Cloud Save Exploit Setup
We're going play the game in order to set ourselves up for exploiting the cloud save feature. The way this exploit works is pretty straightforward: every time you make progress towards an achievement (e.g., by unlocking a power-up or buying the 8th level upgrade) the progress on the achievement is recorded. But the achievement tracker doesn't keep track of what power-up or upgrade you got, it only cares that you made progress. Therefore you can keep on unlocking the same power-up and buying the same 8th level upgrade to make the achievement pop. You can make progress, immediately delete your local save, sync with the cloud to get your pellets/progress back to just before you got them, and repeat the process until the achievements pop.
There are 3 achievements that can be obtained by exploiting this glitch:
Our goal is to setup our local save in such a state as to make progress towards all 3 of these. You can do these 1 at a time, but it's easy enough to setup all 3 at the same time. To that end, you will need to do the following in order:
- Play the game long enough to obtain at least 4080 pellets.
- Play the game long enough to be only 1 item away on a mission.
- Play the game to get very close to unlocking the next power-up, somewhere around 50-100 pellets away.
Once you have all 3, die and then dashboard to force the game to sync with the cloud. The next few sections will discuss the details of each of the above steps. The very end of this walkthrough will tell you how to do the exploit.
Upgrading Power-ups
You can upgrade power-ups from the main menu of the game. To fully upgrade a power-up to level 8 requires a total of 4080 pellets. The costs and levels are as follows:
Level 1 = 16
Level 2 = 32
Level 3 = 64
Level 4 = 128
Level 5 = 256
Level 6 = 512
Level 7 = 1024
Level 8 = 2048
You will need to play the game for probably close to 2 hours to get this many pellets. Obviously focus on only one power-up to upgrade. You start with the laser and it's actually a pretty useful power-up so it's the one I upgraded fully, but it's purely a matter of personal preference. Once you have enough, focus on making progress towards the mission.
Completing Missions
The game has random missions that you can optionally complete for bonus pellets. The missions are pretty basic and involve either picking up a certain amount of fruit (e.g., 5 strawberries), killing ghosts with a particular power-up, picking-up certain power-ups (e.g., 5 freezes), getting a certain number of pellets, getting a certain chain of pellets, etc. These persist across your games until you complete them, at which point you are given your bonus pellets and a new random quest.
Since we need to farm a large number of pellets and we need to complete 16 missions for an achievement anyway, you might as well focus on doing these legitimately throughout the climb towards 4080 pellets. If you're truly diligent you might be able to get this before the other two grindy achievements. If not, you can leave an easy mission almost done. For example, if you have a mission to pick-up 5 of a certain power-up, pick up 4 of the 5 of it and then proceed to work towards the next power-up unlock while avoiding picking any more of it up.
Unlocking Power-ups
You'll unlock power-ups periodically while eating pellets. The first few will unlock very quickly, but each subsequent power-up will cost more pellets to unlock. They quickly become expensive and you will need to get thousands of pellets to unlock the next power-up. Once you have 4080 pellets and the mission in a state of "almost completed", play until you get close to unlocking the next power-up. Play carefully and make sure you don't go over. I gave myself 100 pellets as a buffer. If you do go over, you will need thousands for the next power up.
Playing the Game
The game is pretty basic Pac-Man. There's nothing to miss achievement-wise so you can play worry-free until you hit 4080 pellets. While doing so there are two "hard" (i.e., skill and luck based) achievements that you should focus on.
The first, and probably the "hardest", achievement is:
This achievement requires that you eat at least 16 ghosts in the same power-pellet "chain." The power-pellets follow classic Pac-Man mechanics. When you eat the power-pellet the ghosts will turn blue and walk slowly away from you, and you can eat them. The timer will slowly go downward. All other power-ups will turn to mini-power-pellets that will recharge your timer by roughly 25%. Any regular power-pellets will recharge you to 100%. So long as the time doesn't expire you keep your chain. Simply keep to one side of the screen while eating ghosts and hunting for pellets to keep your timer alive. Eventually you'll get a sequence that gives you enough power-pellets to get your 16+ ghosts.
The second "hard" achievement is:
This achievement requires that you eat 256 pellets without breaking your streak. You will notice that certain parts of the maze won't have pellets or will have breaks in the pattern. You want to avoid those breaks (and ghosts obviously) while going for this achievement. Navigate the maze in such a way as to get an unbroken chain of 256 pellets and you'll unlock the above achievement. There is a bit of luck to this, but eventually you'll have a chain of this.
Once you have the above two achievements, focus of completing missions and getting 4080 pellets. Way before hitting 4080 you should get the other cumulative achievements in the game:
Once you have all of those out of the way and your save state in order you are ready to perform the time-saving exploit.
Using the Cloud Save Exploit
Once you have 4080 pellets, are 1 away on mission completion, and are very close to the next bonus you are ready to perform the exploit. If you haven't been regularly upgrading a power-up, upgrade one to level 7 to save yourself a few purchases. Now start by dashboarding the game in order to force the game the save to the cloud.
Next start the game and do all the steps to make progress toward each achievement you're working towards. This means:
- Buy the level 8 upgrade from the main menu's power-up screen.
- Start a game and play long enough to get enough pellets for the next power-up unlock
- Finish your mission (if you're working on one).
- Die to make the next power-up unlock and claim the mission reward
The first time you buy the level 8 power up you'll unlock the following achievement:
Now while on the main menu of the game, press the guide button, select Pac-Man 256, press start to bring up the xbox menu and go to "manage game and add-ons". Navigate to your save, select it, and select "delete local save". The save will remain, select it again and select "delete local save". You need to "delete local save" twice in order to actually delete your local save. Now launch Pac-Man 256. The game will sync with the cloud, and bring you back to right before you did all the steps to make progress toward the grindy achievements.
Now all you need to do is repeat this process about 30 times to get all the achievements. While this is a bit boring and repetitive, it's significantly quicker than legitimately unlocking all of the achievements.
Multiplayer
There's a lonely multiplayer achievement that requires you to simply play a multiplayer game. As the game has only couch co-op, you'll need at least two controllers. Start up a game and let both controllers sit there until you die (or intentionally look for a way to die) in order to unlock:
Congrats on the 1000 GS!
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