Pikmin

If you haven't already played Pikmin on the GameCube, this game is an excellent opportunity to catch up with a great game. If you've already played this game there is literally nothing new here besides the controls. No new extra modes, no multi-player, no extra levels, no noteworthy graphical upgrades. Just new controls.

For those of you who haven't played the game yet, it is a very solid game. To sum it up simply, you take control of Olimar, a diminutive space explorer that crash lands on an earth like planet filled with hostile bugs and critters. You control a small army of Pikmin that do your bidding by fighting and carrying stuff for you. Red, Yellow, and Blue Pikmin have different abilities which you must take advantage of as you traverse the terrain of each of the levels. In typical Nintendo fashion, there is a great deal of exploration where you can see an area of the game but can't get to it until you unlock new abilities which require you come back to previous levels. Gameplay is broken into thirty 15-20 minute "days" in which you frantically try to cram as many accomplishments as possible into the short time frame. It all works very well, although I wish the 30-day limit wasn't in place. I found Pikmin to be quite entertaining 8 years ago, and still like it to this day.

THE NEW CONTROLS: The new controls work extremely well. There isn't any pointless remote waggle and the pointer controls work pretty well.

GRAPHICS: Aside from progressive scan support and 16:9 wide screen support, there isn't anything new here. The artwork was gorgeous years ago, but nowadays it's only pretty good. Textures look low res but the art style makes up for the deficiencies. The sad thing is that this two generation old game still looks better than most modern Wii games.

SOUND: Time has been kind to me because I apparently forgot how cheesy parts of the game are, and sound is simultaneously a strong and weak point for the game. Some of the music is very pleasant and relaxing while the cut-scenes have some extremely annoying music.

REPLAY: Aside from a points mode at the end, there isn't a whole lot of replay value to the game. It can be beat in about 10-15 hours, including time spent having to replay levels due to unfortunate death situations.

All in all, I recommend this game to anyone that didn't get the chance to play the game on the GameCube. The new controls provide a superior experience. There really aren't many games like Pikmin which makes even this remake feel unique and fresh. For those of you who have already played the game on the GameCube, this game is pretty much just a pure nostalgia purchase.

[Edit: Fixed some embarrassingly bad grammar]

This is an excellent game for those who missed the game on the GameCube (Like me). People who already have it for GameCube will not find anything new here. The motion controls work really well with this game. The only thing kind of frustrating is the camera mover, but what game doesn't have that problem? Here is a rating on each area of the game on a 1-5 star rating system

Graphics: ****
The graphics for this game were considered top-of-the-line 8 years ago, but are still pretty good today.

Gameplay: *****
This is one of those games that are great in gameplay, superb in graphics, and suitable for kids.

Controls: ***
Controls were really good for Gamecube, but are kinda odd feeling for Wii, but are still easy to use.

Storyline: **
This game has a good storyline, it really does, but the reason I gave it a lower rating is because it doesn't go really in-depth.

Cover: *****
Yes, you read this correctly, the cover. I like how they didn't drastically change the cover, something most companies do.
Plus, there are two covers. You just need to flip the cover-thing-a-ma-jig under the plastic around.

Overall this is awesome game, but I'd recommend to people who don't have it for GameCube.

Pikmin is a remake of a game that came out way back in 2001, so if your kids played that one, there's not a lot different for them this time around.

The concept is simple: A little guy has crash landed on a planet and the parts of his ship are scattered everywhere. He's about 2 inches high, so it's not like he can just walk over and pick up the pieces. The environment is like something out of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids where a small rock is a mountain of an obstacle and simple bugs are monsters.

Luckily, you quickly find help in your quest, and it's what this game is all about. There's these little seed creatures that apparently think of you as their mother and will blindly follow you wherever you go. You direct them to create more creatures, tear down obstacles, and battle bugs on your hunt for parts of your ship. There are 3 different types that you can direct, each with their own capabilities and you have to figure out how to leverage them to gain access to different areas of the world.

The crux of the game is to figure out what needs to be done to find the next part of your ship. What makes that difficult is the time limit the game imposes on you. You have 30 game days to gather what you need before your air supply runs out and you apparently die some horrible death. Each day is about 15 minutes long, so you need to get whatever you plan on doing done in that amount of time.

This is what can make the game frustrating for kids who oftentimes just want to explore and have fun. If you really want to make progress, you'll have to hit the ground running and solve puzzles as fast as you can. Otherwise, it will be impossible to complete it within the time given. If you do really screw up one of the days, you can go back to a previous day and try again, but it would have been nice if the game allowed more freedom for the kids just to do whatever they want. Furthermore, you don't have much area to explore unless you do make progress, so you'll get extremely tired of seeing the same blades of grass and flowers if you're just looking to explore.

The kids did enjoy the fact how everything was giant and got a kick out of directing a mob of 100 creatures around (which really is fun for a while), but quickly grew frustrated when they couldn't proceed past certain points in the time given. I think without the time limits, they would have been able to think about and try different tactics, but ever-present push to make progress all the time took some fun out of it. In the end, it's a cute and unique concept, but younger kids will probably need assistance in the difficult parts or they'll quickly abandon it.

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 30 reviews  4.3 out of 5 stars