Pikmin 3 Review

This year has been blow after blow for Nintendo's Wii U. Even amidst all the dire financial news and poor sales, one of the biggest blows dealt to the console was the delay of Pikmin 3. With only one first-party title to call its own in the first seven months of 2013, the Wii U was dead in the water. People who had already invested in the console felt burned by the delay of its biggest game, and felt no reason to recommend the thing to their friends, and folks who hadn't already bought into Nintendo's next-gen strategy were left scratching their heads. But, after years of waiting, Pikmin 3 is finally here, and there's good news for Nintendo fans at last - Pikmin 3 is every bit a game worth buying the Wii U for.

The fruit textures are gorgeous. And yes, that's a legitimate compliment

Pikmin 3 is, for the most part, business as usual for the franchise. A group of treasure-seeking astronauts gets stranded on a foreign planet full of strange, ant-like creatures called Pikmin. They quickly find that by blowing a whistle, they can command the Pikmin to gather resources, fight enemies, and grow in both numbers and abilities. Your goal then becomes to form an army of Pikmin and use them to reconstruct your ship and gather enough food to bring back to your starving home planet. 

Unlike many Nintendo franchises, which just seem to be treading water in terms of story, concept and mechanics, Pikmin 3 actually makes a concerted effort to shake up the tropes that you'd expect to see out of a Pikmin game. The concept and story might be familiar, but the characters aren't. You no longer play as Captain Olimar; instead, you'll take on three new Captains, each of whom has his or her own charming personality traits. Memos left behind by Olimar serve to remind you that Pikmin 3 takes place in the context of a larger world, though, and add some unique mystery to the game. 

Two new Pikmin types accompany the new Captains. Pink Pikmin can fly over obstacles and take out airborne enemies with ease, while the chunky Rock Pikmin are harder than diamond, and can break through hard surfaces including enemy armor. Both of these new Pikmin types come in handy during the game's incredible boss battles, each of which has its own unique mechanics and challenges. 

The boss designs in Pikmin 3 are mostly awesome

Still, the new guys don't overshadow the classics. Red, Blue and Yellow Pikmin make a return in the game's campaign, and prove just as useful as ever. Red Pikmin are tough fighters, and can withstand hot bursts of flame. This makes them ideal for tackling enemies and exploring hot environments. Yellow Pikmin actually conduct electricity, and can be used to light up new environments and get old electronics back into shipshape. They're also very light, and can be tossed farther than normal Pikmin. Finally, Blue Pikmin can explore underwater, making them invaluable for defeating certain enemy types and exploring uncharted terrain. 

If there's one thing that disappointed me about Pikmin 3's campaign, it was the omission of the White and Purple Pikmin from the superb Pikmin 2. These guys, who can poison enemies and lift ten times the weight of a normal Pikmin, repsectively, still show up in the game's multiplayer modes, which I'll touch on in a bit.

The campaign is perfectly paced in the way it doles out different Pikmin types, giving you around one new type with each new biome that you enter. You can technically get through the game with very little backtracking, but if you want to maximize your juice resources and see everything that the game has to offer, you'll have to head back to older environments using new Pikmin types to uncover new ways through the levels. It's a rewarding system that gently encourages exploration without demanding it, and there are plenty of secrets just waiting to be uncovered.  

Many of those secrets take the form of fruits that you will need to sustain your life on the planet. The game's Captains subsist on fruit juice, and the bigger the fruit, the more juice you'll get out of it. You'll go through one jar of juice per day, and after they're all gone it's Game Over. This adds a nice ticking clock mechanic to the game that's reminiscent of the more hardcore ways of the first Pikmin, without allowing you to screw yourself out of beating the game like the original did. If you need more juice, you can always spend a day or two harvesting fruit, although supplies are limited. 

Collecting loot in Pikmin 3

Exploring and gathering fruit and Pikmin is made easier by the ability to swap between any of the game's three Captains in real time. All of them come onto the field with you, and all of them can command Pikmin. This effectively allows you to split into three teams to accomplish tasks faster. A map is projected onto the Wii U's GamePad screen, and using the touch screen you can command your Captains to move to new locations whereupon they will await your next orders. It's an incredibly intelligent system that really opens up the possibilities for strategic play.

Unfortunately, the rest of the GamePad's controls aren't quite ideal. Moving the characters and the camera with the sticks feels totally fine, but aiming your Pikmin, a task that overlaps the movement controls, is clumsy and imprecise. Using the left stick to move and aim can result in situations where you accidentally overshoot your target when tossing Pikmin, or where you need to move around in the environment until the cursor finally clicks over what you're trying to target. Once you do get the reticule on target, a handy lock-on system will keep you there. It's just getting the cursor in the right spot that's the problem. This can also make calling Pikmin back to you a real pain.

An alternate control scheme utilizing the Wii Remote is also available, but this comes with its own set of hurdles. For one thing, you won't get the GamePad's nifty map funcitonality. For another, camera control is less than ideal with the stick and nunchuck. Aiming, on the other hand, is vastly improved. In the end, it's probably best to use a Wii Remote for the majority of the gameplay and keep the GamePad handy to move units around on the touch screen. This workaround is really cumbersome, but you'll get the best out of the game that way. If you're stuck with just one option or the other, don't fret; they're both totally functional, but neither is ideal. Whatever you do, though, don't play with just the Wii U Pro Controller. You'll get the worst of both world that way. 

Red Pikmin doing their thing

You might have to force one of those weird control schemes on another player if you hope to engage in any of Pikmin 3's four multiplayer modes. The modes are split into two categories - competitive and co-op - and span four different objective sets. Boss Rush predictably pits two players against all of the game's bosses - which, again, are excellent - in a row. Gather the Fruit is a race against the clock to collect as much fruit as possible from one of the game's maps, while Enemy Battle challenges players with killing as many enemies as possible under a strict time limit. 

The game's co-op modes really surprised me in that they offered rich, engaging experiences that really encouraged exploration. Having a second player control one of the Captains opens up a whole new world of strategies, although the lack of a third player to take on the third Captain is a bit awkward. Furthermore, since each game mode is strictly timed, you'll be harshly judged and encouraged to return to get a better score. Only one player will have access to the map, which is a major bummer, but aside from that quibble the co-op is a solid hit.

Competitive play offers its own set of rewards, but ultimately falls short of what I would expect a Pikmin competitive mode to offer. In Bingo Battle, two players compete to collect items depicted on a bingo card. The first to create a line on the bingo card by returning items to their ship is the winner. Bingo Battle is actually a realy novel approach to competitive play in that it offers great opportunities for griefing your opponent. Steal the item he was going for, beat up his Pikmin, and do whatever it takes to win in this frantic race. On the other hand, it's not that deep, and definitely won't stand up to too much repeated play. A mode in which both players built up their base, created a Pikmin army, and straight-up attacked each other would have offered more in the way of replayability.

Nintendo seems to be warming up to the online arena, but this sadly isn't reflect in Pikmin 3. All of its modes are offline-only.

Three times the Captains means three times the potential in Pikmin 3

Following a match, a nifty Replay feature allows players to watch back an entire match via the GamePad, with fast-forward and pause controls right there on the touch screen. Players can watch the match from a bird's eye view, which is great for finding out exactly where that one Pikmin disappeared to in the midst of the match, and track real-time statistics as they add up on the TV screen. It's yet another superb use of the GamePad, implemented effortlessly. Replays are also available in single-player, and although they're a bit less vital there, they do allow for plenty of strategic breakdown after a tough day collecting fruit and fighting bosses.

Speaking of wayward Pikmin, it's worth touching on the game's pathfinding AI, or lack thereof, before closing out this review. In both single-player and multiplayer, Pikmin are set to follow your exact movement path when close, or make a beeline to your loaction via the straightest path when farther away. The second of these commands can lead to trouble when navigating corners or going over water. On several occasions I had large groups of Pikmin get stuck on corners and leave my party, or tread directly into water (which will kill all but Blue Pikmin) instead of crossing a bridge. One baffling instance of poor pathfinding even had my Pikmin carry the body of a boss, along with all of the spoils gained from it, directly into a corner, where they stood for the duration of the day before dying at nightfall.

The  different biomes of Pikmin 3 each offer their own brand of natural beauty

You'll have to keep a close eye on your Pikmin thanks to some shoddy pathfinding AI, and none of the game's multiple control schemes strikes an ideal balance between control and command. Despite these bothersome issues, Pikmin 3 manages to establish itself as the most rewarding, charming and fun game in the series yet, and certainly the best thing to come to the ailing Wii U thus far. If you've invested in a Wii U already, you have absolutely no excuse not to start forming your Pikmin army today. And if you haven't purchased one of the consoles yet, now might just be the right time. Like the three chibi Captains bringing fruit to a starving planet, Pikmin 3 ushers in a promising holiday season for the Wii U, restoring life to a system that was drying up all too fast.

 

Score: 8.5/10


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