You are a force of nature being contained against your will for reasons unknown. You will never learn why, only that the men who put you there will stop at nothing to put you down if you should attempt an escape. But you must. If you should hold back, slow down, or show mercy you will be put down within seconds. You act or you die, becoming a killing machine crashing your way past hoards of armed guards and tearing through a labyrinth of stone and steel, seeking salvation no matter what it takes. You've got to have freedom.

A game that is as stressful as it is charming, Pikmin captures a feeling of struggling for survival in a hostile world in such a unique, simple, and rewarding fashion. You'll fail a lot at first, learning what the pikmin are good at, what they're bad at, and how to overcome new difficulties while balancing the time limit and planning out your routes in advance. Once you finally have a grasp on things, you'll encounter new challenges, overlapping puzzles, and even more dangerous hazards. In time you'll conquer these as well, and if you've learned quickly enough, you may just reach the ending alive!

And immediately play it all over again.

Pikmin really is at its best when you're competing with yourself, trying to get the most parts in the least amount of days, laughing in the face of what once seemed insurmountable. Yet even when you feel like the king of the world, that melancholic tone and the tense nature of the time limit is never missing.