2013 has been great for gaming. From Metal Gear Rising to The Last of Us, the list goes on and on. But one title nearly flew under my radar, despite me loving the last one so much: PIKMIN 3. I just wasn’t feeling the hype, no matter how much media I consumed. That includes Miyamoto himself saying this is one of the greatest games he has ever made.
After receiving the game as a gift and giving it a whirl… I’m inclined to agree. And it’s not just the lovely look and feel of the game (which I should note, is FAR more impressive in person than a static screen could convey). No, it’s the unique flavor of challenge it offers. I say this coming off of Dark Souls on PC, and Demon’s Souls on PS3 before that. It’s not a 1:1 comparison, of course, but the effect is the same: All three games provide, in their own way, a constant state of engagement, lighting up every neural connection in the brain. The more you strive to accomplish, the more the odds stack against you. The result is total immersion.
Here, you scope out the environment on the GamePad and carefully plan where to go and what to do before sunset. You have from dawn to dusk to retrieve fruit from far-flung corners of the map, fruit you convert to juice to keep your expedition going. Juice is automatically consumed at day’s end, so there’s real incentive to accomplish something each day, because each day without fruit is a day closer to a dead end.
That may sound like Pikmin 1, where you had 30 days to accomplish your goal before Olimar’s oxygen ran out. That game was a bit TOO suffocating (pun intended!) in its fail state. Then you have its sequel, Pikmin 2, which went too far in the opposite direction – no time limit whatsoever, other than rounding up whatever Pikmin you want to keep by day’s end. You could endlessly grow your army and never bother with the core objective of retrieving treasure.
Pikmin 3 has found the sweet spot -- a way to temper the urgency of Pikmin 1 with the flexibility of Pikmin 2, and vice-versa. If your quest ends fruitlessly (pun intended!), you have the option to revisit previous days of the expedition, and try a different strategy. Knowing this is an option comes as a great relief – yet in the moment-to-moment gameplay, with the sun icon approaching its limit on the HUD, and the light dimming and shadows stretching, you still feel tremendous PRESSURE to retrieve some sort of fruit to keep the mission going.
And so you remain totally absorbed in the game, deftly switching captains, dividing up troops, and marshaling your forces with laser-like precision thanks to the Wii Remote. The seamless controls deserve a great deal of credit, since they become an extension of your will, allowing you to minimize error and conserve precious time. You multi-task and execute actions as quickly as you think them.
I think the new approach to the time limit is especially gratifying with bosses. Spending an entire day slaying the Armored Mawdad and finally offing him as the “Hurry up” message flashes onscreen is incredibly satisfying. Sure, I could have returned the next day to finish him off, but I wanted to finish what I started and round up every troop before night fell. I had to make the cost-to-benefit call of whether to try and haul the spoils of war back to the ship in the time I had left -- failing to do so would mean forfeiting some juice to return to the same area the next day, rather than exploring new territory. Such judgment calls, in the context of the new time limit, is what makes this game so great.
One of Miyamoto’s finest? Early signs point to "Yes." Whatever it is, it’s richly rewarding... What do you think of this game's approach to "get out what you put in" challenge? It's easy to believe this is probably what the Pikmin games were meant to be all along.
After receiving the game as a gift and giving it a whirl… I’m inclined to agree. And it’s not just the lovely look and feel of the game (which I should note, is FAR more impressive in person than a static screen could convey). No, it’s the unique flavor of challenge it offers. I say this coming off of Dark Souls on PC, and Demon’s Souls on PS3 before that. It’s not a 1:1 comparison, of course, but the effect is the same: All three games provide, in their own way, a constant state of engagement, lighting up every neural connection in the brain. The more you strive to accomplish, the more the odds stack against you. The result is total immersion.
Here, you scope out the environment on the GamePad and carefully plan where to go and what to do before sunset. You have from dawn to dusk to retrieve fruit from far-flung corners of the map, fruit you convert to juice to keep your expedition going. Juice is automatically consumed at day’s end, so there’s real incentive to accomplish something each day, because each day without fruit is a day closer to a dead end.
That may sound like Pikmin 1, where you had 30 days to accomplish your goal before Olimar’s oxygen ran out. That game was a bit TOO suffocating (pun intended!) in its fail state. Then you have its sequel, Pikmin 2, which went too far in the opposite direction – no time limit whatsoever, other than rounding up whatever Pikmin you want to keep by day’s end. You could endlessly grow your army and never bother with the core objective of retrieving treasure.
Pikmin 3 has found the sweet spot -- a way to temper the urgency of Pikmin 1 with the flexibility of Pikmin 2, and vice-versa. If your quest ends fruitlessly (pun intended!), you have the option to revisit previous days of the expedition, and try a different strategy. Knowing this is an option comes as a great relief – yet in the moment-to-moment gameplay, with the sun icon approaching its limit on the HUD, and the light dimming and shadows stretching, you still feel tremendous PRESSURE to retrieve some sort of fruit to keep the mission going.
And so you remain totally absorbed in the game, deftly switching captains, dividing up troops, and marshaling your forces with laser-like precision thanks to the Wii Remote. The seamless controls deserve a great deal of credit, since they become an extension of your will, allowing you to minimize error and conserve precious time. You multi-task and execute actions as quickly as you think them.
I think the new approach to the time limit is especially gratifying with bosses. Spending an entire day slaying the Armored Mawdad and finally offing him as the “Hurry up” message flashes onscreen is incredibly satisfying. Sure, I could have returned the next day to finish him off, but I wanted to finish what I started and round up every troop before night fell. I had to make the cost-to-benefit call of whether to try and haul the spoils of war back to the ship in the time I had left -- failing to do so would mean forfeiting some juice to return to the same area the next day, rather than exploring new territory. Such judgment calls, in the context of the new time limit, is what makes this game so great.
One of Miyamoto’s finest? Early signs point to "Yes." Whatever it is, it’s richly rewarding... What do you think of this game's approach to "get out what you put in" challenge? It's easy to believe this is probably what the Pikmin games were meant to be all along.
