Now of all the things that Nintendo have made as video games, I never thought that they would give a real time strategy game series, and to be honest, it works. Pikmin was among Shigeru Miyamoto's ideas for a video game, which he got the insperation from just doing a bit of gardening. The series made its debut on the Gamecube in 2001 which due to it's crtical and commercial success, had then turned into a video game series. Its been a long time since we had a Pikmin game and now that the third installment is out, felt right for me to do a series review, so let's begin:
Pikmin
Our story begins with the game's main protagonist, Captain Olimar (and due to Nintendo's ways, there is little to no voice acting for the character) who is travelling in outer space before a comet hits his rocket and crash lands on a uncharted planet. Due to the high level of oxygen (which is deadly to Olimar and his people), Olimar comes to the conclusion that he has only 30 days before his life support runs out and must find the many pieces of his rocket so that he can depart. However, this is not a one man job, but thankfully, the planet's inhabitants, known as the Pikmin are happy to help him, whatever it takes. As I said, this game runs in real time and the more pieces you find, the more areas you can explore. There are 3 kinds of Pikmin, the red ones are immune to fire and is the strongest out of them all, the yellow ones can be thrown higher and can carry explosive materials and the blue ones are the only ones that can move in the water. Olimar can assign Pikmin to different tasks on each of the days. Some can go and find more Pikmin and others can go and retrieve pieces of Olimar's ship. The game has its own set of enemies, including both regular ones and bosses (the bosses by the way, give you a piece of Olimar's ship upon their defeat) which the Pikmin can battle if given the right direction from Olimar. With the exception of day 1 (which is not in real time as it serves as a tutorial day), all the other days are about 13 minutes in length and towards the end of that time, all the Pikmin and Olimar need to be back at the ship, or the ones left behind, will no doubt die at the hands of the enemies. Overall, this is a great game that explores the real time mechanic, very well and I enjoyed playing it. Its fun, keeps your heart pounding and it's also very sweet as well. Only major criticism is that you will need to have a walkthrough when playing this game, or otherwise, you would be wasting too much time on certain tasks. 9/10
Pikmin 2 (footage review)
Having returned to his home planet, Olimar finds out that the company he works for, is in serious debt, but after finding out that a bottle cap that he acquired on his adventure is worth 100, his boss sends him and his co-worker Louie, to a distant planet find more of this so called waste, with help from the Pikmin of course. The game expands more on a number of things. To begin with, Olimar and Louie can serve as leaders of the Pikmin simultaneously and can get the work done quicker than before. In addition to the blue, red and yellow Pikmin from the last game, we now also get purple (who are immune to hazards and are very strong, but cannot move as fast as the others) and white (who are faster, immune to gases, can use the gases they come across to poison enemies and can find treasure that's hidden in soil) Pikmin. We also get a 6th Pikmin known as Bulbmin who is immune to all hazards, but is only in the players possession, temporarily. There's more areas to explore, an unlimited amount of days, more challenges and a whole lot more. While I haven't played this one, it looks to be even better than before, with it doing what any sequel to a game should do, make it better. The new and expanded gameplay mechanics seem to work well and I'm sure it will keep you even more occupied than before. 9/10
Pikmin 3
So a bit of history about this one. This was in development for quite some time, originally going to be a Wii game before Miyamoto decided that the Wii U would be more suited for the game with its HD graphics and Wii U GamePad, so for Wii owners, they got Wii ports of the first 2 games. Pikmin 3 was released nine years after the second game and became the first to not have Olimar in a regular appearance. The story says that a team of 3 people go to a planet to find food for their starving home planet, but the ship crash lands and the team gets separated. The mission then gets more difficult for the trio as they will have to find each other, find the device that can get them back home and find food for themselves and their home planet. It may sound like a hard job, but the Pikmin are more than willing to help in the matter. The game is much like the previous installments in that you work with the Pikmin to complete the mission at hand, getting them to carry things, destroy any obstacles and enemies, and to use their different abilities to further help the situation. While Pikmin 2 provided an unlimited amount of days, here it will very much depend on how many juice drinks you have. According to Miyamoto, the amount of days can be up to 100 if you want to acquire all the fruit in the world. As the long awaited 3rd game in the series, its actually very good. While everything in the game is the same stuff as before, the HD graphics make the world look and feel great and the Wii U Gamepad does a great job with giving you a map and an easy way to get to places. 9/10
So it may be a series of games that can be difficult at times, but its worth it. The Pikmin are great and I enjoyed playing these great games. I hope that we see more of this franchise in the future. 9/10
No comments:
Post a Comment