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November 15, 2003 | 10:00 PM PST
by: Brandon Smith
Review by Andrew Katan
Shigeru Miyamoto's first GameCube game is mix of real-time strategy and adventure that provides a whole new kind of gameplay for Nintendo's new console. You control Olimar, captain of the spaceship Dolphin, who crash-landed on a strange new planet. Dolphin broke up during reentry, and Olimar only has 30 days worth of life support left in his spacesuit. Luckily, he encountered strange creatures called Pikmin, and with their help he must recover the missing 30 parts of ship before time runs out.
In keeping with Nintendo's goal of simplified control, the control in Pikmin is very intuitive. The big green A button is used to pull pikmin out of the ground after their seed has sprouted. Pikmin are pulled out individually, and repeatedly pressing the A button will quickly and automatically move Olimar from sprout to sprout, pulling up any pikmin ready for harvest.
After pulling pikmin from the ground, they will loyally follow Olimar, and assigning them to various tasks is simply a matter of pressing the A button. A small purple circle extends a short distance in from of Olimar, and acts as a target. Pressing A throws pikmin towards the target, and the object near the target determines the pikmin's task. For example, throwing pikmin at an enemy will send your pikmin into battle and throwing some at a wall will order them to tear it down.
The B button is used to call stray pikmin back to you. When finished with a task, pikmin will turn a paler shade and just stand around: they are now idle. Idle pikmin are no good, since they can't be assigned tasks and don't count as being under your control. Pressing B quickly will emit a short trumpet call that calls to you any pikmin near your target. To call pikmin from a wider area, holding down B lengthens your trumpet call and widens its area of influence, as indicated by a dotted circle on the ground. The call emitted by B can also call back pikmin who are still working, effectively canceling that task.
Another way to get idle pikmin is with the X button. When pressed, all pikmin currently following you become idle, and separate into groups based on color. You can then press B to call only a specific group to you. This is a very quick and effective way to sort your pikmin, and comes in handy when you only need pikmin of a certain type. For instance, only blue Pikmin can cross water, so by sorting your horde with X you can bring only blue pikmin with you across a lake and not drown the others.
If assigning pikmin to tasks one-by-one is to slow or tedious for you, that's where the c-stick comes in to play. While the gray control stick moves Olimar around, the yellow c-stick moves your mass ofpikmin in a circle around Olimar. When using the c-stick to move pikmin, they will automatically interact with anything they come in contact with, be it a wall, pellet, or enemy.
The Y button brings up the monitor screen. On the right side you'll find a display showing a wealth of information, including a breakdown by color of how many pikmin are following you and how many total pikmin you have. The left side of this screen is a very handy mini-map. The map shows the general layout of the area, as well as where your ship is, where Olimar is, and the location of all your pikmin. It will also show terrain hazards like walls and water. Unfortunately, elevation is not represented on the map, so sometimes you'll need to replot your course.
Pikmin's camera control is just as simple and intuitive as the rest of the control scheme. The L button is used like the Z trigger in Ocarina of Time: the digital click centers the camera behind Olimar, and lesser pressure makes the camera follow behind Olimar. The R trigger moves between one of 3 zoom levels. The Z button changes the camera angle, either an isometric or direct top-down view. The camera is the one area of the control that does take some getting used to, especially the rotation feature, but after half an hour or so it'll be no problem.
Graphically, Pikmin is gorgeous, most of the time. Characters are composed of a nice amount of polygons, and animation is very smooth and fluid. Environments are huge (relatively speaking, of course), and free of pop-up or any other kind of draw distance problems. Water effects in particular are impressive, and while the game doesn't exactly abound with real-time lighting, when it's used it's good. The framerate is nearly locked at 30 fps, with slowdowns happening only occasionally, and only when you have a massive pikmin army facing an equally massive boss. Even when this does occur, it doesn't affect gameplay at all, and the game usually corrects itself in a by the time you notice. The number of pikmin on screen at any one time has been capped at 100, and this is a good thing. Earlier builds without this limit would go to framerate hell when you started amassing armies of over 100 pikmin.
The limit ensures that the framerate is as smooth as possible at all times. The game's downfall is, surprisingly, it's textures. The textures used on Olimar and enemies are nice and sharp, and while the pikmin themselves aren't textured so much as simply colored, the work on their leaves/buds/flowers is great as well. However, the textures used on the ground and the rest of the environments are a mixed bag. Zoomed out, the game is absolutely breathtaking; it looks photo-realistic in some areas. However, zoom in and problems start to come up. Close up, the environment textures can look blurry and flat, strange considering that texturing is one of GameCube's biggest strengths. Either ST3C compression hurts quality more than we thought, or Nintendo hasn't realized yet that the optical disk format means that they can use the highest resolution textures they feel like. My money's on the latter.
Pikmin's sound is, well, fitting. It has neither an expansive nor varied soundtrack, and you will be hearing the same songs over and over again. However, the music that's there fits the game perfectly. The game's nice, mellow tunes go very well with the over all pace and mood of the game. After all, this isn't exactly the type of game where a vast list of heavy metal tunes would help. The game's sound effects are also nicely done; pikmin make a nice 'pop' sound when they're pulled from the ground.
If you're one of those gamers who demands that every game you buy include massive amounts of replay, Pikmin probably won't meet your demands. The standard game consists of 30 15-minute days, for a total of 7.5 hours of play. Of course, most gamers won't find all 30 spaceship parts in this time, so the replaying of certain levels or even the whole game lengthens this to about 10-12 hours.
The game also has a challenge mode, where the objective is to see how many pikmin you can grow in one (game) day. Pikmin is so fun that gamers will give this about 5 hours of play time, if for no other reason then that the main game leaves them wanting more.
This has been said many times, but pikmin really is one of the most innovative and freshest games to come out in a long while. It's unique style alone warrants a look, and it's addictive play will keep gamers coming back. With nothing else matching Pikmin's total brilliance of game design, it looks like Nintendo may have another Game of the Year on its hands.
Shigeru Miyamoto's first GameCube game is mix of real-time strategy and adventure that provides a whole new kind of gameplay for Nintendo's new console. You control Olimar, captain of the spaceship Dolphin, who crash-landed on a strange new planet. Dolphin broke up during reentry, and Olimar only has 30 days worth of life support left in his spacesuit. Luckily, he encountered strange creatures called Pikmin, and with their help he must recover the missing 30 parts of ship before time runs out.
In keeping with Nintendo's goal of simplified control, the control in Pikmin is very intuitive. The big green A button is used to pull pikmin out of the ground after their seed has sprouted. Pikmin are pulled out individually, and repeatedly pressing the A button will quickly and automatically move Olimar from sprout to sprout, pulling up any pikmin ready for harvest.
After pulling pikmin from the ground, they will loyally follow Olimar, and assigning them to various tasks is simply a matter of pressing the A button. A small purple circle extends a short distance in from of Olimar, and acts as a target. Pressing A throws pikmin towards the target, and the object near the target determines the pikmin's task. For example, throwing pikmin at an enemy will send your pikmin into battle and throwing some at a wall will order them to tear it down.
The B button is used to call stray pikmin back to you. When finished with a task, pikmin will turn a paler shade and just stand around: they are now idle. Idle pikmin are no good, since they can't be assigned tasks and don't count as being under your control. Pressing B quickly will emit a short trumpet call that calls to you any pikmin near your target. To call pikmin from a wider area, holding down B lengthens your trumpet call and widens its area of influence, as indicated by a dotted circle on the ground. The call emitted by B can also call back pikmin who are still working, effectively canceling that task.
Another way to get idle pikmin is with the X button. When pressed, all pikmin currently following you become idle, and separate into groups based on color. You can then press B to call only a specific group to you. This is a very quick and effective way to sort your pikmin, and comes in handy when you only need pikmin of a certain type. For instance, only blue Pikmin can cross water, so by sorting your horde with X you can bring only blue pikmin with you across a lake and not drown the others.
If assigning pikmin to tasks one-by-one is to slow or tedious for you, that's where the c-stick comes in to play. While the gray control stick moves Olimar around, the yellow c-stick moves your mass ofpikmin in a circle around Olimar. When using the c-stick to move pikmin, they will automatically interact with anything they come in contact with, be it a wall, pellet, or enemy.
The Y button brings up the monitor screen. On the right side you'll find a display showing a wealth of information, including a breakdown by color of how many pikmin are following you and how many total pikmin you have. The left side of this screen is a very handy mini-map. The map shows the general layout of the area, as well as where your ship is, where Olimar is, and the location of all your pikmin. It will also show terrain hazards like walls and water. Unfortunately, elevation is not represented on the map, so sometimes you'll need to replot your course.
Pikmin's camera control is just as simple and intuitive as the rest of the control scheme. The L button is used like the Z trigger in Ocarina of Time: the digital click centers the camera behind Olimar, and lesser pressure makes the camera follow behind Olimar. The R trigger moves between one of 3 zoom levels. The Z button changes the camera angle, either an isometric or direct top-down view. The camera is the one area of the control that does take some getting used to, especially the rotation feature, but after half an hour or so it'll be no problem.
Graphically, Pikmin is gorgeous, most of the time. Characters are composed of a nice amount of polygons, and animation is very smooth and fluid. Environments are huge (relatively speaking, of course), and free of pop-up or any other kind of draw distance problems. Water effects in particular are impressive, and while the game doesn't exactly abound with real-time lighting, when it's used it's good. The framerate is nearly locked at 30 fps, with slowdowns happening only occasionally, and only when you have a massive pikmin army facing an equally massive boss. Even when this does occur, it doesn't affect gameplay at all, and the game usually corrects itself in a by the time you notice. The number of pikmin on screen at any one time has been capped at 100, and this is a good thing. Earlier builds without this limit would go to framerate hell when you started amassing armies of over 100 pikmin.
The limit ensures that the framerate is as smooth as possible at all times. The game's downfall is, surprisingly, it's textures. The textures used on Olimar and enemies are nice and sharp, and while the pikmin themselves aren't textured so much as simply colored, the work on their leaves/buds/flowers is great as well. However, the textures used on the ground and the rest of the environments are a mixed bag. Zoomed out, the game is absolutely breathtaking; it looks photo-realistic in some areas. However, zoom in and problems start to come up. Close up, the environment textures can look blurry and flat, strange considering that texturing is one of GameCube's biggest strengths. Either ST3C compression hurts quality more than we thought, or Nintendo hasn't realized yet that the optical disk format means that they can use the highest resolution textures they feel like. My money's on the latter.
Pikmin's sound is, well, fitting. It has neither an expansive nor varied soundtrack, and you will be hearing the same songs over and over again. However, the music that's there fits the game perfectly. The game's nice, mellow tunes go very well with the over all pace and mood of the game. After all, this isn't exactly the type of game where a vast list of heavy metal tunes would help. The game's sound effects are also nicely done; pikmin make a nice 'pop' sound when they're pulled from the ground.
If you're one of those gamers who demands that every game you buy include massive amounts of replay, Pikmin probably won't meet your demands. The standard game consists of 30 15-minute days, for a total of 7.5 hours of play. Of course, most gamers won't find all 30 spaceship parts in this time, so the replaying of certain levels or even the whole game lengthens this to about 10-12 hours.
The game also has a challenge mode, where the objective is to see how many pikmin you can grow in one (game) day. Pikmin is so fun that gamers will give this about 5 hours of play time, if for no other reason then that the main game leaves them wanting more.
This has been said many times, but pikmin really is one of the most innovative and freshest games to come out in a long while. It's unique style alone warrants a look, and it's addictive play will keep gamers coming back. With nothing else matching Pikmin's total brilliance of game design, it looks like Nintendo may have another Game of the Year on its hands.
February 8, 2010
