Pikmin 3

Game Info

I am a huge fan of the Pikmin series and I had this feeling like I was gonna love this as much as the previous two installments.  The game begins where you are on a mission to find food for your home planet, Koppai, due to a shortage in natural resources.  As you arrive to the new planet, you lose control and crash land and the three pilots, Alpha, Brittany, and Charlie get separated. You will start off as Alpha and begin your search for your ship, the Drake.  When your journey begins, you run into these little red plant like aliens and start your quest in finding the other two pilots, more pikmin, and food to help save your planet.

Just like the other games, you will have the red, yellow, and blue pikmin.  But, this time they added two new pikmin to your squad,  The rock pikmin and the pink pikmin.  Just as before, the red pikmin are immune to fire, the yellow are invulnerable to electricity, and the blue pikmin are able to breath and fight underwater.  The two new pikmin aren’t really immune to anything in particular but the rock pikmin can destroy glass and crystals and the pink ones can fly.  There are only a few parts in the game where the pikmin have to truly work together.  Example would be, there is a spot with a fence blocking the path underwater, the flying pink pikmin can lift it up and the blue pikmin can pass the gate.  Running around searching for your co-pilots and fruits you will encounter creatures that want to eat your cute little pikmin.  After attacking these creatures, your pikmin will pick up the corpse and carry them to their little ship and it will pop out more pikmin.  There are also three characters that you will be in control of throughout the game, which in my opinion is nothing special for the different puzzles that require you to have all three pilots,  I never really had or needed separate squads with their own pikmin either, unless it was necessary to move on.

The game does a great job using all the elements.  While running around, you will notice that there are areas that you can not get to unless you have certain pikmin.  The beautiful lands are surrounded by water, electric fences, and glass walls.  There are only certain paths that are possible to take until you find more of the necessary pikmin to move on past the obstacles.  Some of the boss battles changed it up to where you actually had to use a certain pikmin first to make the villain vulnerable to be able to use the rest of the pikmin to help destroy them bad guys.  While running around through all this ruckus, you are trying to collect fruit to help your home planet survive.  The fruits like oranges, grapes, and cherries stand out as you get near them.  Once you have found them, the pikmin will take it back to your ship so it can be analyzed and turned into a juice for your pilots.  Without these crazily named juices, you will not be able to survive.

The controls are pretty good, I mostly used the gamepad. Sometimes when you aim to throw your pikmin into certain spots or on the creatures, it kinda over throws or just veers off on its own.  The aiming, probably could have been made a little more precise.  There is only one annoyance to me about the controls on the gamepad and that is the fact that if you shake the controller, you will blow your whistle and disperse your pikmin and co-pilots.  Which isn’t bad if you are not in the middle of a big boss battle and you just happen to accidentally shake the gamepad and release all characters out of your control and the boss comes up on your pikmin and enjoys a huge meal.  It was a saddening sight to see all those ghost pikmin float up like a giant cloud.  I would get really annoyed with that function throughout but outside of that, it was pretty basic, nothing extraordinary.

The visual effects of the game are beautiful, from the trees and plants to the fruits and the water ripples.  The boss battles are flawless with all that goes on during the fights.  The sound is great and the music goes with the scenery and revs up a little during the boss fights.  My only problem with the sound is that its a game of reading like before.  I figured they would make it this time around where they would have voice overs for the actual characters but they didn’t, which may not bother some but I am one that doesn’t care too much for reading my game, I would rather listen.

All in all, I believe pikmin 3 is worth buying.  The graphics are beautiful, the sounds go great from the characters walking and throwing to the music going very well to the environment.  The game is great fun and has a little challenge to it.  I feel people of all ages will love this game.  I know my 4 year old son wouldn’t let me play for hours, but once I got my hands on it, I enjoyed it more than I could have imagined.