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Pikmin Review
Stephen Leyton
00/12/0000
The Pikmin are coming to a GameCube near you, CHECK out our thoughts here.
The concept of Pikmin is relatively simple, find the missing parts of your space ship scattered across a mysterious world filled with creature crawlies. Who else could of thought of this idea but our dearest friend Mr Shigeru Miyamoto the creator of Mario, Zelda and Donkey Kong.
Pikmin is certainly a nice surprise in Nintendoâs ever growing catalogue, from initial playing of Pikmin way back in 2001 the game showed promise, a year later we finally have the boxed copy and the game is as good as they get. The graphics may not be quite up to the standards of Resident Evil or Metal Gear Solid 2 however this is a pure example of gameplay over everything else, a nice change we believe.
You take the role of Captain Olimar, an astronaut whose spacecraft is forces to crash-land onto a new planet. With the shipâs wreckage scattered across the planet, you have 30 short days to rebuild the broken ship before the life-support system runs out (the atmosphere on this little planet is poisonous you see). To help you find the missing parts of your ship are little coloured âthingsâ called Pikmin, throughout the game youâll need to use your new friends to overcome a host of puzzles, defeat strange yet powerful creatures and to ultimately help you escape the planet within 30 days.
The Pikmin come in three different types, and they are like little plant creatures complete with budding flowers popping out of their head. Each with their own individual personalities and abilities can overcome different tasks; The Red ones are the most basic and are best used for the mundane jobs such as building bridges, defeating enemies or destroying walls. Secondly the Yellow Pikmin, these ingenious little creatures can pick up Rock Bombs and use them against walls etc to make blocked ways open, however timing is of the essence in which case if you play like myself most often than not you will kill the majority of your Pikmin by dropping a bomb in the wrong place at the wrong time. Lastly the Blue Pikmin, these special ones can swim, unlike the others that drown to their death if they come into contact with water. It is a harsh world out their for the little Pikmin, everything and anything will try to eat your little fellows and uncaring players will find it just to amusing to see them meet their doom.
Finding Pikmin is easy, at the start of each level you will be rewarded with 1 sprout, after a few seconds he will grew and you can pick him from the ground. Youâll then need to assign him various tasks to obtain more sprouts, after a few minutes your legions will grow in number so too will your power. Also after battles, the Pikmin will carry fallen enemies back to their nests to be transformed into more Pikmin. At the end of each level the Pikmin that you keep/save will be transferred to the next level, there is no limit to the amount of Pikmin you can find however only 100 are allowed on the field at anyone time.
In an interview with the creator Mr Miyamoto, he described Pikmin by saying: âWith Pikmin, I wanted to stretch the playersâs imagination but more importantly push the way they understand games so that it would even surprise the player themselves. My original inspiration for Pikmin came to me in a garden near my home when I became fascinated with what it is like to interact in the busy insect world thatâs under our very feet.â
Pikmin is a simple yet highly addictive game, the idea is simplistic; use different Pikmin to solve different types of puzzles allowing you to collect all the missing space parts. However the introduction of time or should I say lack of time makes this game slightly tough. You only have 30 days to complete the game; a day in the Pikmin world roughly transfers to 20/30 minutes of gaming. If at night time you havenât got all your Pikmin tucked up in bed or under your control the little creatures will find themselves hunted down by the environments bad guys, if this happens you will get a good telling off from Captain Olimar. Once a day has passed you cannot repeat that day, so you must make sure you use your timing wisely otherwise by day 30 youâll find yourself in a bad situation with only 20 parts of your space-craft. In that respect the game moves from just an adventure game to a race too, one against the clock, whilst at first it doesnât present many hours of gaming, actually achieving the ultimate goal is certainly not easy.
