Video Game Review: Pikmin

Pikmin

Graphics:	8.5
Sound:	8
Story:	8
Fun:	8
Controls:	9
Overall:	8

Now just what the heck is Pikmin. It's made out to be a strategy game by some magazines and advertisements, but it uses very little strategy, but common sense. Pikmin is it's own kind of game, and unless they have a common sense genre, it really doesn't fit in any categories. That's the beauty of this game. It is completely original, (Hey, what do you expect from a game called Pikmin) in it's style and gameplay. Enough talk, let's get straight to the raitings. Since "fun" is what gamers want, this should not disappoint the most "hard core" gamers. Using it's own gameplay, a mix between point and click strategy games to traveling adventure format. It seems slow, starting out with just one Pikmin (the little leaf headed guys), but once you uncover all three types of Pikmin, it starts to get interesting. You don't even know you are having fun until you have to turn it off. Watching your Pikmin expand, and become stronger, it starts to feel like a war strategy game. Although, I was disappointed. All of the monsters you fight are big, and you only fight one at a time. It doesn't have the same feeling like Starcraft and Warcraft, with huge armies attacking one another. Some strategy gamers may be disappointed. But c'mon, it is still incredibly fun. Now, the technical features. The controls are fine and easy to opperate even in the heat of battle, but moving the Pikmin around with the C-Stick is frustrating. With one hundred homogeneous Pikmin moving in the same direction, a lot of Pikmin will fall off the edge of a plateau or into water (only the blue ones swim). The A.I. is nothing to mess with, nearly infallible. Those large creatures come after you quickly, and won't stop eating. The graphics kick. The landscape is picture perfect, with realistic water effects (they seem better than WaveRace), and great animations, and the crowds of Pikmin make it pretty cool. However, it lacked in 3-D animations, or just movement, which make it feel like a still picture. The story is as weird as the name. A person named Captain Olimar is taking a vacation in space, when a meteor hit's his ship, littering the planet he crashed on with thirty rocket parts. He finds the Pikmin, and uses the what seem like impotent little Pikmin to collect rocket parts. The game does well in giving Captain Olimar a personality, journals written by him tell what he's thinking and some of his home and past. The game has charming music which varies in different levels, but the Pikmin's whines and little squeaky noises are very annoying. Is it good enough to buy? If you buy it, you will beat it in a week or two. And since nothing is randomly generated, if you were to start over, it will be exactly the same. This game is ephemeral, but fun, from adults, even to small children. "Good and short. That's the bad thing!" -Niloc

Archive note: The original publication day is unknown; this review existed by March 30, 2003.