Pikmin

"Brilliant"

Introduction:

Brilliant. That is (in my opinion) the best way to sum up Pikmin. Pikmin is one of the most unique games I have ever played. It is such a refreshing game to play after the myriads of GTA or Halo wannabes. Pikmin is similar to many other Nintendo games, innovative, fun, witty, and …kiddy. This game will seem extremely childish at first, but after you work your way into the game, you will be so hooked that you will pay little attention to this, even if you abhor those types of games.

Story:

In Pikmin, you control Captain Olimar, a man the size of a quarter. He left his home planet on his rocket ship, Dolphin, just to look around. A meteor hits Dolphin and he crashes into a strange planet. The parts of his ship have been dispersed all over the planet. If Captain ever expects to go back to his home planet, he must find all 30 missing parts and repair your ship. If that doesn't sound frustrating enough, the planet Olimar has landed on contains oxygen, which is lethal to his people. He has a spacesuit which protects him from this, but the life support will run out in 30 days (each day is around 15 real-time minutes), so you must find all the parts by then. When he lands on this planet, he discovers these small little creatures he names them pikmin (because the look like pik-pik carrots from his home planet).

Gameplay:

Pikmin are bizarre little creatures that obey Captain Olimar ‘s every command. They come out of these “onion like” structures. Alone, they are weak, but together they can overcome any obstacle. You start off with one red pikmin, but can create more by commanding the pikmin to gather resources (mainly blocks and fallen enemies). They can bring these resources back to the onion which then creates pikmin seeds. These seeds grow and when the pikmin are ripe (when a leaf appears above the ground) you can pick them. If you let the pikmin mature in the ground, they will sprout buds or eventually flowers which will make them faster and stronger then normal pikmin.

There are three types of pikmin in this game, red, yellow and blue. There only difference is that they can do different things. Red pikmin can survive high temperatures and can fight better then other pikmin. Yellow pikmin can pick up bomb rocks to destroy walls and can be thrown higher. Blue pikmin can survive in water (other pikmin just drown when they touch water). Although this all might seem very confusing at first, it is actually very intuitive.

The different pikmin are like your personal slaves. They will literally die for you on command. You can throw them at other insects and they will fight them off and eventually kill them, or die trying. They will brake down walls or build bridges or repair your ship. This all leads to various amusing and addictive puzzles. Even though some are repetitive, they will hardly ever get boring.

Captain Olimar can control up to 100 pikmin at once. Pikmin stored in their onions do not count towards this limit. Before a day is over, you must round up all of your pikmin and store them in their onions, or you will have to leave them behind in which case they will be eaten. You will sometimes be into the game, when you soon realize that the day is ending. The day limit makes you feel rushed through the game. Nintendo has done a smart thing by taking out the thirty day time limit from Pikmin 2, but the single day time limit remains. The length of the game itself is short as well. The last few missions are the best and bring the game into another level. It would have been a lot better if Nintendo added more areas to explore or a few hidden missions. The game has a lot of replay ability though in that you can play the game again and again and try to beat your old record. It's as much fun, if not more, the second time through.

Graphics/Control/Sound:

The graphics are well done for one of the first generation GameCube games. I have a few minor criticisms about it though. The pikmin are not very detailed. This is the price we pay for having the game run smoothly with 100 pikmin and many enemies (which it does), but couldn't Nintendo give them some more detail? Captian Olimar is decently done. The various enemies in the game animate well. The various organic structures in the game are well done. The detail in the various structures becomes apparent when you zoom into them. The water effects are pretty good as well. This game also has a world map like in the Mario games. This looks nice as well. My only major complainant is that the CGI movies are not very interesting, and that you can not skip them. In the instruction booklet, they had a cartoon type thing explaining the story, so Nintendo could have had a comic explaining the story like in Max Payne.

The controls are pretty intuitive once you go through the beginning tutorial mission. The R and L buttons control the camera (R for zoom and L for changing the angle). The A button is used as the action button (for throwing and picking up pikmin, to hit enemies, to repair your suit, etc). Y brings up the status screen and the X button is used to separate the pikmin or make them idle. The B button is used to call the pikmin. The C stick can be used to make the pikmin line up in certain formations and of course, the analog stick moves Olimar. The D-pad can be used for minor things like making Olimar sit on the ground or having pikmin carry Olimar around. These things really don't affect the gameplay. Overall, once you go through the tutorial like mission, you should easily be able to get adjusted to the controls in this game. The sound is decent. There aren't many memorable tunes, but most of them aren't annoying. Overall the songs get the job done. The sounds that the pikmin and Olimar make are very simple, but efficient.

Overall Nintendo has done a wonderful job on this game. There are some minor things that bug me, but hopefully Nintendo will fix these things in the next installment of Pikmin. My biggest complaint is the game is way too short. This was one of the release titles, so a bit more effort should have gone into making this game last longer. The days are inexcusably short, and don't leave enough time to explore. The size of each area is pretty small as well due to this reason. The only other thing that brings the score down are the lame cut scenes. Still, this game deserves a high score due to its original idea.

Score: 9.1/10

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 07/07/04, Updated 07/19/04