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By Talon Ireland on January 2nd, 2002
Introduction Well, soon out of the gate onto the Nintendo GameCube is Pikmin. Releasing only two weeks after the launch of the console, many people rushed to buy this original title. Launching alongside Super Smash Bros (a bad thing considering everyone wanted that one) Pikmin focuses around a spaceman named Olimar who crash lands on a distant planet inhabited by plantlike creatures, whom he names Pikmin. Crafted by none other than Miyamoto himself, this game delivers on its premise.
Presentation The look and feel of the game is awesome. I’m guessing the theme behind the little bubble shaped numbers and so on, are because of the glass helmet that Olimar wears? I don’t really know for sure, but its an interesting look. The menu navigating the place that your spaceship lands is rather interesting that shows your spaceship flying around. I would sit there for a minute or two just playing with this. I know that sounds stupid, but it was kind of fun in an odd creepy kind of way.Graphics & Sound The graphics for this game are outstanding. It represents a perfect picture of small life. If I wear an ant, I’d want to live there! Anyway, great textures make the superb visuals stand out with realistic looking water and dirt. If zoomed in to the maximum level, they do get a little fuzzy, but you won’t be in this view as far as I’m concerned ever! Its way to close for you to navigate around your Pikmin and view your surroundings, so its no big deal. There are very few if ANY blockies as everything is very well rounded off. I wasn’t totally hating the sound of the game, but it wasn’t always that great either. There wasn’t much sound in the game. I think there would have been a much greater atmosphere with elaborate sound to suit the setting, but there wasn’t. What was there was good, but it could have been better. Gameplay The concept of Pikmin is outstanding. Having three different groups of Pikmin to play around with and accompish tasks with was kind of fun. But for me, this was only for so long. There weren’t many bosses in the game. Most of the time the same thing was happening. The player must tear down walls, build bridges, and thats basically the extend of it. Not much new gameplay was added to the game as much of it remained the same throughout. It did get more complex, but no where near where it should have. In the end, I just found myself going over things that I already (or at least it seemed so) had done before. Lasting Appeal To start off, Pikmin lasts a very short time. The game runs in 30 days of ’game’ time, and a day is extremely short. Once the 30 days are over, Olimars days of searching for spaceship parts is over, you either make it off the planet or crash and ’die’. I will tell you, even though I did not get a total 100% in the game, I didn’t feel the urge to go back and start over to do so. The game was fairly fun while it lasted, but not much replay if you ask me. There’s a challenge mode, to get the maximum amount of Pikmin you can. It adds replay to see how many you can get, trying to get more and more each time. But still, if I didn’t want to go back and play the normal part of it, it wasn’t like the idea of getting a lot of Pikmin in shorter amounts of time seemed thrilling. I would like to point out, there isn’t much replay in ANY game unless there is a POINT in going back to play. In Tony Hawk there’s cheats, secret characters, just like the extra characters and trophies in Super Smash Bros. Melee. Other games have that extra hint to them. Pikmin doesn’t have something you really want to strive for to get more out of, which was my same problem with Luigi’s Mansion. I’m sure I’ll go back to both of them someday, but not that soon.Conclusion Pikmin is a wonderful game while it lasted. I don’t plan on going back that soon to it, and did have a good gaming experience during play. I just hope next time Miyamoto tries to add something that makes you want to replay the game. Maybe in Pikmin 2... |
