Pikmin

"Tiny gardens of big ideas."

STORY
Pikmin is a game in which you come to know a place without touching anything directly. Yet you feel immersed rather than detached. This is because you are made to empathise with your cursor, the story is about him and his name is captain Orima. He is a family man, who has a boring job carrying freight from one place to another. A space trucker. He's been working too hard for some time, and so he decides to take a vacation. Going on the road/space with no fixed destination, just driving for the fun of it. The night before he's due to set off, he sits down to a meal of onions and multicolored pikupiku carrots, with his family then goes to bed tired. Once on his way, a stray meteor hits his ship and he crashes on an unknown planet. Here he finds creatures which look like the onions he had for supper, which are host to smaller creatures which look like the carrots he ate to accompany them. These smaller creatures he calls ''Pikmin''.

GAMEPLAY
You act through the Pikmin in this game. You direct them to harvest circular chips and aliens to create more pikmin, and ultimately pieces of your ship, the Dolphin. There are 30 pieces of your ship to collect spread throughout the garden like levels. The controls are easy to fathom, with the analogue stick moving a target which capt. Orima follows, the A button throwing pikmin to the target which can be moved towards whatever you want to collect, the B button which makes Orima blow a whistle which makes the pikmin drop what they are doing and call them back. The camera stick offsets the pikmin in a direction from orima, and can also be used as a ground attack, the X button drops all pikmin and separates them into colors so you can call back only the color you want, and the Y button brings up a map (Once you've got it). The colors of the Pikmin have different abilities, red are fireproof for example, and using the right pikmin for the right job is essential.

GRAPHICS 10
Good. The landscapes are beautiful, with morning haze, running through to all lighting conditions throughout the day. Each level has a totally different feel, with different amounts of haze and even motion blur to enhance the feeling. Even the rusted tin cans look fantastic, which is an achievement in itself. The creatures are amazing, with materials which look soft like maggots, hard like beetles, shiny and matte, and always animated to convey these features. Soft creatures wobble as they move around, water creatures glisten with a wet look sheen, bigger creatures are animated to look heavier, and effects like screen wobble, dust smoke, fire, water, sparks, shadows and light are all utterly believable and never overplayed. All of the visuals in this game are servants to an overall atmosphere, which is as carefully engineered as any film. It's much harder to make a fantasy look believable than it is to make a realistic game impressively real. I can't think of a game with better visuals.

SOUND 10
Good. The music is lazy and relaxed. It creates a calm environment, which is good since you'll be here for a while. It's heavily interactive, which major changes in instrumentation while in battle and near to certain physical features, and minor changes throughout the day. As the day draws to a close and darkness blends over the landscape, the music changes again to become more twinkly and percussive.
The sound effects go from very low key for general events, with strings like in zelda to convey menu operations and chimes to signify the time of day, through to piercing for battle effects and pikmin cries. The creatures make noises, which are appropriate to them, insect noises, splashes, heavy footsteps and so on. Once again, there is no sound, which is out of place, and everything is believable and carefully made.

LONGEVITY 9
It depends upon how you play games. If you are someone who aggressively tackles a game, trying to get all the ship pieces and force your way through, losing interest thereafter, then you will be through this game in no time. As with most games. If however, you play it to enjoy it you will be able to play again and again. With challenge modes and a high score table for each level, you will be able to come back to it months from now to scrape a few more pikmin in a single day. I imagine that some people will be able to get REALLY high scores eventually.

OVERALL 10
For me this is the first game, which exemplifies a new generation of gaming. The technology employed to make this game is mind-boggling. The rendering is cutting edge, the animation data and skinning must be hugely processor intensive, and the textures for the landscape are huge. The A.I. for a hundred Pikmin at once is a ludicrous feat, and yet it is all secondary to a general feel and atmosphere, which is totally entertaining, and the creation of a fun and convincing place to spend some time. This is the only game which offers this kind of an experience, which I think makes it a classic.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 11/01/01, Updated 11/01/01