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Pikmin 3
Wii U
Failure to Launch (Window)
3.5/5 stars
“Pikmin 3” was originally outed by Nintendo when Shigeru Miyamoto blurted out, “We’re making ‘Pikmin!’” at the end of the disastrous E3 2008, at which the company showed nothing but garbage like “WiiMusic” and “WiiSports Resort” for the original Wii. While ‘Pikmin’ fans were expecting to play the third game in the franchise as an end-of-life title for the original Wii, instead, Wii-owning ‘Pikmin’ fans were given the opportunity to rebuy the first two Gamecube ‘Pikmin’ titles with ‘New Play Control’ utilizing the Wiimote and Nunchuck. I passed on those remakes, considering that “Pikmin” and “Pikmin 2” were good enough with the Gamecube controller AND already playable on the Wii via its backwards compatibility.
Four years after Miyamoto let slip the existence of “Pikmin 3,” the WiiU launched with an underwhelming game library. “Pikmin 3” was supposed to be part of Nintendo’s slate of ‘launch window’ titles that would release with or shortly after their new console. Unfortunately, WiiU owners had to wait over a year for “Pikmin 3” to finally become available… and the wait was ultimately not worthwhile.
Presentation
“Pikmin 3” looks and sounds like a ‘Pikmin’ title in HD… because that’s what it is. The graphics still juxtapose cartoony creatures with realistic backgrounds. Every environment in the game is a real-world location as viewed through the eyes of characters that are about the size of a quarter (the coin). Thus the player is given an up-close look at some of the finer details of empty cardboard boxes, rusted-out buckets, small piles of dirt, and fruit (and yes, there is a LOT of fruit in “Pikmin 3”). Populating these realistic HD environments are a slew of bizarre micro-scale creatures, ranging from mushroom-shaped and eye-stalk-bedecked Bulborbs to the waterbear-like Blowhogs. “Pikmin 3” largely recycles creatures from the first two games, but does feature new and spectacularly bizarre boss creatures.
The audio is also much like the first two games. The soundtrack is pleasantly innocuous, and the sound effects do an adequate job of relaying pertinent information to the player alongside visual cues (like that time of day it is or if there are Pikmin getting killed off-screen).
Story
While the first two ‘Pikmin’ games largely revolved around the adventures of one Captain Olimar of the planet Hocotate and his quest to help the Hocotate Freight Corporation remain solvent, “Pikmin 3” revolves around the adventures of three tiny astronauts from a different planet: Koppai.
The Koppaites have overpopulated their planet and are on the brink of starvation when they send robotic probes into space as a last-ditch effort to discover a new renewable food source. The Koppaite probes all come back negative until one reaches Planet PNF-404 (a.k.a., Earth), which is revealed to contain nearly-immeasurable quantities of edible material.
The manned mission to PNF-404 to retrieve the food that will save Koppai consists of Engineer Alph, Botanist Brittany, and Captain Charlie – the three playable characters, whose personalities and quirks are revealed through their mission logs at the end of each day. With only three days’ supply of food (in the form of purple juice), this intrepid team of explorers must quickly gather as much fruit (from which they extract the juice and seeds) as possible before returning to Koppai to save the day.
Unfortunately for the Koppaites, their ship had a bit of a rough landing and the warp key that allows it to navigate interstellar space fell out and was lost somewhere on the surface of PNF-404. Fortunately, the crew begins to discover data files in the course of their exploration that reveal the presence of another astronaut on the planet who has found the warp key.
Thus the entire narrative of “Pikmin 3” is a push for the crew to gather fruit and seek out the astronaut who has the warp key while avoiding starvation themselves or death at the claws and teeth of the native wildlife. There are a couple of surprise twists thrown into the plot, but nothing truly surprising, and the ending is about as plain and predictable as possible. The fact that the mission timer (in the form of the crew’s food supply) is back after the unfettered exploration of “Pikmin 2” also feels like a step backwards for the franchise.
Gameplay
“Pikmin 3” is essentially more of the same when it comes to the franchise. The player is still tasked with exploring top-down environments and navigating obstacles by flinging the mysterious carrot-like lifeform dubbed Pikmin, who work together in swarms and come in a variety of types that each have special strengths and weaknesses. In addition to the three basic types of Pikmin – the fireproof reds, electric yellows, and aquatic blues – “Pikmin 3” features two new types: rock Pikmin that can be thrown at crystalline objects to shatter them and flying pikmin that can uproot plants and bypass obstacles. Each in-game day is 13 minutes long, forcing the player to manage both their time and their Pikmin mob(s) in order to accomplish as much as possible in a given time period.
Pikmin can collect condensed pollen pellets as well as the remains of defeated foes to increase their own numbers, while the astronaut crew needs to collect enough fruit to keep their juice supply up, since they consume one unit of juice each day. Between the starting number of juice units and the number that can be collected from the fruit hidden in the game’s environments, the player has around 90 days to complete the game or face starting over. Facing a complete restart isn’t really that daunting in “Pikmin 3,” however, as the game is incredibly short. My ending timer said I spent 18 hours on it, but I did leave the game idling a couple of times while I ran off to do something else, so I estimate my game duration to be closer to 12 hours, which is incredibly short for a $60 game!
Where “Pikmin 3” really falls down compared to the previous games is in the controls. In the older ‘Pikmin’ games, the right analog stick allowed the player to sweep the entire mob of Pikmin accompanying them into enemies and obstacles. Now the right stick controls the camera (which itself is far more poorly behaved than in previous games) and the ability to sweep Pikmin is completely gone. Instead the player must simply fling Pikmin at every obstacle one at a time. Flinging Pikmin is itself made more difficult by the fact that the targeting loop has a lot more range and frequently is at odds with the camera with regard to what the player is trying to point at. I can’t count the number of times I had the targeting loop over an object, the game had highlighted the object to acknowledge that I was intending to target it, but then decided at the last minute that I did NOT want to fling my Pikmin at the targeted object, but at a nearby piece of background scenery. As if to support the player in targeting objects and to replace the missing sweep functionality, the player can also lock-onto any targetable object, which causes the targeting loop to stick to it and fixes the camera angle. While locked on, the player can command their entire retinue to Pikmin to charge at the target, which can be useful in boss battles and breaking down walls, but always sends ALL Pikmin to the task. Because of the terrible, uncooperative camera, wayward Pikmin can be cumbersome to re-gather.
Of course, all of these control complaints revolve around ‘Classic’ control mode. In a significant update to the game, Nintendo added a DS-style ‘Stylus’ control mode… which I absolutely hated and turned-off after about 5 minutes. In either control mode, it is simply more difficult to do simple things than it was in the older ‘Pikmin’ games. At least, however, the WiiU GamePad has some use as an ever-present map. It’s also possible to send individual crew members (and their accompaniment of Pikmin) to specific locations on the map by poking the target location on the touchscreen. This addition allows significantly more robust multi-tasking that previous ‘Pikmin’ games, but such mulit-tasking is rarely relevant considering that any given stage can only have 100 active Pikmin in it at a time, and those active Pikmin are almost always better off in a single group rather than two or three smaller groups.
Aside from the main story mode, “Pikmin 3” also features a couple of other modes – Mission and Bingo – that didn’t do anything for me. Completing arbitrary missions or playing Pikmin Scavenger Hunt just adds pointless busywork for bored players once they’ve finished the campaign.
Overall
“Pikmin 3” is a relatively safe and uninspired take on the franchise that doesn’t stand up to its predecessors largely due to awful controls that Nintendo only managed to make awful-er in their attempt at fixing them. The touchscreen isn’t the be-all, end-all of control interfaces, and doesn’t really add anything to “Pikmin 3” that couldn’t be accomplished with a mini-map, overlay, or some other tried-and-true method of mapping an environment. The return of the time limit and the game’s overall short length are two more black marks against it. Sure, it’s still fun exploring an ‘alien’ world with the help of anthropomorphic veggies, but this newest entry in the franchise doesn’t offer anything that “Pikmin 2” didn’t already do better… aside from HD visuals.
Presentation: 4.5/5
Story: 3/5
Gameplay: 3/5
Overall (not an average): 3.5/5
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