🥕 You Load 16 Tons, What Do You Get?
A few months I was chatting with a friend about managing ADHD in the workplace, and they said something profound. They talked about being a strong performer overall, but that meant some days they were a rockstar and some days they'd just sit on the couch and played Pikmin. "Consistency is not for everyone." And this really resonated, because I also find that I have good days and so-so days, with the occasional amazing and useless days thrown in there for good measure. I've found myself coming back to that a lot as a self-care check-in.
Also, it made me really want to play Pikmin again.
Pikmin is a series of Real-Time Strategy games from Nintendo in which a tiny alien has landed (sometimes accidentally) on a planet that is basically Earth and needs to do something, repair something, or find someone before they can leave. They accomplish this with the aid of pikmin, tiny plant/animal hybrids that look vaguely like a friendly carrot. You control the pikmin by whistling at them or throwing them at things. They can destroy obstacles or hostile fauna and carry objects (which includes the corpses of said hostile fauna) in order to produce more pikmin or advance you on your quest.
The series manages to do something unheard of: putting RTS mechanics on a console. Your traditional RTS games (think Starcraft or Command & Conquer) are absolutely dependent on mouse-and-keyboard controls. You are constantly moving around the battlefield in order to manage your armies and resources, balancing resource collection against tech development against unit production and finding time in there to actually go and attack.
And speaking of attacking, that's the other thing about RTS's: they are overwhelmingly combat-driven. You are managing an army and using it to gain control over a map. That's the fundamental facet. My dad used to play a lot of the old McGraw-Hill WWII combat games, and I always thought that if he had been a video gamer he'd have really been into RTS's. They scratch that same itch.
Pikmin, however, doesn't have any combat—or at least not any combat against other players or armies. You'll fight your fair share of charismatic megafauna, but you're not eliminating another army and wiping out their infrastructure. Instead, you're exploring a map and solving a set of puzzles architected around the same conceit: pikmin can't survive being out in the wild at night, so you have to wrap up your tasks and collect your workers before sunset.
I recently replayed the entire mainline series, so I thought I'd give my impressions one by one. So without further ado...
Pikmin
Originally released on the GameCube in 2001, Pikmin introduces us to series protagonist Olimar (or, in Japanese, Orimā, which is "Mario" spelled backwards using the katakana writing system, if you were wondering where that name came from). Olimar is flying his spaceship when he gets hit by an asteroid and marooned on a planet that—fauna notwithstanding—bears a striking resemblance to Earth. He encounters the pikmin who live in an onion and want nothing so much as for someone to tell them what to do.
Olimar needs to repair his ship before his life support runs out, that is, he realizes that he has thirty days to recover thirty parts of his ship that are strewn around the crash site. Fortunately, the pikmin are adept are carrying things, given sufficient numbers. During the day he sets pikmin on their tasks, and then during the evening they all retreat to the upper atmosphere, out of range of nocturnal predators. As the ship gets repaired, it gains access to new parts of the map, giving you a sense of level progression.
There's a lot to love about this game. You have three types of pikmin: red, which are fireproof and the strongest attackers; blue, which can move underwater; and yellow, which can carry bombs and be thrown higher. Finding your ship parts is an exercise in coordinating groups in tandem in order to solve the terrain puzzles that the game presents you with. Of the entire series, it's the one that feels like it has the realest stakes. It's not a long game, but it encourages replay by giving you lots of variables to try to maximize. How few days can you complete your mission in? Can you do it without losing any of your pikmin?
Unfortunately, since it's the first, it's also the jankiest. Pikmin have terrible path-finding and will frequently just walk blindly into danger. In the last map, especially, when you're going up against the final boss, it's pretty easy to lose 50 pikmin en route because they can't organize themselves well enough to stay on a bridge.
Pikmin 2
Pikmin 2 released on the GameCube in 2004. It takes the same basic gameplay loop as its predecessor and adds some new features. In this game you return to the Earth-like planet designated PNF-404 (which is honestly a great joke). This time you've brought a companion, Louie, and you're here in search of treasure. The game adds a lot of new features: better path-finding, delving, multiplayer, and two new pikmin types. It also kicks off the series' long-running joke of coming up with funny names for household objects. We get Cupid's Grenade (cherry), Spouse Alert (sleigh bell), and Priceless Statue (black queen chess piece). Lots and lots of whimsy.
It's also my least favorite in the series. The stakes are non-existent. You're traveling back to Earth because your employer has declared bankruptcy and you need to get some treasure to make the company solvent again. This same employer treats you like garbage, so there's no real investment in the game's outcome. Your new partner Louie is kind of worthless from a story standpoint (he's perfectly fine in terms of gameplay). Pikmin is a rather cynical series overall, and this game is probably the worst offender, and it suffers greatly for it.
The delving is interesting. You take a hoard of pikmin underground and take on challenges in a setting that's much more of a closed system. You find new pikmin down there, but you can't exit until you've completed it, and you can't just go back for more pikmin if you happen to lose a bunch in a careless exercise or a battle gone wrong. It works mechanically, but it also breaks the main conceit of the game. Time doesn't flow when you're underground, so there's no rush to wrap things up.
The new pikmin at least are interesting. You gain purple, which are strong and heavy—each one counts as ten regular pikmin—and white which are poisonous. They are immune to poison gas and terrain and if they get eaten by a monster, that monster will itself be poisoned. Although in practice you're mostly using white pikmin in areas where there are a lot of poisonous monsters, so they're immune.
It's a big iterative step forward that introduces some series mainstays, but on the whole it rings a little hollow for me. That said, it does set the stage for my favorite in the series...
Pikmin 3 Deluxe
This was originally released (sans the "deluxe") in 2013 for the Wii U. Was it popular? Probably not, the Wii U had a pretty paltry install-base. I picked up the deluxe-ified version reissued on the Switch and it was my first foray into the series. It's maybe not the best jumping-off point; on my first playthrough I got stuck on the final map and gave up in frustration. But having now taken in the rest, this is the one I'm most desiring to go back to.
Our main characters are Alf, Brittany, and Charlie, three explorers from another planet that has completely run out of food. They heard about PNF-404 and the space-faring Olimar, and that's why they're here. Instead of items, you're just collecting fruit to be turned into juice. Every day you consume one serving of juice, so there's your timer. Your ship had some problems, so in order to get home you need to track down the elusive Captain Olimar because something something plot.
The game does away with delving and the two added pikmin from Pikmin 2. We have newly-added rock pikmin, who can break glass and pack the biggest punch when thrown, and pink pikmin, who can fly, leaving them unencumbered by the obstacles that stymie the others. It also adds my favorite quality-of-life improvement: the ability to lock onto targets.
While this one isn't completely devoid of cynicism, its protagonists are very sympathetic and the story is compelling. The gameplay is tightened up and the boss fights are pretty intense. The big fight on the final map (that frustrated me so much in my initial play) involves solving puzzles with one group while kiting the main boss around with the other group so he doesn't catch you until you're ready to do battle. And it takes pretty much a whole day to get set up for the final confrontation, so it's a pretty big undertaking for what's still a pretty small game.
Pikmin 4
And then they had to go and make this a AAA title. Pikmin 4 was released in 2023 on the Switch, and it is by far the biggest and most ambitious game in the series. You're part of a rescue crew searching for (you guessed it) Captain Olimar. There are six maps and they are huge, each with multiple landing spots. Delves are back. We have all seven of the previous pikmin and two more: ice, which freeze things, and glow, which are extremely useful and versatile but can only be used in darkness. You have a two-legged dog for a partner. Your character has a customizable name and look. There are overnight missions. There are side quests and collectibles and challenges and more! There's just so much game in this game!
It's fine. It's good, even. But it's no longer a small game that's slightly cynical about capitalism. It's now a huge game that's obsessed with "dandori," a Japanese word that describes the art of doing tasks as efficiently as possible. At the end of the day, "dandori" is what Pikmin does, but the game just won't shut up about it. It's, frankly, exhausting. Oh, and there's the new Dandori Academy add-on for the Switch 2, in case you hadn't gotten enough of it yet.
Okay, that's a lot of words about my thoughts on a game series. I don't have a better ending than that.
That's what I think anyway,
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