"Pikmin" - Gamecube

Here's a weird one. When I was a kid, I had a friend who got Pikmin and told me that he didn't really like it, so I asked him if I could borrow it because I thought it looked cool. I played it for about 30 minutes and took it out and gave it back to him the next day, because I didn't like it either. Given, I was about 9 or 10 years old I think, and my only experience with the game was playing long enough to get most of my small amount of Pikmin at the beginning eaten and then feeling like the game was probably too hard for me.

Apparently, Pikmin was designed and created by Shigeru Miyamoto. He had come quite aways from designing cartoon baseball and tennis players on the NES by this point. Now he was designing little cartoon flower gremlins.

The game was directed by Shigefumi Hino, who's first and last (previously) directed work had been Yoshi's Island. He had been the character designer on several Mario games to that point though, including the first Super Mario World.

Interestingly enough, in the late 90's, there was a rumored sequel to Super Mario 64 going around by the title "Super Mario 64-2," and then later, "Super Mario 128." Eventually, the technology in development for this secret project was shown in a demonstration of the Gamecube's power: rendering 128 Marios on screen at once.

Or, as it eventually became known, Retro Gamer Hell.

In 2007, apparently Shigeru Miyamoto commented, "The one question I'm always asked is, 'What happened to Mario 128?' ... Most of you already played it ... in a game called Pikmin."

If I had been the one who asked the question, man, that answer would have probably blown my mind in 2007.

Anyway, let's play Super Pikmin 128, 2019:

But what if I want to pick max?

----- Playthrough -----

Pikmin opens up on the scene of Captain Olimar rushing through space in his ship, the S.S. Dolphin, on vacation, when suddenly he's hit by an asteroid and sent barreling down to an unknown planet. As the ship heads towards the planet, it breaks apart piece by piece before it crashes, and there is where we find our protagonist when we're given the controller.

It doesn't take long for Olimar to realize that the planet he's on has high levels of oxygen, which will kill him, and the support system in his suit is only built to last for 30 days. That gives him 30 days to get his ship fixed up and get the heck off this weirdo planet before anything else terrible happens.

30 days is also when he'll run out of stuff to monologue about, and that would be deadly to his people as well.

While looking around in this first area, Olimar finds his first little leaf-man, which he calls a Pikmin, and during this tutorial you discover all it is that Pikmin can do for you.

See, Captain Olimar is a lazy bum, and he's weak and alone. Pikmin are weak and crappy too, but in great numbers they can do many things that Olimar can't. Which mostly amounts to picking stuff up and moving it, as well as gangbanging any other plants or animals into submission and using them for food to make more Pikmin.

BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!

So it doesn't take long for Olimar, and hopefully you, to put things together. You're gonna make a bajillion of these little guys and use them to get all the parts of your ship back. You have 30 parts of your ship missing, and 30 days to retrieve them. Some basic math tells you you'll have to try to get back at least one a day, but more than that will buy you some extra time in-case something goes wrong..

Man I bet he's glad he doesn't have to carry all that crap.

But it's not all fun and games on planet-wherever-you-are, there are things that want to eat Pikmin for lunch, and some of these parts have landed in really inconvenient and dangerous places.

Lucky for Olimar, and for the puzzle-solving addict, it turns out there are (at least) three types of Pikmin, and all of them have different specialties. Red Pikmin are cool with fire and good at attacking, yellow Pikmin can pick up, hold, and throw bombs, and blue Pikmin don't mind water (the other two colors will just drown if you put them in water).

You have to keep these strengths in mind while playing the game and solving puzzles. Sometimes you'll have to combine two types of Pikmin to solve one type of puzzle, or defeat one type of boss.

Or sometimes you can just charge in there and overwhelm them with whatever you have on hand.

The other thing to keep in mind is that Olimar can only explore the planet during the day, because at night-time, the biggest and baddest of the local fauna come out looking to eat, and there's little chance of you or your Pikmin surviving if you're caught outside when it turns dark.

So, to that end, there's a timer at the top of the screen all day every day, telling you what time it is and how much time you have left, approximately. During the last 30 seconds of the day or so, you'll start getting notifications that it's time to gather all your bois and head to the ships lest they be subject to fatal munching.

HURRY! WHAT ARE YOU DOING, YOU PSYCHOPATH?

And that's really about it. Across 5 areas in the game, you'll be tracking down those 30 parts, and once you're done, Olimar can go home. A word to the wise though, you may want to plan ahead, save a day or two extra at least after getting 29/30 ship parts, and try to keep your Pikmin levels up, especially your red and yellow Pikmin. You'll probably naturally have a lot of blue Pikmin from doing the later areas which have lots of water, so I wouldn't worry about that.

I won't ruin the surprise and tell you why you'll need them, but there's a little tip for you.

Or, again, simply bring the blue scourge along with you because it's what you have. You might be able to make it.

Once you collect all three types of Pikmin in the singleplayer mode, you unlock another mode called Challenge Mode, implying that the regular mode isn't challenging and so you shouldn't feel good about beating it (it actually can be a bit hard at times, though).

In Challenge Mode, you're simply tasked with making as many Pikmin in a one day cycle as possible. There doesn't really seem to be a goal except to score on a leaderboard that's empty by default, presumably for challenging your friends and family in couch multiplayer...?

You're probably not going to do that though, so it's kind of a useless mode, to be honest.

Ah, I see we're bringing out the big scores for the top 5.

So anyway, the strat is probably to just beat the campaign, take your time, enjoy it, and make a backup save incase you accidentally have a terrible day or kill like 200 Pikmin. I would recommend against that (killing 200 Pikmin, that is-- I can definitely vouch for having a backup save).

----- Review -----

How long did I play?
8 hours.

How much did I beat?
I beat the story mode and tried challenge mode once.

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Intuitive Design: 

How easy is it to intuitively understand the game?

There's a pretty thorough tutorial/discovery session at the beginning of the game where you're encouraged to try buttons and see what they do for yourself, and I think it works well. I certainly felt like I learned everything I needed to know by the time I'd been playing for about 15-20 minutes.

I'm not sure if it's just me being an idiot, but it took me literally like 6 days to notice the blue onion (the blue Pikmin spawner) in the level that it's in. I'm not sure that's an intuitive design problem but for some reason the game didn't really explain you could see those on the radar, just the ship parts. If I'd known I would have looked.

Gameplay / Difficulty: 

How rewarding does playing the game feel?

There's definitely some satisfaction to be had when you have several groups of Pikmin doing several different tasks in several different parts of the map and everything's running like a well-oiled machine. I also think it's really cool how the game repeatedly throws very large, overwhelming enemies at you that seem undefeatable and scary, and you eventually learn tactics and are able to defeat those enemies. That's a satisfying loop.

You may have made me pee in my pants today, dirt-bird, but I'll be back for your head in two weeks.

I don't think the game is unreasonably difficult. The last monster that you have to fight in the game is tough, but it's only tough if you don't question what you're doing and come up with a strategy as well as be careful with your Pikmin and yourself. It's very doable and not that hard once you 'get it'.

Depth: 

How deep/long is the game?

I'm not sure what you think but for me, 8 hours of playtime is pretty much plenty for a solid single-player experience. The 3 of the 5 levels have a significant amount of different areas with different things to do, and it will take you multiple in-game days to explore them all, so the areas feel pretty large in general.

The puzzles never really move beyond one or two steps of solving, so they remain mostly pretty shallow, but they're pretty much enough to keep me engaged and entertained.

Sound / Graphics: 

How's the sound? How are the graphics?

Pikmin has a pretty cool "mini" effect going on with the way they chose to angle the camera and stuff. If this was a modern game I imagine there'd probably be some depth of field nonsense to help push the effect, but it works just fine the way it is. At the time, I remember thinking the game looked photo-realistic. As an adult I can tell most of the textures suck, especially on smaller enemies, but it still looks pretty good overall. The low poly look on the small enemies helps.

Overall, the sounds in the game are great for what they are. Different monsters/animals have different sounds and cries, and they're all pretty fitting. I do think the high-pitched sound of the Pikmin (they remind me a little of Yoshi for some reason) can get pretty annoying, especially when there's a lot of them together doing something (like drowning).

Hajime Wakai's OST for the game is great, and very fitting. I don't think there are many tracks that have a lot of sticking power, but there are definitely a few that I like. I particularly like the background music in the last area, which sounds cheery but is totally minor and creepy at the same time. It definitely sets some kind of mood.

Personal Chord: 

Does the game have that undefinable "something" for me?

I think so. This isn't really my favorite Gamecube game or anything now, but I went into it thinking I was going to have to power through it (and a couple times I was right), but in the end I had a lot of fun playing through it, and even though I've always been kind of indifferent to the art style in the game, it grew on me as I played. I particularly like the "bulborbs" for some reason. They're pretty cute.

And pure evil. Slaughter them without mercy.

Should You Play: 

Is there a reason to even bother with this one?

I definitely think Pikmin holds its own even today. It's a unique experience, even if the action game/RTS mashup is a little tired at this point. I think like a lot of Nintendo games, they do a good job of taking that concept and simplifying it enough to make it focused and fun to play.

There's no incredible story to be had here really, the only reason you'd play this game is simply to have fun playing the game itself and enjoying the aesthetic and puzzles, and at least for me, that's plenty enough reason to play it.

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