Games: Pikmin 2

It's like watching a puppy gnawing playfully on a severed hand. Cute and fucking disturbing at the same time.

Pikmin 2
Developer: Nintendo
Platform: Gamecube
Genre: Strategy/Adventure

In the winter of 2001 (or maybe it was early 2002), Nintendo unleashed upon the unsuspecting public what would be regarded as one of the oddest titles Nintendo had ever created. Pikmin introduced us to Captain Olimar, a short (and I mean short; he's roughly as tall as a 25-cent piece) space-traveler on interstellar vacation who had unfortunately met with disaster. His ship, the Dolphin, had collided with an asteroid (no bigger than a golfball, to you or I) forcing him to crash on a nearby uncharted planet. Stranded upon the planet, Olimar came to realize two things. One, his ship had taken quite a beating during the crash and 30 of the most integral parts had been scattered across the strange planet's landscape. Two, the atmosphere of the planet contained high levels of Oxygen, fatal to Olimar's people. With only 30 days worth of life support in his suit, Olimar would have to act quickly in order to recover the 30 missing parts of his ship. Utilizing the talents of a race of miniscule half-animal/half-pant creatures he named "Pikmin", he managed to overcome the planet's obstacles and challenges and eventually escaped.

Over two years later, we have been made privy to the continuation of Olimar's perilous journeys. In the process, we have been given what is undoubtedly one of the best games this year has offered.

Story

Upon escaping the mysterious planet he had been marooned upon (which is quite obviously our Earth), Olimar immediately makes his way back to his home planet of Hocotate. However, during his absence, Olimar's employer, Hocotate Freight, had seen poor fortune and had fallen deep into debt. The company's newest employee, a bumbling space captain named Louie, on his first assignment ran into a vicious Space Bunny and the entire shipment of golden Pikpik carrots he had been transporting were eaten. The loss of cargo put Hocotate Freight into deep debt, forcing the president of the company to take out a large loan in order to cover their losses. However, with no way to pay the 10,000 poko (Hocotate's currency) debt off, Hocotate Freight's future has become bleak and finite.

Enter Captain Olimar. Upon arriving back at the Hocotate Freight headquarters, Olimar is informed of the company's peril by the President and is forced to relinquish his ship, the Dolphin, in order to recoup expenses. Shocked by this, Olimar accidentally drops a strange metal emblem (in actuality, a bottlecap) that he had brought back from the planet as a souvenir for his kids. Seeing this strange item and scanning it for informational purposes, Hocotate Freight's management AI system determines the value of the emblem to be 100 pokos! Realizing that there may be more of these treasures just waiting to be found on the foreign planet, the president orders Olimar and Louie to return to Earth in the company ship and search for more priceless artifacts with which to repay the debt. Hopping aboard the ship, Olimar and Louie set off for Earth to scrounge for more treasures.

That's the introduction in a nutshell. The really nifty thing about that whole segement is the fact that it is presented through the use of very high-quality FMV. The intro cinematic is about five to ten minutes in length and shows nary a sign of video or sound compression. It's all extremely fluid, very well-animated and particularly humorous as well. Seeing CG of this caliber in a Nintendo-developed game is a rarity, and hopefully this will be the start of a good thing for the big N.

Gameplay

Pikmin 2, like it's predecessor, is mainly a strategy game with some adventure elements mixed into it. As Olimar, you're not a badass. You don't wield a ray-gun, you don't have a jetpack and you can't use the force. Olimar's (and Louie's, consequently) abilities on his own are limited to a fairly weak punch, a whistle and the ability to lay down and take a nap (no joke). His true advantages lie not in his phsyical parameters, but in his mental ones. He is a cunning strategist, and when followed by an army of vicious Pikmin, he is capable of taking down even the nastiest of foes.

When in control of a group of Pikmin, Olimar can do several things. With the A Button, he can throw individual Pikmin, with the B Button he can use his Whistle to summon idle or busy Pikmin not under his control, with the Y Button you can switch between Olimar and Louie, with the X Button you can command all Pikmin under your control to go into idle status, with the L, R and Z triggers you can mess with the camera, with the joystick you can move Olimar and with the C-Stick you can move your Pikmin team around as one cohesive unit. Succeeding in the game requires the knowledgeable use of all of these abilities, and each one is absolutely vital to your progression.

Beyond the controls, the larger part of the strategy involved comes from the proper use of each Pikmin type. All three of the original Pikmin types from the first game have returned and have seen one or two alterations to their functionality. In addition to the Red, Yellow and Blue types from the first game, two new colors have been added as well: Purple and White. I'll break down their abilities for you.

Red Pikmin - The red Pikmin are your primary soldiers. They have a higher attack damage than any of the other types (except maybe the purple ones). On top of that, they are completely immune to fire. Not one of them will feel the effects of a scorching flame jet or a lava-spewing spider.

Yellow Pikmin - The yellow Pikmin are much quicker than the other two standard colors and can be thrown much higher. In addition, they are completely immune to electricity, an ability they did not exhibit in the first game. In concordance with that alteration, they have also lost their ability to carry Bomb Rocks, which was their primary function in the first game.

Blue Pikmin - The blue Pikmin are completely resistant to water and might possibly do more damage to an enemy when submerged. I've heard this mentioned by others, but have seen no confirmations of this as of yet. Make note that their immunity to water is an incredibly important ability, seeing that while electricity and fire will certainly hurt your Pikmin, water will absolutely kill them if you aren't careful. It's easy enough to avoid flame jets and electrified fences. Pools of water, however, are an impassable terrain type to any but the Blue Pikmin.

Purple Pikmin - One of the two new types of Pikmin offered in this game, the purple Pikmin are bruisers. They weigh ten times as much as the other types of Pikmin and they are ten times as strong. So, an item that takes 50 Pikmin to carry would only take five purples to lift. In addition, if thrown on top of even the biggest of enemies, their weight will knock the baddie silly, stunning him for several seconds before regaining his composure. They have no immunities.

White Pikmin - The second type of brand new Pikmin to be found in this game, white Pikmin are the smallest of the bunch, and as such they run much faster than any of the other types. White Pikmin are immune to poisons and as such are able to conquer toxic foes and bust down poisonous barriers. In addition, they themselves are filled with fatal toxins and if voluntarily fed to an enemy, the monster will suffer greatly. Finally, the white Pikmins' creepy red eyes give them the indispensable ability to see and unearth buried treasures that the other Pikmin cannot locate. The one serious downside to the white Pikmin is that they are easily the hardest ones to find.

Being intimately familiar with each Pikmin type is crucial to your success, especially in regards to the white and purple types. The primary three (red, yellow and blue) are easy enough to keep a healthy stock of. The three primary types each have their own mothership called an "Onion" which is used for the storage and breeding of those Pikmin. Anytime your Pikmin kill an enemy or find colored pellets on the ground, the Pikmin can take the items back to their respective Onions, which will break the objects down and fashion them into more Pikmin. Keeping a healthy supply of reds, yellows and blues is easy work.

The purples and whites are a totally different story, however. These two types of Pikmin do not have their own purple and white Onions to climb into. You store them in the hull of your ship. Without an Onion of their own, there is no simple way to duplicate these two types. The only possible way to do it is to sacrifice some of your primary Pikmin to a special breed of flower called a Candypop Bud, found only in the underground "dungeon" areas of the game. Up to five red, yellow or blue Pikmin can be tossed into a Violet or Ivory Candypop Bud and an equal number of purple or white Pikmin (respectively) will be spat back out at you. Upon gaining five new Pikmin from any one Candypop Bud, the flower will wilt and won't grow back. So, in essence, there is a maximum number of purple and white Pikmin to be found. Granted, there are ways around that limit, but they can be pretty time-consuming, and they usually involve having to return to the same dungeon over and over again before actually completing it in order to trick the game into re-spawning the flowers. Why were these two types of Pikmin designed this way? In order to maintain balance in the game. It would just be too damned easy to carry around an entire army of white Pikmin and simply feed them to any enemies in your path, thereby cirumventing all real challenge in the game.

One of the most pleasing changes to have been made to this sequel is the removal of the 30-day time limit found in the original game. Under these more-relaxed circumstances, Olimar and Louie have an infinite supply of breathable air and as such are not under the scrutiny of the ever-ticking clock. The days are timed, mind you, and there are only so many hours in a day with which to complete your desired tasks, but there is no overall time limit. With that in mind, it is a relatively simple task to breed a rather massive army of Pikmin, considering you can spend as much time as you want devoted solely to amassing your forces. However, this does not mean that you are invincible. As in the first game, only 100 Pikmin can be in the field at once, creating a limit to how ridiculously large you can make your active squads.

The one other balancing aspect of the game is with the addition of "dungeons". These areas are subterranean caves that range from an ice-cavern to the basement of a shower room to a child's abandoned playroom scattered with toys. Upon locating the entrance to one of these dungeons, you are given the ability to take in your full 100-Pikmin force, and no more. While inside the dungeons, you have no access to the Onions and as such you cannot replenish your ranks easily. It is because of this mechanic that having a nearly inexhaustible supply of Pikmin isn't an unbalanced apsect of the game. You spend the majority of the game inside these dungeons (probably like 60% of the game time) and as such, having 500 reds won't do you a lick of good if you were an idiot and lost 50 of them on the first floor. These dungeons force you to think creatively and yield the most rewarding treasures to be found. On top of that, just about all of the dungeons have a pretty nasty boss creature to fight at the end, upping the ante even more. The nicest feature of the caves is the auto-save function. Once you enter the cave, and every time you drop down to another level, the game automatically saves your progress. The cool thing about this is that if you rush into a level and accidentally lose all of your blues because you didn't know there would be a giant fire-spewing monster that would pop out of the ground, you can easily reset the game and start right back at the entrance to that floor. This function allows for these dungeons to be focused solely on quick-thinking and strategy without being frustrating and unfair. On top of that, the clock outside does not move an inch while you are in the undergroud caverns, so you really honestly can stay in a single dungeon for an unlimited amount of time.

In addition to all of this, throughout the course of the game you will discover several different "special" treasures which your ship can use to fashion new items and abilities for you. Locating a rubber eraser in one of the dungeons allows your ship to enhance Olimar and Louie's suits, making them immune to electric shocks. Finding a stereo speaker in another dungeon allows the ship to amplify the range of your whistle, making it easier to summon your troops. There are about 16 of these enhancements to be found scattered throughout the 4 main levels and nearly 20 dungeons, and each one is an important or (at the very least) amusing addition to your available abilities.

Finally, the one new gameplay aspect of the game is the addition of two types of potions Olimar and Louie can use to fortify their soldiers and more effectively knock down their enemies. By finding red and purple berries that grow in the various main levels, your ship can synthesize these fruits into two different types of potions. For every ten berries you get one bottle of the stuff. The red berries give you the Ultra-Spicy Spray, which, when used on your troops, will cause the flowers growing out of their heads to turn into flashing orbs of energy. This effect supercharges the speed and power of your Pikmin for about 40 seconds, making them vicious, fast little beasts capable of tackling even the largest of foes. The purple berries yield the Ultra-Bitter Spray, which, when used, petrifies the targeted enemy for about 40 seconds. While encased in stone, they are completely immobile and are totally vulnerable to attack. The spray, however, does not seem to work on bosses, at least not in my experience.

In terms of gameplay, Pikmin 2 is the perfect example of Nintendo's "complexity derived from simplicity" philosophy. The actual mechanics of the game are simple, straighforward and easy to learn. However, it is through this formula that a nearly endless horizon of complexity emerges through the tactics and strategic aspects of the game. The game is addictive, and with some 200 different treasures to find, an unlimited amount of time with which to play, several modes of play including 2-player battle, 2-player co-op and challenge modes as well as an extensive bestiary and treasure index to peruse, this game provides a staggering amount of things to do. Simply put, this is one of the most cohesive and complete game packages seen this entire generation.

Graphics

All of Pikmin 2 is presented in full 3D and is brilliantly built. Each of the four main levels encompasses one of the four seasons; winter, spring, summer and fall. Each area is extraoridinarily large, with beautiful textures, incredible water effects and a mountain of nice extra touches like flower petals falling through the air or snow lightly drifting from the sky. The dungeons are all very well designed as well, providing a number of beautifully dark and scary (and even some bright and cheerful) areas to explore. The texture work in the dungeons is actually probably the best in the game. One of the earlier caves is a series of rusted metal walkways suspended in the air. The actual metallic areas are coated in a chipping layer of blue paint, coated with rust in some places, and it all looks fantastic. Another dungeon consists of a series of passages covered in blue bathroom tile with mildew coating the grout and a fresh sheen of twinkling perspiration. The locations in the game are huge and beautifully detailed. The one single flaw to be found is that many of the textures look hazy or grainy when viewed up-close. This is mainly because the game is not intended to be viewed up-close. The game is meant to be viewed from a zoomed-out perspective, and from that vantage point, the textures found in the game are nearly photo-realistic.

Then there are the actual creatures and critters that litter the landscape to think about. Every scuttling animal and beastly abomination in this game is perfectly designed, each one exhibiting it's own personal charm. Each creature in the game is instantly identifiable and very memorable. All are fitted with an assortment of incredible animations that provide them with such life and vitality that you'd almost think they were real.

If you recall, my very first line in this review was that this game is simultaneously one of the cutest and creepiest games I have ever played. This is precisely why. You see, the majority of the critters to be found in this game (especially Olimar, Louie and the Pikmin) are, simply put, adorable. I readily admit that watching the Pikmin scurry around fills me with that same fuzzy feeling I get when I see a puppy. Raziel is openly and brazenly admitting that the creatures in this game are cute. But, that is why the game is so fucking creepy. Viewing one of the large, tubby Bulborbs sleeping in the distance is cute. These guys are the most frequently encountered and most easily recognizable enemies in the game. They are cute, fat and they sort of totter around clumsily when awakened. However, it's that cuteness that makes them so horrible. When you see something that looks as sweet and innocent as one of the huge Bulborbs, you naturally expect it to be nice. You anticipate that if you take your sweet little group of Pikmin to meet this nice, big oaf that they'll perhaps start dancing and signing a nice little song. What happens instead? The Bulbord wakes up and starts devouring your Pikmin by the scores! it greedily tramples them underfoot and begins crushing them in it's massive jaws! That's just fucked up!

The Pikmin, by the same token, are even scarier in some ways. These little guys are just adorable with their stubby limbs and the little flowers growing out of their heads. Their tiny, high-pitched voices just make you want to go "aww" when you hear it. So, what happens when you take your huge group of Pikmin to meet one of those nice, cute Bulborbs? They start gently and adorably bludgeoning it to death with their heads. What happens after the Pikmin finish brutalizing the loveable Bulborb? They carry it's carcass back to their Onion and cannibalize it to make more Pikmin. Agh! The thing that's most disturbing about all of that is not the fact that they're swarming, slaughtering and recycling another cute enemy. The fact is, if these little guys sprouted teeth when going tinto battle and started chewing away at their victim, it would be a lot less fucked up. It would be like something from the Critters or Gremlins movies. No, the Pikmin are far worse because the way they go about killing these nasty creatures isn't vicious at all! It's cute! They don't jump all over the thing and tear it's flesh off, they almost lovingly beat it to death while making these terrible cute noises!! Judas Fucking Priest!

Anybody that says Nintendo makes kids games needs to take a good long look at his one, because to be perfectly honest, it's significantly more disturbing than something like Manhunt. Yeah, you're suffocating guys with plastic bags and shit, but the main character is being pretty vicious about it. He's not cooing and laughing like an infant while bludgeoning his helpless enemies to death with a flower. And afterwards, he doesn't sacrifice their corpses to make more of himself.

So, aside from that huge tangent that I just had to point out, the game is a graphical marvel. Olimar and Louie are both extremely well-designed and well-animated as are the Pikmin. On graphics alone, this game holds its own with the best of them.

Sound

The music is, for the most part, great. The theme in particular is extremely catchy and will undoubtedly get stuck in your head for days. However, there isn't a whole lot of in-game music to be found. While exploring the four main levels, the only time that music really becomes apparent is during the boss fights, which feature an assortment of very intense pieces perfectly written for the size and scale of these battles. Inside the dungeons, the music is mostly delegated to ambient sound with very little actual musical pieces. The lack of music honestly works, in my opinion, becasue there is just so much going on in the sound department that anything more over-the-top in terms of music would just be too chaotic.

Speaking of sound effects, there are a lot to be found in this game. Each and every type of enemy to be found has it's own selection of growls, barks, roars, chrips, moans and noises to be heard. If you listent closely in the levels or dungeons, you can almost always tell what kinds of enemies are in the vicinity even if you can't see them. That snoring off in the distance? It's obviously some sort of large Bulborb. Those weird skittering noises in the dark corner? Certainly some type of spidery Weevil.

The Pikmin themselves feature a much greater range of sound effects in the game as well. They still yelp and chirp in the recognizble ways they did in the first game, but a lot more of those sounds have been integrated into the game in various places. Overall, the Pikmin are just much more vocal than they were in the original. Heh, and now they sing. While running around in a group the Pikmin just idly hum in chorus with one another, and while in dungeons, the singing actually gets a little creepier as they sing a tune eerily reminiscent of the song those little girls are always signing in the Nightmare on Elm Street movies. As before, this can be both adorable and horrible at the same time.

Olimar, Louie and the President all feature voicework too. The characters all speak an odd sort of slow Japanese/Nonsense hybrid. They vocalize extensively during the CG cutscenes and mutter randomly ingame.

Aside from that, the worlds themselves are simply full of sound. The wind rustles through the trees towering overhead, the snow crunches under the boots of Captain Olimar and the rythmic pinging and clanking sounds of the ship and the Onions thrum constantly when in earshot. Like I said before, the worlds are just so full of sounds that adding constant music would seem a little too much in my opinion, but others might disagree.

Flaws

There are only a couple.

1. Purple and white Pikmin are a pain in the ass to breed. I understand that making it too much easier would severely unbalance the difficulty of the game, but the designers could have made it a little less frustrating by having one or two Violet or Ivory Candypop Buds bloom on the surface every few days, or by allowing the Buds in the caves to grow back after you've beaten the dungeon.

2. While there are numerous gameplay modes to choose from in this game, the one that is sorely missing is a true co-op mode in the main game. You can play co-op challenge mode and 2-player battle mode, but you can't play through the main game with more than 1 player? Lame.

3. The textures can be pretty hazy up-close. Granted, the textures are meant to be seen from a distance, but this is probably something they could have dealt with in this game, seeing as it was a noticeable issue in the first one.

4. Very little music. The main theme, boss-battle themes, some music in the caves and the "you just found a new item" pieces make up the majority of the music to be found in this game. While I have no problem with this, some might not be too happy about it.

Overall

If you never played the original Pikmin, this game is a perfect place to start. It's loaded with incredible puzzles, great boss battles, tons of strategy and a gameplay system that is easy to learn and never frustrating. On top of that, this adventure will last you easily 30 hours, and probably more if you intend to acquire all of the available treasures. It has several extra modes, including two 2-player modes, a full bestiary and treasure catalogue. It boats dazzling graphics, great sound and a host of characters and monsters that you will immediately come to know and love. Grab your copy of Pikmin 2 and let the hunting season begin. You can thank me later.

Score:9.5

i will give it a try after i get star ocean