Let’s be honest.
When this game was announced, if you weren’t already doing it on some message boards, you
wanted to complain about it.
“Oh, here’s another remake instead of a new game.
How thoughtful, Nintendo.”
Or maybe, “Wow, Nintendo wants me to buy a GameCube game for Wii.”
You know, some quality Internet snark.
But then you play it.
And you can’t stop playing it.
And that’s when you realize, lazy and easy as this game seems and may in fact be, there’s
also a certain brilliance to New Play Control!
Pikmin 2.
It may not be the new Pikmin you wanted, but now that one’s been announced for Wii U,
it’s a lot easier to appreciate a repackaged Pikmin 2.
In fact, this “lazy remake” is a great primer for Nintendo’s upcoming launch title
for its new system.
And a late testimony to the brilliance of their current one.
Like its New Play peers, Pikmin 2 is a faithful remake of the GameCube original.
The wider camera and widescreen support aside, this is the exact same game GameCube owners
fell in love with back in 2004...along with one other difference.
The game now controls with a pointer and a nunchuck.
And freaking magic.
But for those who missed the original, Pikmin 2 is a real-time strategy game with an undeniably
Nintendo feel.
Space freight pilot Captain Olimar returns home to find his company has gone bankrupt.
With a huge debt and no money, Olimar returns to the Pikmin planet in hopes of finding valuable
alien treasures.
Like soda cans.
The story is not that important, but it has all the charm and subtle humor that make Nintendo
games so appealing.
Of course, it also has that characteristically Nintendo focus on gameplay, and that’s what
makes it so good.
Olimar and Louie will need an army of plant-like Pikmin if they’re going to survive on this
strange alien world...an army that’s easier to control than ever
before.
In fact, I think a lot of the clamoring for a new Pikmin game can be attributed to the
existence of the Wii Remote.
It’s just perfectly suited for this franchise.
Pointing at the screen to command and mobilize your Pikmin is an incredible improvement over
the original controls.
Pikmin 2 is so intuitive on Wii, it’s an absolute joy to play.
And in a sense, that’s what makes Pikmin so special.
Unlike more daunting RTS games, Pikmin simplifies things.
Rather than flexing the muscles of complexity, the game rubs you down with the Ben-Gay of
accessibility.
Uh, what I mean is...uh, it’s just...it tries to be as fun as possible.
People have short memories.
That’s just the way it is.
And it’s sad, but a lot of people think of its late-life disappointments when they
think of the Wii.
Given how things have gone in its home stretch and the fact that it was all-but abandoned
in terms of quality software support, it’s easy to forget how genuinely innovative the
system was.
How genuinely innovative the system is.
But a game like this reminds you.
You can spend hours playing Pikmin 2, and it feels like minutes.
It just plays so well with the Wii Remote, offering the kind of breakthrough control
experience that make the system’s best games so memorable and its potential, even after
six years, still seemingly unfulfilled.
Pikmin 2 is a remarkable game.
And as so many others should’ve been, it’s even better on Wii.