Review: Pikmin 2

Pikmin 2 (Nintendo, 2004) is the story of the return of Captain Olimar (now with co-worker Louie) to the pikmin world to try get his employer out of debt by collecting its "treasures".

Whereas the first game was just Olimar trying to repair his space ship before his life support ran out, the second is about looting. And if there was any doubt that Pikmin takes place on earth, the sequel crushes it, as Nintendo apparently managed to make deals with a lot of companies. The batteries, bottle caps, and other detritus that is the goal of the game is generally stamped with a specific, recognizable brand name. Well, there's that and you dig up a globe of the earth. I'm not sure which is more definitive.

I guess that makes me American.

The graphics are a definite step up from the original, with more detailed textures and a camera that can zoom out to see a bit more than the original.

But the gameplay... They added stuff, lots of stuff. But it didn't really help.

They added a co-worker. You can control him separately, which can be handy, but isn't really key to any part of the game. Split screen co-op is possible, but I don't know if that would make the game more fun or less. You see, Pikmin 2 has a lot of enemies with area effect attacks. I suspect a second player would mostly add more chaos. In fact, there's so much chaos in the game, I often fought enemies by myself, or with as few pikmin as possible, just to keep my losses to a minimum. This meant long stretches of circling bad guys and punching them in the back or throwing one pikmin on the enemy repeatedly. I didn't resent it. I felt good to be a better steward of my pikmin. (I only lost a quarter of the pikmin I lost in the first game.) But Devil May Cry it was not.

They added loot. There was loot in the first game, but it was just enemies and food pellets that created more pikmin. P2 has that plus monetary treasure plus berries that can be turned into "potions" that freeze enemies or speed up the pikmin. I never bothered with the potions as collecting berries felt like busywork. The monetary loot just meant I had to be sure to clear the path for the pikmin to carry it back to the ship.

They added impediments. Electrical and poison barriers joined the old flame spouts and pools of water as environmental blockers. Essentially this just meant busywork of separating out the appropriate minions to knock them out so the rest could pass. There were occasionally traps as well. Mostly it just meant the game had to be played slowly and carefully.

They added pikmin. White poison pikmin and purple sumo pikmin were added to the red, blue, and yellow pikmin from the first game. Outside of using their weight to open an early passage in the game, the sumos weren't terribly useful. The poison ones could be considered overpowered as they run very fast, and any smaller enemy who manages to catch one and eat it dies from the poison. I kept them in reserve for emergencies that never came.

They added underground segments. Dungeons, would probably be a better term. I'm not sure if I can fully describe how much is wrong with the dungeons. They completely remove the timed element of the game. They are randomly generated, so sometimes the enemy placement just sucks. (The reset button was my friend in the dungeons.) They are almost completely flat and basically grids, so the game loses it natural feel. And some are suspended in the air, so throwing pikmin onto the back of an enemy will often get them hurled to their deaths. I generally found time consuming strategies to make my way through them with minimal losses. But I'm honestly kind of surprised I stuck with them. I kept thinking there was fun in there. I just needed to find it. It's quite possible that this game was just coasting on my good will from the original.

For everything they added, there just seemed to be less to this game. Part of that may be the lack of time pressure. Not only do the dungeons completely remove the clock, it's made explicit very early on that you're under no time pressure to finish the game within a certain number of days. At first, that felt freeing. I could waste all the time just building my Pikmin stores, or collecting berries. Then I realized that the stuff I was free to do was totally boring.

At the end of the day, I was glad when the credits rolled. Technically that's not the end of the game. In fact, I barely touched the third area of the game and I suspect there's a fourth area beyond that. But my good will hasn't run out yet, and I think I'll keep it that way.

Final Score
3 of 5

That's technically the end of the review, but I wanted to talk a little bit more about what went wrong with the game. Again, this is my personal perspective. According to a review aggregator, critics slightly preferred Pikmin 2. But to my way of thinking, the focus of the sequel was off.

The designers upped the action quotient, but what I enjoyed was the focused exploration. Every day mattered, so the game was always about covering as much ground as possible. It was also a memory game as there was a constant cataloging of obstacles so that when one goal was accomplished, other avenues could be explored. It was the kind of "I see what I want, but how do I get to it" that's been part of Nintendo game design since forever.

That's always the problem with sequels. Retreads are often dull, but trying to go a new way may alienate the fans. I respect the designers for not being complacent with Pikmin 2. But trying to make it more combat centric killed what made the game special.

Review: Pikmin

Pikmin (Nintendo, 2001) is a real time strategy / puzzle game for the Nintendo GameCube.

The premise is fairly simple. There's a little space man. He can control little plant guys. He must collect space ship parts while overcoming various obstacles. And he must do it fast. There are 30 ship parts to collect in 30 days and each day is fairly short. Well, technically not every piece is required, but you know me. I needed them all.

For me the meat of the game was discovery. The game has a lot of tricks to it both in how to fight enemies (mostly bugs) and how to overcome obstacles. The in game text gives the basics, but there's still a lot to learn. I often decided to play a given day over (sometimes many times) so that I could do things better and faster.

I've never been fond of trial and error as a gameplay mechanic (except for Blood and King Kong, where dying can be a good scare), but it didn't bother me in Pikmin. That was partly because a "day" isn't very long (13 minutes according to Wikipedia), so I didn't feel like I'd lost much progress, and partly because I always felt like I was learning something. Of course, I was often learning it at the expense of my Pikmin. Against the more dangerous foes, they would die by the score.

This raises a moral question. Just because I could control the Pikmin and send them off to their demise, should I have? The game says yes. I got the happy ending and lost over 800 Pikmin along the way. I didn't really think about it at the time. It was how the game was designed to be played. But it nags at me (partly because I believe Christal may have done it without killing any). Between missions the main character worries about his life support running out, pines for his loved ones, and feels bad about the losses the Pikmin suffer, but that doesn't justify his actions. It only explains them.

Graphically the game is fine for its time. The textures are flat. There's not much in the way of lighting (although the color does change with the time of day). Running around with 100 Pikmin trailing behind is pretty impressive. And when I was fighting a large enemy with dozens of Pikmin attacking its feet as I threw more Pikmin who clung and attacked the top, occasionally getting shook off and hurled in all directions... well, I was too busy to care, but that might have looked cool to an observer.

Final Score
4 of 5