them up in a flurry. This obviously turns into a massive combo chain worth tons of points, and it’s also just incredibly satisfying on its own. There’s such an excellent element of risk/reward as you try to collect as many ghosts as you can for an epic combo, but you don’t want to get too crazy as the clock is constantly ticking down and if you don’t “cash in" your crazy conga line of ghosts when it runs out you’ll be out of luck. The gameplay is simply brilliant, and once it “clicks" you’ll be entirely hooked.

Now, let’s talk about the pay model. Pac-Man Championship Edition DX is $4.99 with no IAPs, however it was originally a free to play’d out game with timers and currencies and all that. I really need to commend Bandai Namco for going the paid route with this one, and not shoehorning a free to play model that didn’t feel right into the game. And it definitely didn’t feel right here. Those models work for certain types of games but not all. Here you get the whole enchilada (well, except for the DX+ expansion content that’s on consoles, but maybe someday!) all for a bargain price of $4.99. Awesome.

So if you like Pac-Man, or even if you don’t, you’d do well to look into Pac-Man Championship Edition DX. It’s frighteningly good fun, controls like a dream on the touchscreen (surprisingly!), supports MFi controllers if that’s your thing, and has a ton of content to play through. It’s truly a worthy experience that could have been sullied had it launched as originally intended.