An enjoyable engaging game, great for players of any age (Pikmin (GC))

Member Name: darren55

Product:	Pikmin (GC)
Date:	03/11/09 (10 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: The tactics to overcome each problem

Disadvantages: Simplistic graphics

Pikmin is a very simple game but as with all games its simplicity is its strength not its weakness. Pikmin was one of the first hits for the then new game console GameCube which I had for about 5 years. GameCubes as a concept I always found to be generally looked down by the serious players who owned XBoxes but it was what it was, its games tended to be bright, colourful and fun to play.

Pikmin is a game where a spaceman has crashed on a strange planet, as he crashed his ship disintegrated and he lands with only 30 days worth of air. That gives the game a set time period, when he crashes he discovers a type of plant called a Pikmin, they are in different colours and have different functions.

There are three colours

Red - They are the battle Pikmin who are resistant to fire.
Blue - They are the swimmers
Yellow - They can use bombs and can be thrown further than other pikmin.

These pikmin will attack any creature which you choose and if they are successful in killing the creature will drag the creature back to their home hubs where in a short period of time will pop out a small seed which will develop into a new pikmin. Everytime you encounter a creature it will have a number and a circle over its head, the number refers to the number of Pikmin that creature will generate and the circle refers to its health. So when you attack, the health will go down, but it could kill your pikmin so anything big and dangerous needs to be attacked by a large number of Pikmin. When you select the pikmin to carry back the dead creature, the hub it gets taken back to is decided by which of the three pikmin types are present in the highest numbers.

You can also get Pikmin by knocking down flowers which give you a few pikmin but is only useful at the start or really late in the game when pikmin numbers could be low. You have to ensure that all your Pikmin are back in the hub before dusk, any left out after will be lost. At the end of each day you are informed about the number of Pikmin made/killed that day, the numbers in total and a graph showing your numbers over a few days. It will also tell you how many pieces of ship you've collected.

The challenges - Each piece of ship is in one of three parts of the world, each is protected by increasingly bigger creatures, and as you progress you need clever tactics rather than just throwing Pikmin at the creatures. So fire breathing dragons have to be killed by Red Pikmin, blue pikmin will build you a bridge to get to a piece of ship on an island and yellow ones can be used to blow up walls and barriers. Eventually challenges not only require the right type of pikmin but a complex series of pikmin in the right order, so you need red ones to kill the dragon, blue to build a bridge leading to a wall which requires yellow ones before a big baddie which requires red ones again. Red and yellow pikmin will drown, blue pikmin are really sensitive to fire, and yellow ones can't fight their way out of a paper bag.

The game is simple at the start but becomes increasingly complicated, but it retains a light fun element through out. The game saves after every day so if you are having a bad day you have the option to restart the day and have another go at that challenge that day. Collecting all the parts of the ship is hard but not impossible and after a while it moves from saving Olithar (the astronaut) to seeing how quickly you can do it.

When you finally save Olithar, he flies away but as he flies off he's joined by three other coloured hubs, black, white and purple. This lead into the sequel pikmin 2.

Summary: Enjoyable game