Pikmin
October 18, 2002

     As Captain Olimar, you crash land into a mysterious planet riddled with strange creatures.  One of which, are the Pikmin, who greatly aid Olimar in his quest for his missing space ship pieces.  Olimar controls these little pikmin, and they obey his every whim.  There are three types of pikmin, the red, who are the strongest and can withstand fire.  The yellow, who are light-weight, enabling them to be thrown at a farther distance, and are also to hold bomb-rocks, which come in handy when confronting barriers.  And finally we have the blue pikmin, who are able to withstand water because of their gills.  Each of these pikmin’s attributes comes in handy when overcoming obstacles.  With strategically thinking, Olimar may successfully find all 30 missing parts of his ship in his 30 day (15 min. = 1 day) time limit before he runs out of oxygen.

     Now it comes to it, is Shigeru Miyamoto’s new innovation truly innovated?  Yes, yes and yes.  A fine display of innovation, with unique controls, unique settings, very unique creatures, all of which are… unique.  But there is a few downfalls, such as the 30 day limit, I personally don’t care for time limits in games, they take out the fun in exploring in some ways.  Yeah, but you can deal with it.  Though, you will probably be unable to beat the game in one try, I had to go through it twice to gather all the ship pieces, yup.  As you along in the game, the gradual climb of difficulty is hardly seen!  I guess it’s probably because you’re getting used to it and all, but then more strategy is involved with nearing the end, which is quite amazing.

     Let us now discuss the technical side of Pikmin.  Graphically, this game does not take full advantage of the Gamecube’s capabilities.  The pikmin sprites aren’t very detailed, and could have been better modeled, but then again, they stand out more so you don’t have to strain your eyes to find them, I guess, like Lemmings… I loved that game… *sigh*… I recommend that game to anyone who likes strategy.  The environment is a different issue though.  It’s so lush and green, and beautiful, and well done, it captures the whole intricate mood of the game, and water… I love it!  Has Nintendo ever produced a bad score for their games?  I think not, and Pikmin does not fall short of such reputation, it gives that ‘far away from home’ nostalgia, it’s so beautiful.

     Pikmin has very little replay value.  It’s a straight-out fact.  Once you complete the game, you’re very unlikely to pick it up again in awhile.  Every space ship part stays the same, so there’s no real reason for completing it again.

     Oh, and I almost forgot to mention the Challenge Mode.  It’s a little mini-game where you have only one day to grow as many pikmin as possible.  The Challenge Mode is a nice little additional feature, but serves no real purpose, its fun after awhile, but yeah it gets tedious if you do it too much, heh.

     In conclusion, Pikmin is a nice game to add on to your Gamecube collection.  But first consider renting it for a couple of weeks, if it doesn’t appeal to you too much, and you figure it serves very little replay value, then don’t buy it, but if you thoroughly enjoyed and would eagerly play it over and over again, then by all means, buy it.

- Bobo

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