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I didn't play the game "once" I played it for an evening, for several hours.
It's true that I don't have a whole lot of stick time logged on the 360 wireless controller. But again, I'll reiterate, I would play the game and the controls would feel normal for a time. After the action got a little speedy, I'd find that Pac Man just wouldn't obey my controller inputs. I'd want him to turn, and he'd reverse. Or he'd ignore my input entirely. Or, I'd want him to go straight, and all of a sudden he'd turn on his own.
I thought there was something funny going on with the controller at first. Like that physically something was worn out in the contacts, or it was just very touchy. I was playing on the D-pad at first, so I switched to the analog stick, but the problem still persisted.
I continued to play, and managet to rack scores of up to 130,000 on the 5-minute Championship mode game, usually not making it through the entire 5 minutes (it'd kindof hard when you can't get Pac Man to obey your input). I never said I was great at Pac Man CE, but I did take time to read the instructoions on screen and learn how to play. I went through the configuration options, and of course there aren't any for the controls. It's dead simple. It's Pac Man, what do you expect? So I kept on playing, assuming that I was just experiencing typical newb frustration with the game, and that eventually I'd develop the touch and I'd understand why Pac Man would suddenly turn.
For a while, I played with an assumption that if you tried to turn when you couldn't, Pac Man would reverse. Like if you were running down a long tunnel and pressed into the wall, he'd turn around. I thought, maybe I'm pressing into the wall too early, trying to do a faster turn, and the game is interpreting my stick input with some weird logic, perhaps something like:
ChangeDirection(Stick.Input) {
If Stick.Input.Direction.IsNotBlockedByWall() Then
TurnPacMan(Direction)
Else
Stick.Input.ElapsedTime = 0
While Not(Stick.Input.DirectionIsNotBlockedByWall()) && (Stick.Input.ElapsedTime <= 250) Do {
Stick.Input.ElapsedTime++;
}
If Stick.Input.ElapsedTime => 250 Then
ChangeDirection(Random);
}
So I started trying to play super, super precise, turning *just* before I hit the gap in the maze where I wanted to turn. My play improved a bit, but Pac Man would still make random turns at times or refuse to make a turn I wanted him to make. Eventually, I started to get frustrated.
After a few games of playing like this, I started testing things out. I'd play a game, and take my hands completely off the controls. Literally, the controller was sitting on my flat open palm, with no part of me touching any buttons, the D-pad, or the analog stick. Pac Man would run around the maze for what felt like a long time, but probably was just a few seconds. He wouldn't run into a corner and stop, he'd follow the line of dots, turning several corners, grabbing the fruit or the energizer, and chase down ghosts. It was like he built up a certain amount of momentum and after letting go of the controller he'd keep playing without me for a few seconds until he ran out of steam. Then he'd stop making turns automatically and run into a corner and not move again until I pressed a direction.
I tested this from the very beginning of a game, and it did not happen at first -- it only seemed to happen once the game sped up.
Something very weird was happening. Since he was playing well on "auto-pilot" I started to think that the game was built that way on purpose for some reason, although it made no sense to me. It did not seem like a worn or defective controller was feeding the game random inputs -- the skill level that Pac Man "auto-pilot" was demonstrating could not have been replicated by chance.
I'm not claiming to know what was happening or what caused it, but I will swear on my life that it happened just as I have stated.
All I want to know is, is that how the game is supposed to be? (You've answered that, thanks).
Since it's NOT... then how do I fix it? Has anyone else seen this odd behavior, and what did you do about it?
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