Review of New Nintendo Game Cube Game - "Pikmin"
Today I picked up the new Nintendo Game Cube game, "Pikmin", developed by the artist who brought us Mario and Zelda. (Got the last copy in the store, too!) Here's my very, very favorable first impressions. Any game where you can order little grinning multi-colored plant guys to their shrieking doom, watching them get munched by the dozen by huge frogs, beetles, and birds, is good enough for me.
The game controls are taught bit by bit; you start on an untimed introductory level with just one red Pikmin, the attacking type. It shows you how to literally THROW your Pikmin at various things (flowers which drop Pellets, walls, boxes, and other things to move/dig/build), and teaches you the basics. You play Orima (Mario backwards in Japanese!) and your goal is to find, within 30 days, the 30 parts of your broken-down spaceship, the Dolphin (which oddly looks kind of like a Pokeball) that are scattered over the mysterious planet you crashed on.
Getting Pellets or killing enemies lets you grow more Pikmin; a Pellet that has a big "5" on it, for example, takes at least 5 Pikmin to drag back to their home "ships" (called Onions) though you can throw more Pikmin at it and they'll all work together to drag it faster. When you bring a Pellet or enemy back to one of the Onions, it spits out as many seeds as the minimum number of Pikmin required to drag it back home -- the seeds take a few seconds to sprout, but then you can pull 'em up and start ordering them around. As a bonus, the Pellets come in 3 different colors, one for each "race" of Pikmin. If you bring a Pellet back to the same color Onion (there's one Onion for each color of Pikmin) you get double Pikmin seeds!
A day is about 15-20 minutes of gameplay (sorry, I didn't time) and things you do on one day will help your progress the next, such as knocking down walls, building bridges, and finding hidden spaceship parts. It can take several days of work to find just one part, so you need to get good at multi-tasking; your Pikmin are diligent and will eventually finish even the longest task as long as you put enough of them to work. I've found that some days I find 1 part, some days none, and some days up to 3. But you'd better balance it out! (One of the in-between level "log entries" hinted that you won't get "BAD END" if you don't find all 30 pieces, but I haven't finished yet).
You can move between areas freely at the start of each day, but you can't move to a new area until you've gotten a certain number of ship pieces and fixed up your hunk of junk to the point where it can fly far enough to the new area. You can't spend part of a day in one area and part in another, which is a little frustrating when you completely finish an area. But you can always spend free time growing more Pikmin, by killing enemies and finding Pellets.
The controls are fantastic. You can zoom, recenter the camera, and order your Pikmin around easily. What really makes Pikmin's control shine, though, is not the fact that the AI is super smart (while it's really great, the Pikmin are still just flowers, and get stuck around corners a lot), with the C stick, you can order all the Pikmin currently following you to stay on one side or the other, or in front/back of you. This helps keep them in line a *lot*.
The Red Pikmin are short, aggressive, and can kick butt, as long as you have a lot of them. Small enemy fights are common, and pretty easy, as long as you have Red Pikmin. Larger enemies take quite a lot of strategy. Throwing your Pikmin onto different parts of the big enemies' bodies will help in different ways; to succeed, you need to throw Pikmin as high as you can, but still hit the big enemy's body/head. If you miss, your Pikmin will attack the large enemy's legs, and usually get stomped on very quickly.
You *WILL* lose a lot of Pikmin in this game; like soldiers in any war, you have to portion them out and be willing to sacrifice them by the dozens. But be smart about how you use your Pikmin, because if you lose your stored up guys, it may take a few days just scrounging around to get the levels back up to be able to knock down walls quickly. I learned really fast not to bother throwing anything but Red Pikmin at large enemies, because they'll get their butts kicked.
The Yellow Pikmin are available once you find the Yellow Onion in the second area, "The Forest of Hope". They're little spindly guys, and you can throw them much higher and farther than the Red Pikmin. In fact, getting a running start also helps, and you'll need it to toss Yellow Pikmin over some obstacles to get them to push it from the other side. Yellow Pikmin have a second ability; if you find Bomb Rocks, these glowing rocks hidden away in various places on the levels, you can use them to blow up walls that other Pikmin can't knock down with brute force. Be careful, it's easy to blow up your own Pikmin!
The Blue Pikmin aren't available until the third swampy area. You might have guessed that they're aquatic, and indeed they are. Orima himself can swim no problem, but the Red and Yellow Pikmin will drown after a few seconds of cute whining and gurgling. Blue Pikmin, however, can swim and attack aquatic enemies. Once you get them, you'll need to go back to the second and first areas, where there are more ship parts behind water. They'll help build bridges and knock down walls that you can only get to through water.
The game reminds me a tiny bit of "Lost Vikings", in that you will need to decide which color Pikmin to use for which task. It's not a big deal to have multiple colors of Pikmin with you when you roam the levels, but if you want to make sure you're throwing the right Pikmin at the job, you'll have to issue a "halt" command, and your Pikmin will separate themselves into their colors (Yellow Pikmin with Bomb Rocks will separate themselves from the rest of the group so you can pick them up and throw them separately at obstacles). This can get tough if you're trying to send some to fight and some to do work, so if you're planning on fighting, leave the rest of your Pikmin home and just take a bunch of Red ones with you.
You can only have 100 Pikmin on the playfield at any time, including ones that have been planted as seeds but not pulled up yet. Any Pellets or enemies you drag back home will add to your total, even past 100, but you will have to put some Pikmin back into their Onion before taking out more once you have 100. I've found you really only need at most 50 to do just about every task through the 3rd level, although they often throw more than one task in a row at you. Since enemies (even large enemies!) regenerate at the start of each day, you'll have to be quick and not waste time. Again, though, you can set up shortcuts for your Pikmin to drag the ship parts back to your ship one day (by building bridges, knocking down walls, etc.) and then use them the next. It takes planning to get some of the ship parts that are behind several walls, a few cardboard boxes, and then 3 big mini-boss enemies!
Overall, I really enjoy the game. It's difficult but not frustrating, and having a game with a time limit really makes you feel like you have to try your best to finish, unlike the post-Mario 64 3D platformers where you can wait around all day to finish. Being under pressure is actually a lot of fun! I just hope you don't get too smacked down at the end of 30 days if you don't have all 30 ship pieces.
Let's hope the game doesn't let up after the 3rd level (i.e. the famous "Black and White" curse). I'm enjoying myself so far, and can't wait to play more!
Posted by Ben at October 27, 2001 12:34 AM
