Pikmin

"Fresh, fun and a joy to play."

Just when you thought games couldn’t get any better, they do. With the launch of GameCube came a swagger of great titles each with their own individual twists of brilliance. My personal favourite from the entire list of games released so far is Pikmin. Blending the genre’s of adventure, puzzle and real-time-strategy, Pikmin pulls the best from each area and brings it together onto a GameCube disc of absolute joy.

Pikmin puts players in the shoes of Captain Olimar, a 3-inch tall spaceman who crash lands on a strange planet after his spacecraft is hit by an asteroid. As his ship crashed down, 30 parts of his ship fell off and scattered across the surface of this mysterious planet. When Captain Olimar lands the situation doesn’t look good and he only has 30 days to find the parts before he will die from the poisonous gas on the planet.

So 30 parts in 30 days – still sounds rather tricky considering most of the parts are twice the size of our little hero. Enter the Pikmin. After the exploring the surface for mere moments Captain Olimar stumbles across a strange pod. He reaches out to touch it and just as he does it flies up into the air, grows three legs and then falls gently back to Earth sprouting a single seed from its top. The seed goes into the ground and then sprouts a leaf which Olimar gives a tug and out pops a little red Pikmin. Olimar is amazed and as he goes about his business he finds that the little Pikmin will follow him and do as he commands. Soon Olimar is able to build up an entire army of these little guys by picking up ‘pellets’ with Pikmin seeds in them or carrying enemies back to the pod. With this mighty army Olimar can use Pikmin to perform certain tasks such as:

- Building bridges
- Knocking down walls
- Building ramps
- Collecting and carrying your 30 ship parts
- Attacking enemies
- So much more

Basically the Pikmin will do what ever Olimar wants them to and this comes as a great relief to our hero as he now has hope in collecting all 30 ship parts. As his adventure continues two more coloured Pikmin become available (blue and yellow), these have different strengths and weaknesses to the red Pikmin and adds to the complexity in deciding what colour to use at certain times. In some situations a combination of colours will be needed to collect a certain ship part so knowing when to use each becomes vital.

Controlling the Pikmin is reasonably simple and takes very little practice. In the early stages of Pikmin you are given the basic controls but they aren’t continuously shoved down your throat as the game goes on, you are told once and then you are left to play the game yourself. The analogue stick moves Olimar and this determines where his cursor will be. The cursor is important for throwing and commanding your Pikmin as I will explain now. A-button will make Olimar throw a Pikmin to where your cursor is. If the Pikmin lands near a pellet it will pick it up and take it back to base and if you throw it on an enemy it will attack. You can throw multiple Pikmin by quickly tapping the A-button and you can of course have different Pikmin performing different tasks at anyone time. Use of this multitasking becomes an essential tool in the game as you try to find your ship parts before time runs out. Some items require the use of more than one Pikmin to carry them back to base and the game will indicate just how many Pikmin are needed by putting a number above the item that is to be carried as well as the number of Pikmin already on the task. B-button is used to round up your Pikmin under your command. When you press it a circle will appear around your cursor and any Pikmin in this circle will come and follow you and join any group currently behind you. If you hold down B this circle will expand and you can collect all your Pikmin in one foul swoop. The X-button will split your Pikmin up into three groups (based on colour) so you can then re-select a certain coloured Pikmin for your task. Y-button will toggle your status and the shoulder buttons (L, R and Z) manipulate the camera offering a range of viewpoints that are all useful in certain situations.

The Pikmin will follow Olimar in a group behind him but players can use the C-stick to move them independent of the Captain within a certain range. Also, instead of throwing all 100 Pikmin towards a task (which can take a bit of time) you can simply use the C-stick to guide them to the task and they will all automatically do it. Nice.

At one time you can have an army of 100 Pikmin under your command. However you can have more stored in the pods that the Pikmin live in and planning what coloured to Pikmin have out at a certain time is quite important. However Pikmin can be lost and killed as a result of your mistreatment. There are many ways for Pikmin to die and the most common tends to have them eaten by another, much larger, bug on the planet. Each enemy has it’s own attacking habits, some will sit back and wait, while others will come out and attack the Pikmin because they feel hungry or generally feel like causing havoc. However the Pikmin are not totally defenseless, Captain Olimar can throw them at creatures and there is, most certainly, safety in numbers. The best tactic seems to be throwing the Pikmin onto their backs rather than at faces which tend to have rather large, hungry mouths.

Every day you must plan what you are going to go out and achieve. A day on the Pikmin planet lasts about 15 minutes in real time and this is shown by the Sun moving across the screen (up the top). You can also tell the time of day by the lighting in the game. The day starts off with a mellow sunrise and the day gets brighter and as it draws to a close the forest slowly falls under shadow as you scramble to finish the day off and gather your Pikmin together. Any Pikmin that are not collected at the end of each day will be eaten by their enemies overnight, not a pretty picture.

As well as the normal one player mode there is also a challenge mode. This lets players go back to a level to collect as many Pikmin as they can in one day. While this mode isn’t a massive extra it does add some replay value to the title and is also a great way of showing the game basics to friends. However the core replay is found in playing the adventure all over again. I have had the game three days and I have already clocked it six times and will most certainly clock it six more in the coming week. It’s just that addictive. There is a scoreboard recorded by the game with the main focus being on how quickly you can collect all the ship parts. However just playing the game again for the sake of it is just as enjoyable as the first time through and is high recommended.

Graphically Pikmin is quite brilliant. While the Pikmin themselves are very colourful the actual environment of the planet itself focuses on detail rather than a mixture of bright colour. There are five levels in the game and each has it’s own unique setting, some in caves, some in forest and others in open lake areas but each beautiful and interesting. Because players can manipulate the zoom of the camera it is incredible to see the amount of detail with the ultra close zoom, it almost looks real (this statement is overused but Pikmin looks real, honest!) Both the Pikmin and their enemies all look great and their cartoon appearance seems to somehow fit very well with the realistic natural environment they have been placed in. Pikmin lacks any real cut scene action and where there are cut scenes they don’t look the greatest. However with such a tidy graphical engine in the game Nintendo can be easily forgiven.

Pikmin is easy to pick up but oh-so-hard to put down and people from all over the gaming spectrum will enjoy this game. ‘Hardcore’ gamers, sisters, mothers, fathers and even grandparents will fall in love with the Pikmin. It can be just as fun to watch someone else controlling the Pikmin as it is to play yourself, such is the wonder of the little creatures. This is my favourite GameCube game so far so I am a little bias when I say ‘buy it now’, but this is a great game and it’s minor flaws are dwarfed by the incredible gameplay that Pikmin offers. Buy it now.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 10/15/02, Updated 10/15/02