One of the biggest reasons I continue to buy Nintendo products despite the company’s
many shortcomings, is that the games they make are filled with charm.
Over the past 30 years, Nintendo has created some of the most beloved experiences in gaming.
They’ve crafted more memorable characters and worlds than any other videogame company,
and they’ve done it with a consistent level of polish in regard to gameplay and presentation.
However, the most impressive thing about Nintendo’s charm is their ability to come up with ideas
that people don’t really want, and then turn them into compelling games that fans
can’t help but fall in love with.
Things that look awful on paper don’t scare Nintendo; they inspire them.
The best examples of Nintendo pulling this sort of thing off are mainly on the GameCube,
which instead of following the trends of it’s competitors, doubled down on titles that were
uniquely Nintendo.
Its catalogue is filled with games that fans never asked for but grew to love anyway.
They made strange but fun spin-offs like Kirby Air Ride.
They launched the console with a new franchise starring Luigi as a ghost hunter instead of
one of their tried and trusted series.
They reworked Zelda and Mario, redefining what both of those series could be.
And, they made an RTS-action game, which by all means should be a nightmare for a console
title, but by most accounts, it’s not.
Look, most of you know how this show works by now, so let me just say…
Shhh...I’ve Never Played Pikmin.
Pikmin is a series that I actively avoided.
When the first two titles released, I was in the “Keep me away from kid’s games”
phase, and even though it may not have deserved to be, Pikmin fell into that category.
But now, some of my favorite pieces of media are ones that have the ability to appeal to
both kids and adults in meaningful ways, and Pikmin certainly does that.
It strikes a solid balance between silliness and seriousness.
The world is lush and colorful and filled with Pikmin who are cute and expressive, but
a threatening tension hangs over it all due to, the main character, Captain Olimar being
stranded and only having 30 days to repair his ship before running out of life support.
It had me on edge in the best way possible.
Funny moments like watching the Pikmin trip or get distracted are offset by terrifying
ones like having a Bulborb swallow 10 Pikmin at once.
It’s adorably disturbing, and this mood is highlighted through the musings of Captain
Olimar.
One of the biggest reasons I find Olimar so interesting stems from how fundamentally different
he is compared to Nintendo’s other major icons.
Nintendo is kinda famous for building characters who really only convey information about their
personality through their appearance and actions.
More often than not, these characters never talk, but Olimar’s most charming and intriguing
feature is his voice.
The observations and quips he makes when finding a ship component or writing a voyage log range
from being funny to helpful to strangely poignant.
And I think that might be part of why he never caught on the way characters like Link or
Kirby or Mario did; he’s too deep to understand in a glance.
Without his internal dialogue describing his hardships and the life he’s trying to get
back to, he doesn’t appear to be all that interesting of a character, which means he
can’t be quickly sold to an audience.
Although it’s only a small part of the game, seeing his thoughts about the Pikmin, his
family, and life on a new planet created a greater sense of importance to completing
the mission, and it made Olimar go from being a character I didn’t care about at all to
one of my favorites.
The Pikmin themselves are also rather endearing, and it is hard not to feel guilty and panicked
when leading them into dangerous places.
Overall, I felt a connection to the primary cast, which practically forced me to feel
invested.
Pikmin’s gameplay centers around growth and retrieval.
Captain Olimar leads the Pikmin around the planet and throws them at things to get them
to do one of their two major functions: carry stuff or beat the shit out of stuff.
There is a pretty wide range of things they can beat the shit out of whether it be walls
that open pathways to new areas or giant bugs whose corpses can be brought back to base
to create more Pikmin.
On a whole, the Pikmin are pretty limited in what they can do, and this works in the
game's favor.
If they had too many functions, there would most likely need to be some sort of bulky
menu, which would take away from how smoothly the game plays.
Instead of giving a single type of Pikmin a lot of different things to do, Nintendo
opted to create various types of Pikmin with different passive abilities (Visual: Pikmin
colors and their abilities).
This works great because it allows for streamlined gameplay while still providing a multitude
of options for how to approach a task.
Selecting the optimal composition of Pikmin for any given excursion can be the difference
between retrieving more than one ship part in a day or dying in a fiery mess.
As more ship parts are found, more of the world opens up to be explored, and, overall,
the pacing of this is pretty solid.
I never felt like I was stuck in one spot for too long, but opening new areas still
felt deserved.
There are five different zones, but only three have any real bulk to them, which made it
feel a little light on the level variety side of things.
It would have been nice to have 1 or 2 more places with substance to explore.
The three main areas are different enough from each other, but this kind of comes at
the cost of underutilizing a couple features . A few enemies are only encountered once,
which is a shame because some of them have really interesting abilities that would have
been cool to see in other situations and levels.
For me, the crux of Pikmin’s experience comes from the limited amount of time given
to accomplish the various tasks the game sets out.
There are 30 days to collect as many ship parts as possible, and each day lasts about
15 minutes or so.
Achieving this goal isn’t that difficult, but having the countdowns in place adds a
ton of weight to each day.
If Olimar runs out of health or Pikmin, he must return to his ship and miss out on the
rest of the day, which adds that much more pressure to collect more parts the next day.
What I like about this is that it punishes failure in a way that isn’t entirely defeating,
but still puts players in a bad spot, making every accomplishment that much sweeter.
Demonstrating mastery in most titles that fall underneath the RTS umbrella requires
solid time management skills and a deep understanding of the game’s innerworkings, whether it
be map layouts, upgrade trees, individual unit’s strengths and weakness, or really
any of the thousand moving pieces that can make or break a match.
While some of the latter factors into showing mastery in Pikmin, its simplicity and the
fact that there is no enemy actively pursuing the player really makes time management the
primary key to being great.
Separating Pikmin into effective groups and getting those groups to do as many different
tasks as possible at the same time is paramount to completing the mission quickly.
With that said, there is a lot of buffer time for players who never quite figure out how
to manage their time well, which opens up the title to either be a casual experience
or a speedrunning challenge.
No matter how it is approached, Pikmin manages to be very chill and calming to play, while
still having high stakes, which I’m not really sure how it pulls off, but it does
expertly.
Pikmin does a pretty good job of dealing with the limitations of being an RTS-like game
on console, but throughout my time with it, I couldn’t help but think that it would
play better on a keyboard.
When away from the base, there isn’t a reliable way to pick out a specific number of Pikmin
to form a group.
They can be selected in a large number with Olimar’s whistle, or in a smaller one by
running into them when they are deselected, but neither are precise.
This made it so I accidentally grabbed Pikmin that I didn’t need, forcing me to deselect
and try again.
This is a pretty small annoyance, but when it happens over and over, it gets tiring.
Also, while the developers made a smart decision by primarily giving the Pikmin passive abilities,
there were still a few active abilities that were frustrating to control.
I had a hell of a time getting the yellow Pikmin to pick up and throw bombs without
blowing up my entire colony.
Precision is non-existent here, which makes for a lot of wasted time in a game where time
is key factor.
I also wish there were more formations for the Pikmin to line up in.
They can make a line behind Olimar, but maneuvering through tight areas proved to be more difficult
than it should.
What frustrated me more than anything else was the camera.
Olimar’s movement is tied to the thumbstick and the Pikmin’s movement is tied to the
c-stick, leaving button controls for the camera, which is unsurprisingly awful.
The views are restricted, making it difficult to ever really feel comfortable while playing.
I found myself wishing my controller had an extra joystick.
None of these things ruined my experience, but there was definitely a lot of room for
improvement.
I imagine some of these issues were addressed in later titles, but some problems are just
the cost of playing on console
Maybe one of the most endearing things about Pikmin is that even if the player doesn’t
fix the ship within the 30 days, there is still a sense of “finishing” the game.
In a lot of titles, failure typically leads to a loss of progress that needs to be redone,
but in Pikmin that isn’t really the case.
Nothing important on the level resets due to a fail state and the only thing that is
really lost when Olimar runs out of health or Pikmin is time.
Players either collect every piece before the time limit is up or get through the entire
30 days, and whether they fail or succeed, the story of Captain Olimar is wrapped up.
If Olimar hasn’t collected enough ship parts, the launch will fail, and he ends up being
transformed into a sort of half-pikmin, half-human thing.
If enough parts are collected though, the launch is a success, and Captain Olimar heads
back home.
On my first playthrough, I just barely collected every piece, getting the last part on the
final day.
As a human adult, it wasn’t that hard to do, and that’s even taking into consideration
that I didn’t realize finding the radar in the Forest of Hope revealed on the map
where each ship piece was until I got to about day 25.
Regardless, what I admire so much about the multiple endings, especially the “bad”
ending is that the player isn’t forced to succeed.
So many games have fail states that never impact the story, and in the grand scheme
of things can be ignored once the game is beaten.
But in Pikmin, that doesn’t happen.
Failure leads to a failed ending, and that’s okay.
This approach doesn’t work in every type of game, but it is refreshing to see titles
that don’t force players to redo the same portion over and over until they figure it
out.
Instead, it pretty much just says, “Good luck.
Try not to suck.”
Pikmin surprised me.
In a lot of ways it ended up being exactly what I expected, but there’s a layer of
charm and intrigue about it that gripped me.
I think this why Pikmin has such a loyal following despite not being an incredibly well selling
franchise.
It’s only when players get a close look at it that they realize how much it has to
offer.
I’m excited to play Pikmin 2 and 3 to see what they improved on and just to revisit
a relaxing, yet terrifying world.