timrtabor123
Forgot to log this earlier in the year. Going to give this a shorter review as a result as I haven't played since March and can only remember the general experience. TLDR? Pokemon Legends Arceus is probably the freshest Pokemon game we've gotten since the XD: Gale Of Darkness. The changes to the battle system, mission structure, and catching are generally speaking a nice change of pace but I have some reservations with a few design choices. The noble Pokemon boss fights and stronger emphasis on catching is neat but both are kinda too repetitive to be a the large portion of the play time they are. Presentation-wise I'm also sorta conflicted on being incentivized to catch multiple of the same Pokemon for Pokedex completion especially with the true ending being tied to it. It kinda reduces the whole "bond with your magic pet" ethos the games are built on even if you ignore the negative externalities to gameplay. Music and sound design is good but not particularly rememberable and graphics/character design is generally pretty awesome (the new hisiuian forms are dope, UI is good and readable,)... with two exceptions: framerate and cutscenes. Framerate can start to chug and make Pokemon look like a slideshow from afar. Meanwhile a lot of in-game cutsenes look like badly staged puppet shows with the amount of unexpressive animation in them. Ashame given this IP was launched off the back of a successful animated show in the west. This could've used a few more months in the oven...so its a modern Pokemon game.
1992
Introduction
In the wake of my five star review of Kirby & The Forgotten Land for Nintendo Switch and the launch of the Game Boy titles on the Switch Online service I decided to give this game another shot to see if I was perhaps a bit too hard on these early Kirby titles. Baseline difficulty was played for this review.
Gameplay
Kirby's Dream Land is a 1990s 2D platformer centered on floating and using your enemies as projectiles intended for less experienced players for the Nintendo Game Boy. I think Given that development context and creative intent the game fairs remarkably well even if its not suited to my tastes personally ( to avoid repeating myself see my Forgotten Land for more details there). The floating ability is mostly carefully balanced and well suited to a small poorly lit Game Boy screen. That being said, I do feel that my character's hit box is a tad clunky at points with some of the maneuvering you have to do in the third and fourth levels being particularly spotty. That being said, when taken on a macro level everything done with that mechanic is serviceable. What is perhaps less well done though is the very bland and basic use of the sucking and spitting mechanic.
Most of what you can do with this spitting mechanic is exhausted by the second level and even what you see that basically amounts to "see an enemy? Suck it up and spit it into another enemy or "?" block". This not helped by level design that allows you to float over some of the more interesting enemy configurations that test the players grasp on the spitting mechanic. I can sorta see why this concept got deprioritized in favor of powerups (fire spitting curry and air shooter mint sections) in the late game and copy ability based exploration in the sequels. To the director Mashiro Sakurai's credit they were aware of the limitations of their stylistic choices and kept the game short with a normal difficulty run lasting thirty minutes to an hour if you play poorly.
The best use of both mechanics is probably the boss fights which are incredibly well done given that they have to convey and or balance:
A) what a platformer boss is to a beginner to the genre.
B) Making the bosses fun to fight without being brainless.
C) Something you can improve upon further exposure.
This is also why I actually like the final boss rush here while I tend to dislike it in something like say the robot master gauntlet in MegaMan 1-6's climaxes. Enemy patterns are actually decipherable to normal human reflexes so it feels like I'm applying skills learned in prior levels to finish something more efficiently and not just brute forcing the game with sheer endurance/patience.
Story & Graphics
Normally I discuss these categories separately but given how simple Kirby's Dream Land is story-wise and how much of the series's long standing narrative appeal is tied into these character designs I felt it made since to combine these categories together for this review.
Kirby's Dream Land is a very minimalist work narrative-wise. King Dedede has stolen his subjects food and its your job as Kirby to put a stop to his gluttony. This plot is a functionally fine for the target audience and style it is going for. Not much else I can really say.
Really the strongest, most stand out point here is the main villain and how he serves as a microcosm for the game's expressive graphics. You can tell the developers were really focused on pushing the Game Boy to its limit by making the sprite animation as expressive as they did with Dedede being the best example of how well director Mashiro Sakurai understands character design as a craft.
King Dedede parallels Kirby so well during the final boss fight with the monarch having riffs on the pink puffball's main two hooks in the form of a vacuum attack to punish players baiting out his hammer attack and a high jump to counter Kirby's glide. Both moves along with a tripping attack are also telegraphed slowly in order to show just how much of a powerful but clumsy oaf the penguin really is. Thus when you win it feels like a very satisfying "the emperor has no clothes" moment.
Music & Sound Design
Sound design was vital for getting the player to understand how to maneuver with this floaty character with Kirby having sounds effects for both puffing up and sucking/spitting that convey what form you are shifting out of at a given time. You can really see the beginnings of where Sakurai's audio philosophy would evolve in the Super Smash Bros series here.
Music in this game is legendary. Basically every track here is iconic and constantly reused and remixed in future entries for a reason. The upbeat and hyper active chip tune style used here really sells the cutesy but adventurous vibe. Honestly composer Jun Ishikawa doesn't get enough credit for how much of the franchise's identity is tied to their musical style.
Conclusion
Kirby's Dream Land is a fun romp and while I hesitate to say its a "must play" I think the fact that it now comes as essentially a free pack in with your Switch online multiplayer subscription you are likely to already have if you are big enough Nintendo fan to read a backloggd review for a game from 1992. I can say its worth checking out. Especially if you like seeing how auteur creators evolve across their portfolio.
In the wake of my five star review of Kirby & The Forgotten Land for Nintendo Switch and the launch of the Game Boy titles on the Switch Online service I decided to give this game another shot to see if I was perhaps a bit too hard on these early Kirby titles. Baseline difficulty was played for this review.
Gameplay
Kirby's Dream Land is a 1990s 2D platformer centered on floating and using your enemies as projectiles intended for less experienced players for the Nintendo Game Boy. I think Given that development context and creative intent the game fairs remarkably well even if its not suited to my tastes personally ( to avoid repeating myself see my Forgotten Land for more details there). The floating ability is mostly carefully balanced and well suited to a small poorly lit Game Boy screen. That being said, I do feel that my character's hit box is a tad clunky at points with some of the maneuvering you have to do in the third and fourth levels being particularly spotty. That being said, when taken on a macro level everything done with that mechanic is serviceable. What is perhaps less well done though is the very bland and basic use of the sucking and spitting mechanic.
Most of what you can do with this spitting mechanic is exhausted by the second level and even what you see that basically amounts to "see an enemy? Suck it up and spit it into another enemy or "?" block". This not helped by level design that allows you to float over some of the more interesting enemy configurations that test the players grasp on the spitting mechanic. I can sorta see why this concept got deprioritized in favor of powerups (fire spitting curry and air shooter mint sections) in the late game and copy ability based exploration in the sequels. To the director Mashiro Sakurai's credit they were aware of the limitations of their stylistic choices and kept the game short with a normal difficulty run lasting thirty minutes to an hour if you play poorly.
The best use of both mechanics is probably the boss fights which are incredibly well done given that they have to convey and or balance:
A) what a platformer boss is to a beginner to the genre.
B) Making the bosses fun to fight without being brainless.
C) Something you can improve upon further exposure.
This is also why I actually like the final boss rush here while I tend to dislike it in something like say the robot master gauntlet in MegaMan 1-6's climaxes. Enemy patterns are actually decipherable to normal human reflexes so it feels like I'm applying skills learned in prior levels to finish something more efficiently and not just brute forcing the game with sheer endurance/patience.
Story & Graphics
Normally I discuss these categories separately but given how simple Kirby's Dream Land is story-wise and how much of the series's long standing narrative appeal is tied into these character designs I felt it made since to combine these categories together for this review.
Kirby's Dream Land is a very minimalist work narrative-wise. King Dedede has stolen his subjects food and its your job as Kirby to put a stop to his gluttony. This plot is a functionally fine for the target audience and style it is going for. Not much else I can really say.
Really the strongest, most stand out point here is the main villain and how he serves as a microcosm for the game's expressive graphics. You can tell the developers were really focused on pushing the Game Boy to its limit by making the sprite animation as expressive as they did with Dedede being the best example of how well director Mashiro Sakurai understands character design as a craft.
King Dedede parallels Kirby so well during the final boss fight with the monarch having riffs on the pink puffball's main two hooks in the form of a vacuum attack to punish players baiting out his hammer attack and a high jump to counter Kirby's glide. Both moves along with a tripping attack are also telegraphed slowly in order to show just how much of a powerful but clumsy oaf the penguin really is. Thus when you win it feels like a very satisfying "the emperor has no clothes" moment.
Music & Sound Design
Sound design was vital for getting the player to understand how to maneuver with this floaty character with Kirby having sounds effects for both puffing up and sucking/spitting that convey what form you are shifting out of at a given time. You can really see the beginnings of where Sakurai's audio philosophy would evolve in the Super Smash Bros series here.
Music in this game is legendary. Basically every track here is iconic and constantly reused and remixed in future entries for a reason. The upbeat and hyper active chip tune style used here really sells the cutesy but adventurous vibe. Honestly composer Jun Ishikawa doesn't get enough credit for how much of the franchise's identity is tied to their musical style.
Conclusion
Kirby's Dream Land is a fun romp and while I hesitate to say its a "must play" I think the fact that it now comes as essentially a free pack in with your Switch online multiplayer subscription you are likely to already have if you are big enough Nintendo fan to read a backloggd review for a game from 1992. I can say its worth checking out. Especially if you like seeing how auteur creators evolve across their portfolio.
2001
--
ORIGINAL GGAPP.IO review:
Played on:
Gamecube
A classic that is emblematic of the experimentalism of the PS2/GameCube/X-Box era of the medium. The time limit system and Olimar's journal entries were an excellent use of dramatic tension to keep the player engaged in the story and themes of the game.
--
New Review:
(Author's note: This play-through was of the normal ending with 29/30 ships obtained. Any commentary on the challenge mode predates this play-through and stems more from owning the game for years. This run was done on Dolphin emulator version 5.0 - 18498 on native hardware graphical settings. Additionally I will note that nothing strange really happened that would notably change the experience from original hardware.)
Introduction
Pikmin 4 is coming out later this year and in anticipation I would like to look back on the three previous games with a clearer head and more depth compared to that frankly poorly written one sentence review from GGapp.io. For those unaware Pikmin is a series of real time strategy games by Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto inspired by his love of gardening. The series started with duology on the Nintendo Gamecube and has since become something of a rarity among modern Nintendo first party IP by having been one of four post 2000 IP launches to really succeed for the company (the other three being Xenoblade, "Wii __", and Splatoon if anyone is curious on my math) spawning an additional two sequels on Wii U + Switch, a short film, several ports, and a litany of merchandise. This begs the question is Captain Olimar worthy of being this statistical outlier standing over the bodies of Issac and Captain Falcon like its that Grant Gustin meme? Let's find out!
Gameplay
Pikmin's primary hook is a time limit of 30 days. Each day has roughly 15-20 minute window in which you can explore to find ship parts (the game's main collectable) with your army of up to 100 disposable (but replenishable with enemy kills) units. These units come in three varieties throughout the game. Fire resistant Red Pikmin that deal extra damage, aquatic Blue Pikmin, and acrobatic Yellow Pikmin that also serve as demolition experts. Ship parts are hidden behind environmental puzzles and significant enemy encounters in each of the game five locales. Most of these environmental puzzles are pretty often basic to the point of feeling "tech demoy" in nature. Part on a tall ledge? Throw Yellow Pikmin to reach it. Part in the water? Use Blue Pikmin. While there are a few parts that require some creative thinking (the analog computer for example requires you to carry it with blues initially and switch to reds after pulling it out of the water to avoid burning your Pikmin to a pile of ash) nothing really that complex is really asked of the player and much of the gameplay loop is really about balancing growing/upgrading your units and going after ship parts in the time limit rather than the struggle of getting the parts themselves. Given the strategy genre's tendency to skew towards very lengthy, micromanagement heavy experiences I actually think the choice to focus on a arcadey time trial centric experience was for the best to help the game standout from the crowd. Some folks might not care for the trial and error nature that comes with the time limit system but there is nothing like getting into a flow state of a perfectly executed day where you bring multiple part back,have time to farm more backup units and also plan out a route for the next day.
With that in mind I can certainly see why the dev team were going for with the choice to include the bonus challenge mode centered around maximizing the # of Pkmin you can grow in a day but I found it a tad too minimalist for my liking. I think even changing the layout of the selectable levels slightly and having some built in scores to beat could have gone a long way towards giving some value to that mode. As it stand it sorta just feels like something slapped together with some debug tools. Not impossible given the crunch that was common with Nintendo's early first party GameCube titles (Mashiro Sakurai infamously was hospitalized during the development of Super Smash Bros. Melee for example). That criticism aside the core content during the main campaign is more than enough to be satisfying in my opinion.
Graphics
Being a launch title meant that, in order to showcase what the purple lunchbox could do, Pikmin went with a unique art style by being a mash up of (at the time) realistic environments and cartoony characters models (this is a choice made more clear by promotional art). This leads to a game that rests in an interesting middle ground with its graphical age. The environments look a tad dated nearly 20 years later obviously but the character models fair a tad better (thought Olimar and the Pikmin can look a tad glossy at points). Stylistically speaking I like the art style mashup since it helps sell the idea of Captain Olimar as this outside to the planet but it clearly has a downside with dating the game long term but hey time rots everything eventually.
Story
Pikmin's story premise, like most Nintendo games, is simple. The tiny space alien Captain Olimar crash lands on planet earth and must work with a local tribe like mobile plant species to repair his spaceship in order to return home before he succumbs to the toxic atmosphere. This Castaway riff plot by itself would be serviceable enough to give the game dramatic tension but Pikmin has a brilliant narrative device that gives things a lot more flavor. During major tutorials and at the end of each day Olimar will write diary entries that flesh out his backstory and thoughts on what is going on. This does an excellent job of both justifying tutorial speak and getting you more invested in Olimar as a character. Pikmin probably has some of the best writing from the Big N's non-RPG output.
Music & Sound Design
While I find the music in this game mostly forgettable (but atmospheric enough for what the development team was going for) outside the main menu theme I think the actual sound design is incredibly well thought out. Since micromanging is such a big part of the game having audio ques for say an enemy ambushing a ship part being taken to base (Pikmin screaming) or a Pikmin drowing/burning are vital to allowing the player to keep in mind what their squad is doing while they attend to others things without needing to pull up the radar screen 24/7.
Conclusion
For strategy game fans Pikmin is a must play especially if you own a GameCube, Wii, or Wii U. Just be weary of how much you pay if your are are on limited gaming budget.
ORIGINAL GGAPP.IO review:
Played on:
Gamecube
A classic that is emblematic of the experimentalism of the PS2/GameCube/X-Box era of the medium. The time limit system and Olimar's journal entries were an excellent use of dramatic tension to keep the player engaged in the story and themes of the game.
--
New Review:
(Author's note: This play-through was of the normal ending with 29/30 ships obtained. Any commentary on the challenge mode predates this play-through and stems more from owning the game for years. This run was done on Dolphin emulator version 5.0 - 18498 on native hardware graphical settings. Additionally I will note that nothing strange really happened that would notably change the experience from original hardware.)
Introduction
Pikmin 4 is coming out later this year and in anticipation I would like to look back on the three previous games with a clearer head and more depth compared to that frankly poorly written one sentence review from GGapp.io. For those unaware Pikmin is a series of real time strategy games by Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto inspired by his love of gardening. The series started with duology on the Nintendo Gamecube and has since become something of a rarity among modern Nintendo first party IP by having been one of four post 2000 IP launches to really succeed for the company (the other three being Xenoblade, "Wii __", and Splatoon if anyone is curious on my math) spawning an additional two sequels on Wii U + Switch, a short film, several ports, and a litany of merchandise. This begs the question is Captain Olimar worthy of being this statistical outlier standing over the bodies of Issac and Captain Falcon like its that Grant Gustin meme? Let's find out!
Gameplay
Pikmin's primary hook is a time limit of 30 days. Each day has roughly 15-20 minute window in which you can explore to find ship parts (the game's main collectable) with your army of up to 100 disposable (but replenishable with enemy kills) units. These units come in three varieties throughout the game. Fire resistant Red Pikmin that deal extra damage, aquatic Blue Pikmin, and acrobatic Yellow Pikmin that also serve as demolition experts. Ship parts are hidden behind environmental puzzles and significant enemy encounters in each of the game five locales. Most of these environmental puzzles are pretty often basic to the point of feeling "tech demoy" in nature. Part on a tall ledge? Throw Yellow Pikmin to reach it. Part in the water? Use Blue Pikmin. While there are a few parts that require some creative thinking (the analog computer for example requires you to carry it with blues initially and switch to reds after pulling it out of the water to avoid burning your Pikmin to a pile of ash) nothing really that complex is really asked of the player and much of the gameplay loop is really about balancing growing/upgrading your units and going after ship parts in the time limit rather than the struggle of getting the parts themselves. Given the strategy genre's tendency to skew towards very lengthy, micromanagement heavy experiences I actually think the choice to focus on a arcadey time trial centric experience was for the best to help the game standout from the crowd. Some folks might not care for the trial and error nature that comes with the time limit system but there is nothing like getting into a flow state of a perfectly executed day where you bring multiple part back,have time to farm more backup units and also plan out a route for the next day.
With that in mind I can certainly see why the dev team were going for with the choice to include the bonus challenge mode centered around maximizing the # of Pkmin you can grow in a day but I found it a tad too minimalist for my liking. I think even changing the layout of the selectable levels slightly and having some built in scores to beat could have gone a long way towards giving some value to that mode. As it stand it sorta just feels like something slapped together with some debug tools. Not impossible given the crunch that was common with Nintendo's early first party GameCube titles (Mashiro Sakurai infamously was hospitalized during the development of Super Smash Bros. Melee for example). That criticism aside the core content during the main campaign is more than enough to be satisfying in my opinion.
Graphics
Being a launch title meant that, in order to showcase what the purple lunchbox could do, Pikmin went with a unique art style by being a mash up of (at the time) realistic environments and cartoony characters models (this is a choice made more clear by promotional art). This leads to a game that rests in an interesting middle ground with its graphical age. The environments look a tad dated nearly 20 years later obviously but the character models fair a tad better (thought Olimar and the Pikmin can look a tad glossy at points). Stylistically speaking I like the art style mashup since it helps sell the idea of Captain Olimar as this outside to the planet but it clearly has a downside with dating the game long term but hey time rots everything eventually.
Story
Pikmin's story premise, like most Nintendo games, is simple. The tiny space alien Captain Olimar crash lands on planet earth and must work with a local tribe like mobile plant species to repair his spaceship in order to return home before he succumbs to the toxic atmosphere. This Castaway riff plot by itself would be serviceable enough to give the game dramatic tension but Pikmin has a brilliant narrative device that gives things a lot more flavor. During major tutorials and at the end of each day Olimar will write diary entries that flesh out his backstory and thoughts on what is going on. This does an excellent job of both justifying tutorial speak and getting you more invested in Olimar as a character. Pikmin probably has some of the best writing from the Big N's non-RPG output.
Music & Sound Design
While I find the music in this game mostly forgettable (but atmospheric enough for what the development team was going for) outside the main menu theme I think the actual sound design is incredibly well thought out. Since micromanging is such a big part of the game having audio ques for say an enemy ambushing a ship part being taken to base (Pikmin screaming) or a Pikmin drowing/burning are vital to allowing the player to keep in mind what their squad is doing while they attend to others things without needing to pull up the radar screen 24/7.
Conclusion
For strategy game fans Pikmin is a must play especially if you own a GameCube, Wii, or Wii U. Just be weary of how much you pay if your are are on limited gaming budget.
2004
Pikmin 2 is one of the worst sequels I’ve played that has received some degree of critical acclaim. For those not versed into the Pikmin series Pikmin 2 for Nintendo Gamecube is a sequel to the hit launch title that set out to address many of the contemporary criticisms of the first game by dramatically overhauling many aspects of the franchise’s overlying systems and presentation. In my view these changes to narrative tone, progression structure, and game feel don’t really coalesce into an overall completely satisfying package.
The story is centered on Captain Olimar and his assistant Louie returning to the Pikmin planet in order to find treasures that can help him pay back his employer’s corporate debt. I usually say with Nintendo reviews the plot is simple but works as a vehicle for the gameplay and to an extent that is the case here but I can’t help but feel as though more could’ve been done. The first game had this unique sense of isolation to it that gave it a fantastic atmosphere and the day system synergized with the ship crash plot to give the game a tense mood. Not saying the more comedic tone of Pikmin 2 wasn’t a valid direction to take the series. Hell, if anything I think the game’s light jab at capitalism with the treasure hoard being IRL product placement in this (implied) apocalyptic planet and President character being this incompetent shortsighted oaf that doesn’t understand the concept of predatory loans is neat. I just wish the game had tied this theme of destructive consumerist capitalism into the gameplay loop more but hey its a mass appeal kids game they were probably never gonna go that far. To me the biggest fault in Pikmin 2’s story isn’t necessarily this shift in tone or even an inability to fully capitalize on its anti-capitalist themes but rather how it fails to use its gameplay in a synergistic way with its narrative. To get into this I will need to address overall game structure and how things have changed since the first game.
Pikmin 2 has four main additions to the franchise formula including Purple & White Pikmin, upgrades in the form of the both consumable spicy/bitter berry sprays & permanent upgrades for your space suit, and an additional captain for multitasking. All these tools are promising on paper but never really come together into a cohesive package of interesting choices for one simple reason: caves.
Caves are basically combat oriented dungeons where Olimar will earn much of the treasure to pay off his debt. This cave system does not gel with any other choice the developers make even on a baseline level. The way the combat in Pikmin 1 was set up (and that is largely carried over here) is you throw or swarm the Pikmin horde in a vague direction towards your opponent and avoid attacks aimed at your captain and Pikmin using a combination of movement and whistling. This has a level of impreciseness to it that meant your Pikmin lost in combat were effectively a resource tax you had to play around in the time limit system to ensure you gathered the 30 ship parts in 30 days. Since time doesn’t run naturally in the caverns and the time limit doesn’t really exist on a macro-scale (in other words there is no alt ending system) sans as a form of leaderboard tracking you effectively end up with very basic combat with little gameplay tension. Losing a Pikmin is less “ NOOOO NOT MY REDS!” and “more ugh time to grind more Pikmin”. Unless you run low on troops this game can devolve into the very tedious pattern of killing a ton of enemies and playing 52 pickups with the treasures left behind. Needless to say this creates a ton of dead air. The developers must have realized this at some point in development as this game has assorted layers of mass Pikmin grave creators like roaming enemies, falling bombs, and various flavors of instant kill attacks to create tension via low Pikmin counts close to boss areas. Some of it a player can counter play (as an example: boulders are usually telegraphed with sound effects and a discolored ground texture even before the drop shadow reveals itself thus giving you plenty of time to whistle Pikmin out of the way) but a lot comes off as artificial difficulty on a first playthrough. A lot of falling bomb rocks only seem to trigger upon trying to pick up a treasure for example. Pretty much the only two of these hazards that felt interesting on a decision making level were the boulder which incentivized playing with a smaller squad to scout out a location before tracking down the loot and the waterwraith, an Aliens: Isolation or Metroid Fusion style instant kill enemy chase sequence tied to a timer which forces you to grab the treasure quickly. These are the few moments in the game that really have any sense of tension. In short, most of these hazards feel less like engaging gameplay challenges and more like a resource threshold you have to clear by grinding Pikmin.
Speaking of grinding Pikmin, doing that for two of the species in this game is a complete pain in the ass that shows the reason a lot of these stylistic choices don’t go together. New to Pikmin 2 are white and purple Pikmin. White Pikmin can dig stuff out of the ground, carry things around quicker, and sacrifice themselves to most enemies for a massive amount of inflicted poison damage while Purple Pikmin are the muscle of the squad that can stun enemies in combat by being thrown and act as strength equivalents to 10 normal Pikmin in the context of the carrying weight mechanic. I do actually like the game play choices they ask of the player in terms of party composition (you have a 100 slots, how many do you want allocated to these just as perishable excess utility Pikmin vs tried and true puzzle solving Pikmin species?). The problem comes from the rarity of these two new species. Since Whites and Purples can only be grown via underground transferring of other species troops via Candypop buds. You end up with a large time sink for dungeon preparation. Want more white Pikmin as prep for those annoying Pileated Snagret boss battles or a poison barrier in the Awakening Wood? Better be ready to take a trip to the Subterranean Complex’s third sub-level with any extra red Pikmin you have several times over. Want 100 Purples for that time sink 1000 carrying weight dumbbell in Wistful Wild? Dear god your poor soul shouldn’t have decided to go for all treasures.
Oh and did I mention that Yellow (due to electric gates, negating some instant kill attacks and the strength of being more able to easily hit various bosses significant more easily with vertical mobility) & Purple Pikmin (stun locking enemies with throw) are overwhelmingly more useful then Red, White, and Blue Pikmin (all of which serve as very basic keys to certain treasures) further exacerbating this design choice to limit Purple growth to caves as it sorta naturally draws a casual players’s eye to this bad pacing for dungeon preparation. Sure players might optimize the fun out of everything (a common retort I see to poorly balanced gameplay systems online) and balance isn’t everything but I feel like it's safe to say that a spammable combat unit you get during the first dungeon trivializing combat is pretty different from say saving great scientists in Civ 5 to exploit that game’s research payout algorithm. Both are pretty gamey and take away player expression but one is much more likely to be noticeable and thus employed by a casual player playing the game for the first time. Maybe if Pikmin 2 didn’t employ cheap design tricks with its falling bomb rock and enemy spam that heavily incentivized unfun, optimal strategies like purple grinding I wouldn’t be making this review but I guess what I am trying to say is that it isn’t just a case of Pikmin 2 being unbalanced it's that the unbalanced aspects are actively brought to the four front via its sloppy dungeon design which in turn is informed by a lack of temporal consequences to Pikmin grinding due to the lack of a day system.
I could go into more detail on other new aspects of Pikmin 2 that reinforce this point with the bitter spray and captain punching upgrades but I’d just be repeating both myself and other folks in the online discourse surrounding this title. Instead I wanna turn my attention to another aspect of the game I think hasn’t gotten as much attention as a gap between the designer's likely intent and the final product: the shoddily implemented multi-tasking system.
In Pikmin 2’s pseudo-midpoint (paying off the debt) you get a mock credits sequence in which Olimar accidentally leaves Louie to fend for himself on the Pikmin planet. In theory this should be a needle scratch moment after the player has gotten attached to Louie as this helpful partner that helped you grow your corporate bank account via the multi-task function. In practice this ends up being a bit of a wet fart of plot point that sorta makes the true ending feel less like a Lethal Weapon like capstone on Olimar and Louie’s unlikely friendship kinda and more just abrupt due to how little you need to use the multi-task function in game. Over the course of my all treasures playthrough of Pikmin 2 I can only think of seven places I was heavily incentivized to use the multitasking feature:
1) The Valley Of Reposes multitasking tutorial.
2)The three berry grinding locations in Awakening Wood, Perplexing Pool, and Wistful Wild.
3) A stone elevator in the yellow onion spawn in
4)The Perplexing Pool’s “Massage Girdle” treasure.
5) A boss known as the Ranging Bloyster that requires constant switching to stun lock him into vulnerability.
Since Louie can theoretically just be chilling at your base or cave floor entrance 90% the game with little repercussions (and generally I’d say sticking to one captain or treating the captains as a universal party is the path of least resistance most of the time) you as a player never really develop an affinity for the second in command thus you end up with a kinda ineffective climax with the only interesting stuff being the implication that Louie might’ve been controlling the final boss to cover up his role in the company going into debt. The game doesn't really do much with this so I don't really have much to add to that other than it sorta being emblematic of Pikmin 2 as a whole of a bunch of good ideas that never really come together in the end.
Pikmin 2 isn’t all bad. There is some nice quality of life changes with Pikmin party management, some of the writing in the treasure horde is generally pretty funny, the arcadey challenge mode is a huge step up from the first game but it just didn’t take into account how much of the franchises appeal and structure of its core mechanics resided in its use of time scarcity to create tension.
The story is centered on Captain Olimar and his assistant Louie returning to the Pikmin planet in order to find treasures that can help him pay back his employer’s corporate debt. I usually say with Nintendo reviews the plot is simple but works as a vehicle for the gameplay and to an extent that is the case here but I can’t help but feel as though more could’ve been done. The first game had this unique sense of isolation to it that gave it a fantastic atmosphere and the day system synergized with the ship crash plot to give the game a tense mood. Not saying the more comedic tone of Pikmin 2 wasn’t a valid direction to take the series. Hell, if anything I think the game’s light jab at capitalism with the treasure hoard being IRL product placement in this (implied) apocalyptic planet and President character being this incompetent shortsighted oaf that doesn’t understand the concept of predatory loans is neat. I just wish the game had tied this theme of destructive consumerist capitalism into the gameplay loop more but hey its a mass appeal kids game they were probably never gonna go that far. To me the biggest fault in Pikmin 2’s story isn’t necessarily this shift in tone or even an inability to fully capitalize on its anti-capitalist themes but rather how it fails to use its gameplay in a synergistic way with its narrative. To get into this I will need to address overall game structure and how things have changed since the first game.
Pikmin 2 has four main additions to the franchise formula including Purple & White Pikmin, upgrades in the form of the both consumable spicy/bitter berry sprays & permanent upgrades for your space suit, and an additional captain for multitasking. All these tools are promising on paper but never really come together into a cohesive package of interesting choices for one simple reason: caves.
Caves are basically combat oriented dungeons where Olimar will earn much of the treasure to pay off his debt. This cave system does not gel with any other choice the developers make even on a baseline level. The way the combat in Pikmin 1 was set up (and that is largely carried over here) is you throw or swarm the Pikmin horde in a vague direction towards your opponent and avoid attacks aimed at your captain and Pikmin using a combination of movement and whistling. This has a level of impreciseness to it that meant your Pikmin lost in combat were effectively a resource tax you had to play around in the time limit system to ensure you gathered the 30 ship parts in 30 days. Since time doesn’t run naturally in the caverns and the time limit doesn’t really exist on a macro-scale (in other words there is no alt ending system) sans as a form of leaderboard tracking you effectively end up with very basic combat with little gameplay tension. Losing a Pikmin is less “ NOOOO NOT MY REDS!” and “more ugh time to grind more Pikmin”. Unless you run low on troops this game can devolve into the very tedious pattern of killing a ton of enemies and playing 52 pickups with the treasures left behind. Needless to say this creates a ton of dead air. The developers must have realized this at some point in development as this game has assorted layers of mass Pikmin grave creators like roaming enemies, falling bombs, and various flavors of instant kill attacks to create tension via low Pikmin counts close to boss areas. Some of it a player can counter play (as an example: boulders are usually telegraphed with sound effects and a discolored ground texture even before the drop shadow reveals itself thus giving you plenty of time to whistle Pikmin out of the way) but a lot comes off as artificial difficulty on a first playthrough. A lot of falling bomb rocks only seem to trigger upon trying to pick up a treasure for example. Pretty much the only two of these hazards that felt interesting on a decision making level were the boulder which incentivized playing with a smaller squad to scout out a location before tracking down the loot and the waterwraith, an Aliens: Isolation or Metroid Fusion style instant kill enemy chase sequence tied to a timer which forces you to grab the treasure quickly. These are the few moments in the game that really have any sense of tension. In short, most of these hazards feel less like engaging gameplay challenges and more like a resource threshold you have to clear by grinding Pikmin.
Speaking of grinding Pikmin, doing that for two of the species in this game is a complete pain in the ass that shows the reason a lot of these stylistic choices don’t go together. New to Pikmin 2 are white and purple Pikmin. White Pikmin can dig stuff out of the ground, carry things around quicker, and sacrifice themselves to most enemies for a massive amount of inflicted poison damage while Purple Pikmin are the muscle of the squad that can stun enemies in combat by being thrown and act as strength equivalents to 10 normal Pikmin in the context of the carrying weight mechanic. I do actually like the game play choices they ask of the player in terms of party composition (you have a 100 slots, how many do you want allocated to these just as perishable excess utility Pikmin vs tried and true puzzle solving Pikmin species?). The problem comes from the rarity of these two new species. Since Whites and Purples can only be grown via underground transferring of other species troops via Candypop buds. You end up with a large time sink for dungeon preparation. Want more white Pikmin as prep for those annoying Pileated Snagret boss battles or a poison barrier in the Awakening Wood? Better be ready to take a trip to the Subterranean Complex’s third sub-level with any extra red Pikmin you have several times over. Want 100 Purples for that time sink 1000 carrying weight dumbbell in Wistful Wild? Dear god your poor soul shouldn’t have decided to go for all treasures.
Oh and did I mention that Yellow (due to electric gates, negating some instant kill attacks and the strength of being more able to easily hit various bosses significant more easily with vertical mobility) & Purple Pikmin (stun locking enemies with throw) are overwhelmingly more useful then Red, White, and Blue Pikmin (all of which serve as very basic keys to certain treasures) further exacerbating this design choice to limit Purple growth to caves as it sorta naturally draws a casual players’s eye to this bad pacing for dungeon preparation. Sure players might optimize the fun out of everything (a common retort I see to poorly balanced gameplay systems online) and balance isn’t everything but I feel like it's safe to say that a spammable combat unit you get during the first dungeon trivializing combat is pretty different from say saving great scientists in Civ 5 to exploit that game’s research payout algorithm. Both are pretty gamey and take away player expression but one is much more likely to be noticeable and thus employed by a casual player playing the game for the first time. Maybe if Pikmin 2 didn’t employ cheap design tricks with its falling bomb rock and enemy spam that heavily incentivized unfun, optimal strategies like purple grinding I wouldn’t be making this review but I guess what I am trying to say is that it isn’t just a case of Pikmin 2 being unbalanced it's that the unbalanced aspects are actively brought to the four front via its sloppy dungeon design which in turn is informed by a lack of temporal consequences to Pikmin grinding due to the lack of a day system.
I could go into more detail on other new aspects of Pikmin 2 that reinforce this point with the bitter spray and captain punching upgrades but I’d just be repeating both myself and other folks in the online discourse surrounding this title. Instead I wanna turn my attention to another aspect of the game I think hasn’t gotten as much attention as a gap between the designer's likely intent and the final product: the shoddily implemented multi-tasking system.
In Pikmin 2’s pseudo-midpoint (paying off the debt) you get a mock credits sequence in which Olimar accidentally leaves Louie to fend for himself on the Pikmin planet. In theory this should be a needle scratch moment after the player has gotten attached to Louie as this helpful partner that helped you grow your corporate bank account via the multi-task function. In practice this ends up being a bit of a wet fart of plot point that sorta makes the true ending feel less like a Lethal Weapon like capstone on Olimar and Louie’s unlikely friendship kinda and more just abrupt due to how little you need to use the multi-task function in game. Over the course of my all treasures playthrough of Pikmin 2 I can only think of seven places I was heavily incentivized to use the multitasking feature:
1) The Valley Of Reposes multitasking tutorial.
2)The three berry grinding locations in Awakening Wood, Perplexing Pool, and Wistful Wild.
3) A stone elevator in the yellow onion spawn in
4)The Perplexing Pool’s “Massage Girdle” treasure.
5) A boss known as the Ranging Bloyster that requires constant switching to stun lock him into vulnerability.
Since Louie can theoretically just be chilling at your base or cave floor entrance 90% the game with little repercussions (and generally I’d say sticking to one captain or treating the captains as a universal party is the path of least resistance most of the time) you as a player never really develop an affinity for the second in command thus you end up with a kinda ineffective climax with the only interesting stuff being the implication that Louie might’ve been controlling the final boss to cover up his role in the company going into debt. The game doesn't really do much with this so I don't really have much to add to that other than it sorta being emblematic of Pikmin 2 as a whole of a bunch of good ideas that never really come together in the end.
Pikmin 2 isn’t all bad. There is some nice quality of life changes with Pikmin party management, some of the writing in the treasure horde is generally pretty funny, the arcadey challenge mode is a huge step up from the first game but it just didn’t take into account how much of the franchises appeal and structure of its core mechanics resided in its use of time scarcity to create tension.
2017
Author's note:
Played on Citra Nightly 1946.
This is probably the worst thing I've reviewed on this account and the first thing I've had to drop since New Pokemon Snap. The touchscreen controls feel awful and the level design is just a bunch of enemies with ether high HP (relative to lack of combat depth) or crazy reaction times and a few very basic puzzles that honestly feel like they'd be boring even for kids playing this in 2017 when you compare it to other touchscreen controlled games targeting that demographic in the late 2010s like Angry Birds, Cut The Rope, and the IOS port of Fortnite. Like I am baffled this made it out of playtesting session let alone shipped as a $40 release at launch. People are probably gonna argue I should have played more but if a game's fundamentals are just so plain and unpleasant it can be hard for a player to shake off this initial disgust (for lack of better term) and in my experience that will usually end up with a game being made a perpetual backlog slot that never gets touched again. I honestly don't even thinks this merits a full review with proper structured writing. Hence this rambly blurb. I hope the dev team grew from this experience and used it as learning experience to grow as artists because having this on your resume has gotta be rough.
Played on Citra Nightly 1946.
This is probably the worst thing I've reviewed on this account and the first thing I've had to drop since New Pokemon Snap. The touchscreen controls feel awful and the level design is just a bunch of enemies with ether high HP (relative to lack of combat depth) or crazy reaction times and a few very basic puzzles that honestly feel like they'd be boring even for kids playing this in 2017 when you compare it to other touchscreen controlled games targeting that demographic in the late 2010s like Angry Birds, Cut The Rope, and the IOS port of Fortnite. Like I am baffled this made it out of playtesting session let alone shipped as a $40 release at launch. People are probably gonna argue I should have played more but if a game's fundamentals are just so plain and unpleasant it can be hard for a player to shake off this initial disgust (for lack of better term) and in my experience that will usually end up with a game being made a perpetual backlog slot that never gets touched again. I honestly don't even thinks this merits a full review with proper structured writing. Hence this rambly blurb. I hope the dev team grew from this experience and used it as learning experience to grow as artists because having this on your resume has gotta be rough.
2020
Author’s Note: I wrote a decent chunk of this prior to 4’s release.
Introduction:
The year was 2013 and Pikmin was at a bit of a standstill. Only motion control centric re-releases were present on Nintendo’s biggest home system since the NES and it was nowhere to be seen on Nintendo’s lucrative handheld line. Whenever asked about Pikmin in interviews, series creator Shigeru Miyamoto would always give a vague promise of a third game coming “soon”. Pikmin 3 would ultimately release in North America on August 13 of that year (almost a full decade removed from its predecessor) on the failed experimental console known as the Wii U. Flash forward to 2017 the Nintendo Switch is a huge hit and Nintendo has a giant back catalog of Wii U titles that will effectively feel like new releases to the less informed public that just thought the Wii U was some failed controller add-on like the UDraw Tablet. Porting to recoup expensive HD era dev costs and build brand recognition for the more nicher IPs of the Nintendo stable on the cheap is just good business sense. Enter our primary subject for today: Pikmin 3 Deluxe. An expansion on the “hit” Wii U game that adds two additional stories, revamps certain mechanics, and includes all the extra DLC of the Wii U release. Is this a release that trends in the quality direction of Pikmin 1 or 2? Let’s find out!
Before We Begin:
I will assume you have read my Pikmin 1 and Pikmin 2 reviews before reading this review as I go into much of the series core structure in those writings. Also please keep in mind I played both versions of this game for the purpose of getting a feel for how certain mechanics and stylistic choices might have been impacted by the Wii U’s uhh.. “unique” tablet controller setup (Cemu in a two screen side by side setup for base game + Yuzu for Deluxe). I also went into the challenge mode a tiny bit more this time around as it felt high enough in production value to merit the extra effort. I also played through the additional Captain Olimar stories in Deluxe for the purposes of being thorough and to see how the main storyline plays in a more intense “arcadey” setting like the dandori battles coming to Pikmin 4.
Story:
Pikmin 3’s main campaign breaks series tradition by introducing 3 new protagonists instead of series alumni Captain Olimar. These player avatars are ship captain Alph, botanist Brittany, and military general Charlie. They aim to save their planet from malthusian collapse by examining the dangerous PNF - 404 for fruit that can serve as a source of food for their planet Koppai’s growing population. There's a decent goofy adventure here with decent banter between the three protagonists and some okay cutscenes before and after each boss fight but you probably aren’t gonna play this for the story.
Presentation:
This is probably going to be an unpopular opinion but the graphics here are leaving a lot to be desired. Pikmin 3 was the first HD Pikmin game and I feel like in spite of that its Wii prototype roots show. Lots of uncanny valleys in the environment design with low res textures in the first half of the game. I also feel like Formidable Oak reusing the cave sub areas assets for a majority of its runtime after giving you this great looking american southwest desert for outside area is incredibly disappointing. I get they likely used the dark cave aesthetic to gel with the slight genre shift to soft horror game with the Wraith chase sequence but I don’t think it was impressive enough to sterilize the personality and identity of the final area graphically.
Sonically the music and sound design fares much better with the boss theme being different based on the game state changing and the sound effects returning as a form of party management with regard to hazards and enemy attacks (see my Pikmin review for more details). The former has a pretty good explanation by the Youtuber “Scruffy” that’ll link in the end of this review as it goes into this from a musical composition angle much better than I can go into as someone not that versed on composition or music theory. Ultimately like the first game I think the music serves its purpose as a mood setter but isn’t super memorable on its own outside the aforementioned boss music.
Gameplay:
Pikmin 3 is a return to form gameplay wise as the time limit returns albeit in a less harsh form. Everytime you grab a collectable fruit your crew will juice it at the end of day and add to a total supply. Each day uses one unit of juice and running out of supply results in the game’s bad ending. This is a good idea in theory, it gives folks a sense of tension present in the late game of Pikmin 1 while also giving players a catch up mechanic but in practice I feel it comes into conflict with the game’s choice to be more linear and cinematic in its design. Since vast swaths of your time are assumed to be taken up by opening the singular path to each area boss the game pretty much has to leave a decent chunk of each area’s total juice supply out in the open. This leads to the mechanic feeling very tacked on sans one set piece in the game’s midpoint where you lose your juice supply. This is made even worse in a 100% run I have to imagine as the fruits on the linear track to the boss that are rather low effort acquisitions such as the plums underneath the pink flowers in Twilight River likely come off as filler content. Combine this with the further simplification of the combat via automatic lock-on and you have probably the easiest game in the series. In a strategy game where the brunt of the appeal is coming up with novel solutions to problems (in my opinion) I think an overly low difficulty is a problem. I think really two things save this game from being completely mindless: the three captain “go here” system and the robust suite of challenge maps that double down on the time scarcity aspect of the game’s design.
The concept of captains multitasking has received a great glow up from 2. The presence of three remotely controlled captains and the concept of captain throwing means both actual incentives for multitasking as well as vertical level design are added to the game allowing for you to think about your squad compositions on several additional levels. Should I keep a captain at base to ensure quick squad plucking or send them as insurance in case I run into a captain throwing section? How should I divide my Pikmin colors among the two to three squads? Should I keep a squad free for backup if something unexpected comes up or press on for quicker progress? Etcetera etcetera. Add in the intuitiveness of having go here mapped to the tablet touch screen on Wii U (in fact I’d say that change from tablet screen to a pause menu is the biggest downside of Switch over the failed console) and you have a very satisfying set of mechanics. While the aforementioned simplistic campaign design prevents this feature set from reaching its apex, the Olimar side stories and challenge mode map more than make up for this.
In Pikmin 3 Deluxe after learning about Olimar being kidnapped by a creature known as the Plasma Wraith you unlock a prequel story detailing how that scenario came to be. This is further complimented by a post game epilogue about Olimar repairing his ship. Both these stories are effectively “storyfied” challenge mode missions centered on beating a set of goals like growing Pikmin, collecting treasure, killing enemies, escorting a ship part, or reaching a point on the map in a time limit. Every mission is ranked on a bronze to platinum scale just like the typical mission mode segments elsewhere in the game. You also gain access to the two underground Pikmin species from 2 otherwise not accessible during the main game. Going for the platinum in these missions is some of the best time I had in the series up to this point with each segment of the level path needing to be optimized to a high degree for the coveted platinum rank. These three modes were the only part of the game that really kept the flow state you can get into in the original game. It's a shame that I can see less patient folks bouncing off this game before they get to this part given the earliest ones available are at the midpoint of the experience but as someone that unironically defends the slow burn beginning trope a lot of games use (JRPGs mostly) I’m not gonna be phased by the pacing much.
Conclusion:
If Pikmin 1 is the perfect bite sized game and Pikmin 2 a lesser sum of its parts perhaps Pikmin 3 DX can best be described as meeting someone with a prickly personality out in a public space and getting a very superficial vibe on their life only to be surprised when you start to learn more about them after a chat. Lots of depth under the surface if you put in the work.
LINKS:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaBJ2C7Am6E
Introduction:
The year was 2013 and Pikmin was at a bit of a standstill. Only motion control centric re-releases were present on Nintendo’s biggest home system since the NES and it was nowhere to be seen on Nintendo’s lucrative handheld line. Whenever asked about Pikmin in interviews, series creator Shigeru Miyamoto would always give a vague promise of a third game coming “soon”. Pikmin 3 would ultimately release in North America on August 13 of that year (almost a full decade removed from its predecessor) on the failed experimental console known as the Wii U. Flash forward to 2017 the Nintendo Switch is a huge hit and Nintendo has a giant back catalog of Wii U titles that will effectively feel like new releases to the less informed public that just thought the Wii U was some failed controller add-on like the UDraw Tablet. Porting to recoup expensive HD era dev costs and build brand recognition for the more nicher IPs of the Nintendo stable on the cheap is just good business sense. Enter our primary subject for today: Pikmin 3 Deluxe. An expansion on the “hit” Wii U game that adds two additional stories, revamps certain mechanics, and includes all the extra DLC of the Wii U release. Is this a release that trends in the quality direction of Pikmin 1 or 2? Let’s find out!
Before We Begin:
I will assume you have read my Pikmin 1 and Pikmin 2 reviews before reading this review as I go into much of the series core structure in those writings. Also please keep in mind I played both versions of this game for the purpose of getting a feel for how certain mechanics and stylistic choices might have been impacted by the Wii U’s uhh.. “unique” tablet controller setup (Cemu in a two screen side by side setup for base game + Yuzu for Deluxe). I also went into the challenge mode a tiny bit more this time around as it felt high enough in production value to merit the extra effort. I also played through the additional Captain Olimar stories in Deluxe for the purposes of being thorough and to see how the main storyline plays in a more intense “arcadey” setting like the dandori battles coming to Pikmin 4.
Story:
Pikmin 3’s main campaign breaks series tradition by introducing 3 new protagonists instead of series alumni Captain Olimar. These player avatars are ship captain Alph, botanist Brittany, and military general Charlie. They aim to save their planet from malthusian collapse by examining the dangerous PNF - 404 for fruit that can serve as a source of food for their planet Koppai’s growing population. There's a decent goofy adventure here with decent banter between the three protagonists and some okay cutscenes before and after each boss fight but you probably aren’t gonna play this for the story.
Presentation:
This is probably going to be an unpopular opinion but the graphics here are leaving a lot to be desired. Pikmin 3 was the first HD Pikmin game and I feel like in spite of that its Wii prototype roots show. Lots of uncanny valleys in the environment design with low res textures in the first half of the game. I also feel like Formidable Oak reusing the cave sub areas assets for a majority of its runtime after giving you this great looking american southwest desert for outside area is incredibly disappointing. I get they likely used the dark cave aesthetic to gel with the slight genre shift to soft horror game with the Wraith chase sequence but I don’t think it was impressive enough to sterilize the personality and identity of the final area graphically.
Sonically the music and sound design fares much better with the boss theme being different based on the game state changing and the sound effects returning as a form of party management with regard to hazards and enemy attacks (see my Pikmin review for more details). The former has a pretty good explanation by the Youtuber “Scruffy” that’ll link in the end of this review as it goes into this from a musical composition angle much better than I can go into as someone not that versed on composition or music theory. Ultimately like the first game I think the music serves its purpose as a mood setter but isn’t super memorable on its own outside the aforementioned boss music.
Gameplay:
Pikmin 3 is a return to form gameplay wise as the time limit returns albeit in a less harsh form. Everytime you grab a collectable fruit your crew will juice it at the end of day and add to a total supply. Each day uses one unit of juice and running out of supply results in the game’s bad ending. This is a good idea in theory, it gives folks a sense of tension present in the late game of Pikmin 1 while also giving players a catch up mechanic but in practice I feel it comes into conflict with the game’s choice to be more linear and cinematic in its design. Since vast swaths of your time are assumed to be taken up by opening the singular path to each area boss the game pretty much has to leave a decent chunk of each area’s total juice supply out in the open. This leads to the mechanic feeling very tacked on sans one set piece in the game’s midpoint where you lose your juice supply. This is made even worse in a 100% run I have to imagine as the fruits on the linear track to the boss that are rather low effort acquisitions such as the plums underneath the pink flowers in Twilight River likely come off as filler content. Combine this with the further simplification of the combat via automatic lock-on and you have probably the easiest game in the series. In a strategy game where the brunt of the appeal is coming up with novel solutions to problems (in my opinion) I think an overly low difficulty is a problem. I think really two things save this game from being completely mindless: the three captain “go here” system and the robust suite of challenge maps that double down on the time scarcity aspect of the game’s design.
The concept of captains multitasking has received a great glow up from 2. The presence of three remotely controlled captains and the concept of captain throwing means both actual incentives for multitasking as well as vertical level design are added to the game allowing for you to think about your squad compositions on several additional levels. Should I keep a captain at base to ensure quick squad plucking or send them as insurance in case I run into a captain throwing section? How should I divide my Pikmin colors among the two to three squads? Should I keep a squad free for backup if something unexpected comes up or press on for quicker progress? Etcetera etcetera. Add in the intuitiveness of having go here mapped to the tablet touch screen on Wii U (in fact I’d say that change from tablet screen to a pause menu is the biggest downside of Switch over the failed console) and you have a very satisfying set of mechanics. While the aforementioned simplistic campaign design prevents this feature set from reaching its apex, the Olimar side stories and challenge mode map more than make up for this.
In Pikmin 3 Deluxe after learning about Olimar being kidnapped by a creature known as the Plasma Wraith you unlock a prequel story detailing how that scenario came to be. This is further complimented by a post game epilogue about Olimar repairing his ship. Both these stories are effectively “storyfied” challenge mode missions centered on beating a set of goals like growing Pikmin, collecting treasure, killing enemies, escorting a ship part, or reaching a point on the map in a time limit. Every mission is ranked on a bronze to platinum scale just like the typical mission mode segments elsewhere in the game. You also gain access to the two underground Pikmin species from 2 otherwise not accessible during the main game. Going for the platinum in these missions is some of the best time I had in the series up to this point with each segment of the level path needing to be optimized to a high degree for the coveted platinum rank. These three modes were the only part of the game that really kept the flow state you can get into in the original game. It's a shame that I can see less patient folks bouncing off this game before they get to this part given the earliest ones available are at the midpoint of the experience but as someone that unironically defends the slow burn beginning trope a lot of games use (JRPGs mostly) I’m not gonna be phased by the pacing much.
Conclusion:
If Pikmin 1 is the perfect bite sized game and Pikmin 2 a lesser sum of its parts perhaps Pikmin 3 DX can best be described as meeting someone with a prickly personality out in a public space and getting a very superficial vibe on their life only to be surprised when you start to learn more about them after a chat. Lots of depth under the surface if you put in the work.
LINKS:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaBJ2C7Am6E
The camouflage (additional flexibility during stealth sections) and electricity (crowd control in combat) abilities serve as a decent extension on the mechanics of the first game but you can frankly see the pesudo DLC mini sequel budget creep in a lot at points (the Roxxon troops being recolors of silver sable's troops, same map largely, reused mission concepts like Howard's pigeon chases or the plumbing mission, etc.). I'd say this is otherwise fine for what its going for even though I wish the pacing was a bit better. There is a flashback right before the main fight that frankly feels like it should've been the opening of the game and the Prowler's short lived attempted betrayal kinda feels forced in since the Miles/Prowler familial ties are one of the few things differentiating the character from Pete (outside the multiverse shtick) to really stick long term. On related note I do like how they tie the side-mission system, main narrative themes, and ending cutscene together by changing who from Harlem shows up based on what missions you've done. Great subtle way of showing player agency and emphasizing the community protection aspect of the superhero power fantasy I wish more devs did.
I am probably among the "easy to please" on the target audience spectrum for this game being a political science major and even I think this is a rather weak showing. Like I won't even make fun of the MS Paint art style much since its a strategy game and frankly I don't play these for the graphics but this really feels like someone took the basic conceit of a character centric strategy game and didn't think through what would be needed to update that crusader kings like premise to a democratic government system outside a very basic common sense application of realism. Like a lot of what you do here is a fine foundation for a prototype of the premise but so much more could be done conceptually. Like interest groups and intra-party poltics (stuff like super delegates or early primary Iowa/South Carolina retail politics endorsements) are such a big impactful thing in US politics for better or for worse and yet the trust statistic feels too simple to model those dynamics. This isn't the only failure though. Like how the hell isn't there a deal making and or black mail aspect of the game? Henry Clay, Mitch McConnell, New York era FDR, and so many other famous politicians in US history have used the levers of machine politics to get what they want and yet you can't really replicate that dynamic in game. Hell why isn't making a party that can cannibalize one of the big 2 and create a realignment/replacment party an option? Plenty of examples of that happening in US history. This just feels too simplistic for what it aims to do. Also for the amount of turns you can just automate in this game I feel like this could have benefited from a skip to significant week option.
Edit: There is a skip option but its rather hidden on the UI so I missed it at time of writing this review.
Edit: There is a skip option but its rather hidden on the UI so I missed it at time of writing this review.
2024
Consider this post less a "review" than a "first impression" or "time capsule" of sorts of the 0.1.2 PC release of this game. At the time of writing this little spiel this weird mashup of BOTW world traversal, Pokemon Legends: Arceus style creature collecting, and survival/automation games like Factorio or Ark: Survival Evolved has gone viral and lit up the charts like its Woodstock. Is it worth the hype? Well my answer here is complicated and colored by my own (lack of) experience with the survival genre.
THE FIRST ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM: EARLY ACCESS
First off I wanna address the reality of this being an early access title. Which is to say there three realities I can't ignore in this write up:
1) The game is in an incomplete state and all the "jank" and design imprecision that comes with that. This is to say several mechanics don't quite "click" as well as I'd like them to. The game's version of creature catching just isn't as satisfying as its Pokemon generation 8 equivalent for example. Often its not really obvious if I have damaged the creatures enough for them to not deflect the ball and I have even had the balls pass through the enemy models at points when engaging in close combat....which is an issue when your opening weapons choices are likely to be a club, repuposing a pick ax or torch for combat, or making a spear AKA close combat weapons. This means the players first exposure to catching is going to be through janky close quarters throws and that even putting aside the long range weapons being put front in center in trailers and such. Its a rough first impression to say the least.
2) The price will likely go up in the future to a full price release. As a $30.00 release? I think this is a good value proposition at that price considering this is effectively a $70.00 modern AAA open world title and the baseline level of polish that entails purchasable at roughly 43% of the total cost. As a full cost game? I think the gameplay loop might be a tad too simplistic for that price point especially when you look at the experiences being offered by many other indie and "AA" devs for less upfront cash.
3) The opening hours of this game can be a bit repetitive currently when you are just building up your wood, stone, blue ore, and yellow ore supplies and building the foundational tools/crafting tables/statues. Lots of walking back and fourth in the starting hillside base since you aren't gonna wanna risk undoing your resource collecting with an ill-advised combat encounter (when playing on default settings). A fact made worse by the very low early game weight limit. Despite my rather negative prose here I actually am of two minds about this setup. On one hand this makes the early game a bit of a slog but on the other it also does a great job of putting you into the shoes of your avatar building out his or her little boom town settlement from literal sticks and stones. This is all to say if this is your first survival game experience you might be in for a rough time if you just wanna jump into the creature collecting aspect but if you stick with it you can be very satisfying to fill out your base and build up a creature army.
THE SECOND ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM: THE CREATURE DESIGNS ARE MAYBE PLAGIARIZED
TLDR: Someone on Twitter/X by the name of "Byo" compared the skeletons of the Switch era Pokemon models and several palworld creatures and found them to be eerily similar which may suggest the use of AI as a plagiarism tool given the CEO of PocketPair's very libertarian dudebro persona and pro-AI statements in interviews. To be clear the automation of digital art via AI is something that should be agitated against for several reasons (its a union busting/job killing tool, consolidates more cultural power into the 1%/ruling class, leads to worse art in most cases, etc.) but game development is a multi-disciplinary process. Simply put, is it fair to write off the work of the sound team, game designers, and programmers just because upper management, legal department and the art team screwed up on their ends? This is all to say I can criticize the ethical failings of the game's art team while praising what this game does well and not be contradictory. If anything the fact this team wasn't just a couple hacks doing an Steam asset flip makes the plagiarism accusations more salient and tragic. Had these guys hired a proper art team to their project's scope or hell even just went up to the IP holders of any of these big Pokemon competitors like Namco-Bandai's Digimon or Monster Rancher for the rights to plop in their stock assets and animations into this gameplay system we could be looking at the next big thing on the level of Fortnite or Minecraft. As it currently stands I see this getting blown the fuck out by TPC's lawyers and disappearing by the end of the year. Perhaps resurfacing in a year or two with even uglier looking characters and zero cultural momentum. A tragic fate given the very strong foundations here if the devs could get a chance to polish the early game and catching mechanics.
THE FIRST ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM: EARLY ACCESS
First off I wanna address the reality of this being an early access title. Which is to say there three realities I can't ignore in this write up:
1) The game is in an incomplete state and all the "jank" and design imprecision that comes with that. This is to say several mechanics don't quite "click" as well as I'd like them to. The game's version of creature catching just isn't as satisfying as its Pokemon generation 8 equivalent for example. Often its not really obvious if I have damaged the creatures enough for them to not deflect the ball and I have even had the balls pass through the enemy models at points when engaging in close combat....which is an issue when your opening weapons choices are likely to be a club, repuposing a pick ax or torch for combat, or making a spear AKA close combat weapons. This means the players first exposure to catching is going to be through janky close quarters throws and that even putting aside the long range weapons being put front in center in trailers and such. Its a rough first impression to say the least.
2) The price will likely go up in the future to a full price release. As a $30.00 release? I think this is a good value proposition at that price considering this is effectively a $70.00 modern AAA open world title and the baseline level of polish that entails purchasable at roughly 43% of the total cost. As a full cost game? I think the gameplay loop might be a tad too simplistic for that price point especially when you look at the experiences being offered by many other indie and "AA" devs for less upfront cash.
3) The opening hours of this game can be a bit repetitive currently when you are just building up your wood, stone, blue ore, and yellow ore supplies and building the foundational tools/crafting tables/statues. Lots of walking back and fourth in the starting hillside base since you aren't gonna wanna risk undoing your resource collecting with an ill-advised combat encounter (when playing on default settings). A fact made worse by the very low early game weight limit. Despite my rather negative prose here I actually am of two minds about this setup. On one hand this makes the early game a bit of a slog but on the other it also does a great job of putting you into the shoes of your avatar building out his or her little boom town settlement from literal sticks and stones. This is all to say if this is your first survival game experience you might be in for a rough time if you just wanna jump into the creature collecting aspect but if you stick with it you can be very satisfying to fill out your base and build up a creature army.
THE SECOND ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM: THE CREATURE DESIGNS ARE MAYBE PLAGIARIZED
TLDR: Someone on Twitter/X by the name of "Byo" compared the skeletons of the Switch era Pokemon models and several palworld creatures and found them to be eerily similar which may suggest the use of AI as a plagiarism tool given the CEO of PocketPair's very libertarian dudebro persona and pro-AI statements in interviews. To be clear the automation of digital art via AI is something that should be agitated against for several reasons (its a union busting/job killing tool, consolidates more cultural power into the 1%/ruling class, leads to worse art in most cases, etc.) but game development is a multi-disciplinary process. Simply put, is it fair to write off the work of the sound team, game designers, and programmers just because upper management, legal department and the art team screwed up on their ends? This is all to say I can criticize the ethical failings of the game's art team while praising what this game does well and not be contradictory. If anything the fact this team wasn't just a couple hacks doing an Steam asset flip makes the plagiarism accusations more salient and tragic. Had these guys hired a proper art team to their project's scope or hell even just went up to the IP holders of any of these big Pokemon competitors like Namco-Bandai's Digimon or Monster Rancher for the rights to plop in their stock assets and animations into this gameplay system we could be looking at the next big thing on the level of Fortnite or Minecraft. As it currently stands I see this getting blown the fuck out by TPC's lawyers and disappearing by the end of the year. Perhaps resurfacing in a year or two with even uglier looking characters and zero cultural momentum. A tragic fate given the very strong foundations here if the devs could get a chance to polish the early game and catching mechanics.
INTRODUCTION
Plants Vs Zombies was in many ways a game that can only come out in 2008. Any earlier and it’d likely just be another dime a dozen flash game on some now defunct website you gotta find mirrored on www.definitelynotgonnagiveyouavirussoenjoythisfungame.com. Any later and it’s a free to play game littered with one dimensional skitterbox design shilled by B-tier YouTubers desperately convincing themselves Manscaped ad revenue and their obsession with Brie Larson will make their degree in digital media studies worth it. No, Plants Vs Zombies had to come out the same year as Julia & Julia to be what it is.
WE’RE COMING!
The game essence is that of a rather simple tower defense game with a surprising amount of depth under the surface. You have 5 lanes of grass that are entryways to your home (base) and you have to use your plants (weapons and tools) to defend it from zombies (enemies) while managing your energy to grow plants (sun). This defensive process can take several different forms and require different considerations that need to be mixed and matched depending on your circumstances. In short, Every plant type in your garden composition is a lever you must pull at the precise time. Is the zombie horde coming at your base composed of a bunch of digging zombies? Better use the David Cronenberg pea plant that shoots backwards in your garden composition . Are the zombies in the opposing army tanky? Gonna need to have some instant kill plants like the cherry bomb or chili pepper on hand. Fog in the area inhibiting your strategic view? Blow it away with the clover plant. I could go on and on but surely you see my point by now. The game has a shitload of flexibility with room for player expression without overwhelming its core demographic of casual players. One of my favorite anecdotes about this actually comes from my middle school years where I used to exchange tips with a teacher up the hall from my language arts class that hadn’t touched a controller since the NES. It bears mentioning this is a conversation that probably wouldn’t have been possible without the intuitive touch controls of the IOS releases. These controls made the game inviting to less experienced players while also making the gameplay ceiling higher by allowing for quicker on the fly reactions. Thus allowing the dev team to throw complex zombie configurations like the Zomboss fight and endless levels at the player by the late game regardless of skill level.
WE’RE GOING BOWLING!
The mingames of Plants Vs Zombies are pretty emblematic of a strength of this dev team to build a simple easy to understand formula and subvert it in basically any way they can imagine to give the player a shitload of varied gameplay to experience when going for 100% completion(even pulling from other Popcap titles at times for inspiration). From the more reflex focused walnut bowling to testing the players improvisation skills with the random convey belt levels George Fan’s team did an excellent job ringing out every angle they could out of this premise to the point this almost feels like the video game equivalent of lean gimmick set piece action movies like “Speed”, “Crank”, and “Hardcore Henry”.
I use “gimmick” purely as a term of endearment to the style of craftsmanship as I think it has its place.
ZOMBIES ON YOUR LAWN
Popcap games tend to be very “function over form” games in terms of presentation. This is to say they prioritize communicating a gameplay concept to the player or a decent frame rate performance over visual flourishes. This is a long way of saying the game’s enemy designs do an excellent job of articulating how they work to a new player. As a case study I’ll highlight the pole vault zombie. In 2008 there was a summer olympics games so the idea of pole vaulting would’ve naturally been in the public zeitgeist even if someone wasn’t a sports fanatic. Thus, when a player is first exposed to this enemy they are likely to infer the enemies ability to skip a tile and plan accordingly with plant formations. Sound design follows a similar train of thought with zombies sounds being used to signal a wave is coming soon so the player has a few seconds to rebuild their plant flanks or collect any sun or cash laying around the garden.
CONCLUSION
Plants vs Zombies is probably one of the best smartphone centric games ever released due to its intuitive controls and kirbyism like design philosophy. While I think the “free” to play aspects of the smartphone side of the industry often incorrectly paint deeper experiences as an impossibility for the sector. I believe this game shows that it is largely more a consequence of late stage capitalism optimizing everything into a grindset treadmill than an intrinsic quality of the platform.
Plants Vs Zombies was in many ways a game that can only come out in 2008. Any earlier and it’d likely just be another dime a dozen flash game on some now defunct website you gotta find mirrored on www.definitelynotgonnagiveyouavirussoenjoythisfungame.com. Any later and it’s a free to play game littered with one dimensional skitterbox design shilled by B-tier YouTubers desperately convincing themselves Manscaped ad revenue and their obsession with Brie Larson will make their degree in digital media studies worth it. No, Plants Vs Zombies had to come out the same year as Julia & Julia to be what it is.
WE’RE COMING!
The game essence is that of a rather simple tower defense game with a surprising amount of depth under the surface. You have 5 lanes of grass that are entryways to your home (base) and you have to use your plants (weapons and tools) to defend it from zombies (enemies) while managing your energy to grow plants (sun). This defensive process can take several different forms and require different considerations that need to be mixed and matched depending on your circumstances. In short, Every plant type in your garden composition is a lever you must pull at the precise time. Is the zombie horde coming at your base composed of a bunch of digging zombies? Better use the David Cronenberg pea plant that shoots backwards in your garden composition . Are the zombies in the opposing army tanky? Gonna need to have some instant kill plants like the cherry bomb or chili pepper on hand. Fog in the area inhibiting your strategic view? Blow it away with the clover plant. I could go on and on but surely you see my point by now. The game has a shitload of flexibility with room for player expression without overwhelming its core demographic of casual players. One of my favorite anecdotes about this actually comes from my middle school years where I used to exchange tips with a teacher up the hall from my language arts class that hadn’t touched a controller since the NES. It bears mentioning this is a conversation that probably wouldn’t have been possible without the intuitive touch controls of the IOS releases. These controls made the game inviting to less experienced players while also making the gameplay ceiling higher by allowing for quicker on the fly reactions. Thus allowing the dev team to throw complex zombie configurations like the Zomboss fight and endless levels at the player by the late game regardless of skill level.
WE’RE GOING BOWLING!
The mingames of Plants Vs Zombies are pretty emblematic of a strength of this dev team to build a simple easy to understand formula and subvert it in basically any way they can imagine to give the player a shitload of varied gameplay to experience when going for 100% completion(even pulling from other Popcap titles at times for inspiration). From the more reflex focused walnut bowling to testing the players improvisation skills with the random convey belt levels George Fan’s team did an excellent job ringing out every angle they could out of this premise to the point this almost feels like the video game equivalent of lean gimmick set piece action movies like “Speed”, “Crank”, and “Hardcore Henry”.
I use “gimmick” purely as a term of endearment to the style of craftsmanship as I think it has its place.
ZOMBIES ON YOUR LAWN
Popcap games tend to be very “function over form” games in terms of presentation. This is to say they prioritize communicating a gameplay concept to the player or a decent frame rate performance over visual flourishes. This is a long way of saying the game’s enemy designs do an excellent job of articulating how they work to a new player. As a case study I’ll highlight the pole vault zombie. In 2008 there was a summer olympics games so the idea of pole vaulting would’ve naturally been in the public zeitgeist even if someone wasn’t a sports fanatic. Thus, when a player is first exposed to this enemy they are likely to infer the enemies ability to skip a tile and plan accordingly with plant formations. Sound design follows a similar train of thought with zombies sounds being used to signal a wave is coming soon so the player has a few seconds to rebuild their plant flanks or collect any sun or cash laying around the garden.
CONCLUSION
Plants vs Zombies is probably one of the best smartphone centric games ever released due to its intuitive controls and kirbyism like design philosophy. While I think the “free” to play aspects of the smartphone side of the industry often incorrectly paint deeper experiences as an impossibility for the sector. I believe this game shows that it is largely more a consequence of late stage capitalism optimizing everything into a grindset treadmill than an intrinsic quality of the platform.