Pikmin

Pikmin

So of course I picked up Pikmin last Friday. You can see a video of it here if you haven't seen the game. Like I mentioned before they are advertizing the crap out of it with very cute commericals.

If you want to see one of the commericals you can download it by clicking on the Pikman2.zip link on this page. The words are something like this

We are Pikmin, we'll tell you about us.
Carrying, attacking, increasing in numbers and getting eaten
We are living in many different ways on this planet
Carrying, attacking, increasing in numbers and getting eaten.

Nintendo Gamecube. Pikmin

There's another on this page. Personally I think those particular commericals are trying to bring in a female audience by making the game appear to be very cute.

It's hard to say if it's *good* or not. I've never been one to get into strategy games. I had many friends get addicted to Sim City on Super Nintendo or PC. I tried playing once but I didn't see the point. Similarly I never got into Diablo, Warcraft, or any of those kinds of games. I tried playing C&C a little and though I had some fun playing networked I never really got good at it and single player just bored me. Then there's Populous, The Sims, Black & White.

So, aruably Pikmin would fit in a similar category as you control and direct lots of little Pikmin. I am finding it fun but because I'm playing the Japanese version, everytime an explaintion comes up I have to pause for 5 to 10 minutes while I try to figure out what it says and I'm not always successful since the kanji fonts are too small for somebody that doesn't already know kanji. You do have the option of making the messages for kids in which case there would probably be no kanji and less adult vocabulary but it seems like that might be less useful so I chose adult messages.

There are several things that stick out to me. One, the game is clearly designed NOT to be played with a mouse which is probably a first for these types of games since most of them started on PC or Macs.

The story is you are flying through space and you bump into a meteor and then crash land on some planet. As you are falling from the sky, parts of your ship get scattered all over (sounds familiar

) and so you need to go find all 30 pieces within 30 days. I wasn't quite sure what the story's explaintion for the 30 day time limit is.

Anyway, you find out there are these little creatures on the planet that look like onions and you decide to call them Pikmin and that for some reason they obey you. There are 3 different types. Red, Yellow and Blue. I haven't gotten the blue ones yet but each type has it's specialties. The Yellow ones can carry little exploding rocks they find and they can be thrown twice as high as the other kinds. The blue ones can swim where as the other two kinds drown if they fall in the water.

Separate from that, each Pikman goes through 3 stages of growth. Leaf head, Bud head and Flower head. Those basically correspond to strength and speed. Pikmin are created / birthed when your Pikmin carry either a pellet or the body of a killed animal back to their ship. They pop out the top and plant themselves in the ground. If you leave them planted all day they might grow into the flower kind. If you pull them out early then you have to get them to eat this yellow goo if you want them to grow up which you can find from various sources.

So, you lead them around getting them to attack animals, pick up pellets, knock down or blow up walls, build bridges etc. You can lead upto 100 at a time around the level. You only have from morning until dusk to work because at night the big monsters wake up and will eat all Pikmin so before the sunsets you need to get them all back in their ships and take off.

The graphics are pretty cool. Pikmin are supposed to be like 1cm tall and the main character is like 2cm tall so it all takes place in grass and bushes with puddles and stuff. Even with 100 Pikmin on the screen and 20 or so monsters I've never seen it slow down. The water is probably the best real looking water I've seen so far though they are similating a puddle and not a lake or the ocean. The textures are great, detailed and multi-layered so for example the canopy of leaves above the level is casting swaying shadows on the ground.

A couple of things that I'm less than thrilled about. Playing the 30 days in game time would probaby be 5 hours, maybe 8. So, if the 30 days end before I can find all 30 pieces will I want to start over from the beginning? You can save your game and you can copy your save but then the question is how far back should I start over from. From day 20? From Day 10 etc. Maybe from day 20 I just don't have enough time so I try again and fail again. It's probably one of those things that only would get to me more than most people.

But anyway, for me, the most inspiring thing is that I can see a game I want to make here. Since before I went to Crystal in 93 I wanted to make a game about a little space character on a zelda like action adventure. Of course back then I was thinking of a 2D game. PS1 game out and I think I was still thinking 2D although maybe 2D like Diablo. But now, seeing a 3D world this detailed with 100 pikmin running around and a main character and several cool looking well animated monsters I can now see the presentation that I would like my game to be. The only bad part is that the main character in Pikmin, "Orima", is a little space character so if I made my game with a little space character people would probably think it was a rip-off even though my game would play nothing like Pikmin.

Comments:

subject goes here? [ e ]

regarding time-limited games, did you play Majora's Mask? one of the reasons i couldn't get into that game at all was that it made you do the same task over and over again (since the world is reset after the third day). including some very large and annoying ones, if you fail to reach the reward before time runs out.

on the other hand, i don't think i'd mind the pikmin time limit so much, because, well, it's only 5-8 hours. if i like the game, i'm going to be putting much more time into it than that, and it just becomes a problem of optimization. have you ever played varicella? i don't know if you're into infocom-style text adventures, but in this respect, it's much the same thing: a fleshed-out world to explore, and you die if you don't perform certain tasks within 300 turns or so. normally it's considered mean to kill the player off like that, but in cases like this, so what? you've only lost 300 turns.

regarding good-looking water, have you seen the new waverace game? the screenshots look very impressive, with breaking waves and water droplets aplenty, with correct-looking shadows and reflections. i don't think they do true refractions or reflections for each droplet, though :)

what was the second thing you weren't thrilled about? the idea that people might see your game as a ripoff?

-jim

posted by pfOctober 30, 2001 at 10:51

Majora's Mask [ e ]

Yes, I played and yes, I personally hated the time limit. In fact I hated it so much that I played with a walkthrough.

To be honest, it was designed such that mostly it was not that big a deal. If you were in a level and you ran out of time, if you had found the owl statue near that level, after starting the time over you could almost beam right back and you kept any major items you had already found so it wasn't that bad to get back into it but it was annoying AND as a player I didn't really know that so that the time limit removed a large percentage of the fun of a Zelda game which is just to have fun exploring. Because of the time limit it always feels like you can't waste anytime, you can't just look around, you always have to run as fast as you can to the next place. I hope that's not in the next Zelda.

I have Waverace and the water effects are great but for whatever reason the water in Pikmin looks real to me and the water in Waverace looks like a cool simulation. But, the water in Pikmin is easier to make because it's simulating a puddle, not a lake or ocean.

posted by greggmanOctober 30, 2001 at 15:13

I wouldn't go that far [ e ]

I agree with you that the Mask was kind of weak as the villian but I wouldn't say the game sucked. There were a ton of cool things. The way you can turn into all the different character was awesome. It's especially fun to be a goron and roll around. I also liked swimming as a Zora and flying as a Deku kid. I liked many of the dungeons and although I didn't like the time thing I liked some parts of it. Like I liked that you could go watch different things happen at different times of day like watching the mail man deliver to Kafei or waiting for Sakon to come by so you can sneak into his secret lair. I liked the Gerudo Lagoon where you have to avoid being seen. It felt cool to sneak in.

But, I agree, there was too much repeated. They shouldn't have used the same people when it made no sense for them to be the same people.

posted by greggmanDecember 8, 2001 at 9:00

Majora's Mask [ e ]

As a zelda fan I will have to say Major's mask sucks! It was way to childlike. The time limit did make the game more difficult but the repetition of characters was lame. Also repeating of events got very annoying. The graphics were very neat. I hope the next Zelda has a more evil characters than a stupid mask and an imp. Also it should be darker and scarier.

posted by ZeldaFreakDecember 8, 2001 at 12:29

Majora's Mask [ e ]

What I think about Majora's Mask is that it is different and fun. I mean, if it was real, you wouldn't have an unlimited amount of time. You don't have to hurry (exept for some parts) because if you run out of time you atoumaticly warp back to the past with most of your things. In other parts of the game when you wait for some days or use the song to go one day ahead you are able to access other parts of the world. Example:At the place with the big rock in the way, on the third day it's gone, (unless you blast it with a special goron bomb). Also at night, the people and monsters are gone or somthing else is there or it's the same. With the extra masks you can get help too, like the stone mask for example, most regular mosters wont see you. There was extra evil men too, like the theif. You also get to talk to other monsters than the deku scrubs. Theres still the Gorons, Deku Scrubs and the Zoras in the game, and you actually get to turn in to one of those creatures in there group. you also get to do some of there moves, if not all. And it's realistic how they mistake you for someone or something else when you where a mask. And some people in the game don't fall for the regular masks. If you try to get all the masks you can get the Fierce Diety's mask if you give the kids the masks and complete there level, WHICH IS VERY AWSOME!So my point is, most people don't like it until they look for the good parts in the game, and I did. I really don't have anything to say exept that i hope people read this!

posted by linkorDecember 14, 2001 at 17:09