pikmin

Pikmin, Shigeru Miyamoto?s creation, which was inspired by his back garden. At first glance, the game looks horribly babyish and cartoony, but as Nintendo gamers have learned, missing a game because of its looks would be a grave mistake indeed. Admittedly, not everyone?s idea of a good game is controlling little walking flowers and collecting engine parts, but as the saying goes, do not judge a book by its cover.

The story goes that captain Olimar?s rocket, the Dolphin, was hit by a passing asteroid, and he crashed landed on a strange planet. Upon regaining consciousness, he discovers that he cannot breathe the planets air, and has only 30 days to rebuild his ship. After a brief exploration of the planets surface, he discovers an onion like thing, which drops a seed into the ground. When Captain Olimar pulls the seed out of the ground, he discovers that it is in fact a living creature. Realising that it is his only hope, he names it a Pikmin, and sets out to find his machine parts.

The game will allow you to have 100 Pikmin on screen at any one time, although you can keep many many more in the onions that you encounter. There are 3 types of Pikmin, Red ones, which are better fighters, yellow ones, which can carry bombs and be thrown higher than normal and blue ones, which can pass through water. This adds an element of strategy, how many Pikmin, and of what types do you need for the tasks?

The game is essentially time based, with each day taking up roughly 12 too 13 minutes, and there are 30 days. At nights you have to return to your ship, and the Pikmin to their onions, as wild beasts roam the land. The actual planet is divided into 5 different zones, each with different amounts of machines parts scattered around. There are a total of 30 machine parts, although only 25 are required to complete the game. Getting a certain amount of parts will allow you to progress to the next area of the planets surface. All the areas are well detailed, with the grass and plants swaying in the wind and the water looks absolutely stunning. It really just looks like a part of over-sized country, complete with tin cans, various different plants, tree trunks, various rock structures and some very nice lighting. This makes for a varied landscape that is nice to look at, as well as play in. As the day progress?s the mild yellow of morning gives way to the bright light of mid day, which in turn changes to the golden light of evening. The mist effects are second to none; it really has the best atmosphere on the Cube just now. The planet is also populated by different kinds of wild beasts, who would like nothing more than to eat your Pikmin. This is where the strategy comes in. You can split you Pikmin into groups, sneak up behind enemies, and assault them, are try to creep around the side.

Each machine part must be carried back to the spaceship, usually requiring 30 to 40 Pikmin to lift it. You must split your time between exploring the land for more machine parts, growing more Pikmin, and collecting the machine parts. You are pretty much free to do as you please, and the machine parts don?t really have to be collected in any specific order, although you will have to activate the Yellow and Blue Pikmin before you can collect certain items. The forest where the game is set is almost photo-realistic, and looks and behaves absolutely fantastically.

The main downside to Pikmin is its size, with only 30 days, each lasting 13 minutes; you could complete the whole game in less than 7 hours, allowing for cut scenes. There is a little replay values, trying to complete the game as quickly as possible by getting more than one machine part per day, and the challenge mode offers a little fun for a while, but this is unfortunately to short, like Luigi?s Mansion. This game will not appeal to everybody, but it is certainly worth at least a rental, and after that you may want to buy it, or you may not. With rumours of a sequel in the works, maybe be better to hold out and see if it is improved by much. A shame, but just too short for some peoples liking. Overall, a joy to play, really good experience, which just does last long enough to be a classic. I would certainly recommend renting the game, not even trying it because of the look would mean missing out on one of the most original and fun games on any console.