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Despite being a Nintendo fan, I never played the original game but once borrowed the second one from my college roommate. What's always struck me about these games is the ingenuity and creativity that went into the myriad fauna the player - only half an inch tall - encounters. Since this is a video game, most of it is hostile.
While the concept isn't exactly new, I like the idea of a plant-animal hybrid. Anthropomorphic carrots! Working together like an ant colony! And they come in a variety of species, much like the creatures we lump together as "beetles" or "birds". There's your fire-resistant reds (probably a defense mechanism against the Fiery Blowhog or the Pyroclasmic Slooch!) and your electric-resistant yellows (able to take on the Bearded Amprat) and your waterproof blues (because being able to swim is pretty important). The second game had heavy-hitting purples with good upper-body strength and tiny poison-resistant whites (with red eyes - could they be albinos?)
Not sure why those last two didn't come back for the third game's story mode. Instead we've got tough-skinned gray ones that look like rocks (sort of like a walking-stick's camouflage?) and pink winged Pikmin (weak on the ground but good in the air). Also, I'm told the first game's ending implied there are other species out there somewhere; I have to wonder why they only introduce two or three new species per game. Having ten to twelve types of troops instead of three or five would probably open up some different emergent gameplay tactics, improving replay value.
The life cycle of these creatures is a bit fantastical, though. The Pikmin appear to be omnivorous; any enemy you defeat, you can take the cadaver back to base, where the Pikmin presumably eat it and more Pikmin sprouts are produced.
That's pretty rough for a cutesy game like this! But I suppose it makes sense from a nature perspective. On one hand, I like the series' leaning toward having a real-life nature feel. On the other hand, it's still packaged like a game for children. What's up with the Bulbmin? Parasitic Pikmin? *cringes* I mean I suppose macro-parasitism does happen with real-world animals, but from what I've seen in the games, it's not quite clear whether the Pikmin are meant to be alien animals or sentient, intelligent beings. (I really hope Nintendo intended them to be the former; otherwise I feel a lot worse about all the Pikmin that died over the course of my playthroughs...)
But I digress. Wasn't I talking about the life cycle? The eating is done by their nest...thing that the game calls an "Onion" due to its shape. In the 2nd game each of the 3 principal Pikmin flavors had their own Onion. In the new one, each new Onion you find fuses with the ones you've already found, by the end creating a sort of rainbow super-Onion (must get crowded in there at night when all the Pikmin come home to roost). The new style is streamlined for gameplay purposes, true, but less realistic (yes, I am calling out a Nintendo game on realism! I am also ignoring the fact that the Onions fly away - into orbit - at night to escape nocturnal predators!) Perhaps there's a queen Pikmin inside the Onion, whom we never see, eating the food brought to the nest and producing seeds as a queen ant might lay eggs?
As for the aforementioned hostile fauna, I like how they feel like actual animals and not just enemies in a video game. Highlights include the Bulborb, a spotty frog-like thing that comes in different varieties, the aforementioned Fiery Blowhog (I'd like to see more creatures in sci-fi with a valid scientific mechanism for generating fire or electicity) and the Burrowing Snagret, a long-necked heron-esque bird that pops its head out from underground in an inversion of classic ostrich behavior. There's quite the variety; too bad the third game lacks the Piklopedia, an Audubon-style log in the second game of the various creatures you encounter. One of the characters is even a scientist, but all she really seems to journal about are the different fruits you collect as the goal of the game - fruits that players will recognize, despite the game taking place on an Earth millions of years into the future, as evidenced by visible continental drift. Likewise, I kinda miss the caves from the second game; they made you feel like there was more to the world than just the surface. Plus the daily time-limit did not apply underground.
As for the tiny astronauts from the planet Koppai, they don't seem to have any problem digesting these anachronistic fruits, despite the environment itself necessitating full spacesuits. Players will note that the fruit is always turned into juice before consumption, and this represents the whole of their food supply for the duration of their expedition to Earth - or as they call it, planet PNF-404 (see what they did there?) I find that concept interesting in itself: creatures that only drink and never eat. How does that work? Does it have to do with their diminutive stature?
All in all, I thoroughly enjoy the Pikmin games. There's a feel of exploration; the Areas you visit are named in such a way as a human explorer might think up names on the fly for areas on another planet. There's just enough realism and thought put into creature design to really leave an impact. The fact that it's a Nintendo game doesn't do much to diminish this fact; we're so used to the ideas that alien life would either be humanoid or hideous, we've never really considered the possibility that alien life would be...cute.
Plus, cultivating an army of cute killer carrots is always guaranteed fun. Makes me wish I could see the world from a height of half an inch.
Maybe being Ant-Man isn't as lame as people think.
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