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| Pikmin 3 | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Sep 7 2013, 01:02 AM (278 Views) | |
| Complete_Dweeb | Sep 7 2013, 01:02 AM Post #1 |
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I’M rAD
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Oh man! It's this game!!! After 9 years of waiting, Pikmin fans finally got the sequel they'd been long asking for. After 9 months of waiting, everyone with a Wii U finally got a game to actually play on it. It's Pikmin 3, bro! ![]() This game begins with a brief prologue explaining the predicament that a planet called Koppai is facing. (This is literally the first thing you see when you boot the game up.) Due to the Koppaites booming population, ravenous nature, and their seemingly nonexistent skill at planning and coordination, they've essentially exhausted their entire food supply. In an attempt to remedy this situation, the Koppaites dispatch a fleet of SPERO's to search for any other planets that have food sources capable of whetting their appetites. Luckily, one SPERO manages to locate a planet hundreds of light-years away, which the Koppaites name "PNF-404". This planet just so happens to be the same Pikmin planet we've been visiting in the past 2 Pikmin games. Nevertheless, Koppai selects 3 explorers to travel to PNF-404, obtain as much food as they possibly can, and bring it back to Koppai. This crew consists of Alph, a young engineer, Britanny, an accomplished (and somewhat gluttonous (and also incredibly cute)) botanist, and Captain Charlie, a reasonably competent commander...who has a strange fondness for Rubber Duckies...Anyways, these 3 board the S.S. Drake, and take off for PNF-404. All seems to be going well, until the Drake...just sort of explodes or something. Seriously, the game at no point explains what happens to cause this crash landing. There's no meteor, nothing. It's really weird to be completely honest. Either way, this accident causes the three Explorers to become seperated, thus kicking off the game in proper. This game without a doubt has the best story of any Pikmin game so far. Everything about it, the plot, the characterization, the dialogue, everything is simply amazing. There aren't any major plot twists or anything of the like, but this game doesn't really need that to stand out. It just does what Pikmin does best; Great World-building, humorous dialogue, and memorable characters. Seriously, this game really does have a good amount of humor sprinkled into it. Listening to the explorers interact with each other is just really charming. Always pick the "Check In" option at least once before starting a day. The game plays like the previous games in the series, but with a few notable tweaks. You actually have multiple controller options that you can use as you play the game, the Wii U Gamepad, the Pro Controller, or the Wii Remote & Nunchuk (Preferably with the Motionplus attached). If you played the first two games on the Gamecube, then you'll feel right at home using the Gamepad or Pro Controller. However, if you've played either of the New Play Control versions of either game for the Wii, then you'll probably feel more inclined to use the Wii Remote and Nunchuk (Again, highly recommended that you use the Motionplus in conjunction.) In terms of Core gameplay tweaks, you no longer have the ability to swarm your Pikmin manually with the C-stick (Or D-Pad for Wii users.) However, in exchange for this, you now have the ability to Lock on to enemies and other things of the sort. By dismissing your Pikmin while doing so, you'll automatically send all Pikmin under your command at whatever your locked on to. Really, I think this works much better than controlling your Pikmin manually, although I will miss the little tune that plays when you did that. *channels Miyamoto's dark engrish powers* Don't!...Attack my eye! Another noteworthy addition is the fact that you now have 3 Captains at this disposal (If this trend keeps up, I'd really love to see what Pikmin 7 ends up looking like.) Having 3 Captains doesn't overcomplicate the gameplay at all. It's basically just like Pikmin 2, except you have 3 Captains instead of 2....yeah... It's a bit obvious at this point, but there are also 2 new Pikmin types: The Rock Pikmin, and the Winged Pikmin. The Rock Pikmin can break crystal objects and can put quite a dent in enemies if thrown directly at them. I find the Rock Pikmin to basically be a less broken version of the Purple Pikmin. The Winged Pikmin are capable of travelling over water (although they can't go underwater like Blue Pikmin can), and they can even carry enemies and objects while ignoring most hazards, making them ideal for transporting fruit and the like. However, to balance this, Winged Pikmin are given significantly less strength than any other Pikmin type during combat, and are only recommended for fighting certain airborne enemies. I am very glad that the Winged Pikmin are incredibly useful, but at the same time, balanced so that they're not game-breaking. Last and certainly not least is the utilization of the Gamepad. At first glance, it just has your basic "screen dedicated to the map and other less important things" functionality, but in reality, it's much more useful that you'd think! This is all because of the "Go here" ability. What this allows you to do is automatically send one of your Captains to any point on the map you've already explored (obviously not instantaneously.) This feature is REALLY useful because it just makes multitasking all the easier to accomplish. Proper use of this feature can potentially double the amount of things you can accomplish in just one day. So Pikmin 1 gave you exactly 30 days to accomplish your goal, and Pikmin 2 had no such time limit. Pikmin 3 tries to strike a balance between the two, but the way it executes this has a bit of a fundamental problem I find. In this game, your goal is to gather as much fruit as you can so you can harvest their seeds and cultivate them on Koppai. However, at the end of each day, every fruit you managed to find during that day is converted into juice that your crew needs in order to continue their mission. For every bottle that you can fill completely with Juice, you get one extra day. If you run out of juice, you get a game over and will be forced to start over from an earlier day. I'm supposed to be craving straight-up Fruit Juice during this part, but I'm honestly more in the mood for Gatorade. Lemon Lime is the best kind imo. However, you will most likely never get a game over because it is very easy to get an average of 3-4 bottles of Juice per day. This is that fundamental problem I was mentioning earlier. The better you perform at the game, the easier it gets to win. This is the complete opposite of proper difficulty scaling and I really think it should have been implemented in a slightly different manner. The 4 Main Areas of this game are very well-designed. Like Pikmin 2, these areas are themed after the 4 Seasons. There's the Summer-themed Tropical Wilds, the Spring-themed Garden of Hope, the Winter-themed Distant Tundra, and the Autumn-themed Twilight River. This game aimed to make the overworlds larger and more interesting, as opposed to Pikmin 2's approach of simply adding Caves to extend game time (which I would have had no problem with, if it weren't for the fact that the caves took up practically 70% of the game, and really weren't too interesting in hindsight.) In short, this game's approach to the overworlds works very well. Each Area is comprised of 3-4 different sections, all with ferocious creatures to fight, and puzzles to solve. Each Area has 1-2 Major Boss Fights, and these fights are easily the highlight of the game in my book. They're all decently challenging, and you will lose at least 15 Pikmin during each of these fights with the exception of maybe the first two or three. Now that I've basically talked about every aspect of the gameplay, let's move on to the graph--THIS GAME LOOKS FREAKING AMAZING AND I LOVE HOW IT LOOKS AND AGGGGGHHHHHHHH....Ahem! This game looks gorgeous, and it really makes me wish that Nintendo had gone HD before the Wii U. The environments, the models, the textures, everything just looks so polished. One feature that really drives this game's presentation home is the ability to use the Gamepad as a camera and take pictures of the environment around you. What's even cooler is that you can post these photos directly to Miiverse to show to the world! Here's a few pictures I got directly off of Miiverse to show you. I'll source the people who took these photos if you want to see what else they may have done. Myself Michael (FamilyDevic) Luke (tkdluke) Sero (Serore) SPOILER: THIS NEXT PICTURE DOES SHOW OFF THE FINAL BOSS OF THIS GAME. CLICK AT OWN RISK. Now let's move on to the Music. Honestly, while this game does have some very memorable music, as a whole, I would have to say this game has the weakest Soundtrack out of the whole series. Most of the music you hear isn't nearly as memorable as say, Forest Navel, or the Perplexing Pool. But there are a few tracks that stand out among the rest! Garden of Hope The Distant Tundra All other music I would recommend listening to can be found in this post I made to the "Favorite Game Music?" thread. I feel the need to tell you guys that I'm currently on my 5th playthrough of this game. When I first played this game, I felt that it was a bit too short for its own good. Now I think it's the perfect length for what it's trying to be. Pikmin 3 is short, but it's not a game you can casually 100% in a few hours. This game encourages repeated playthroughs to see how quickly you can beat it. My Personal Best 100% Run as of this review is 26 days (17:26). I now realize that I never mentioned Mission Mode earlier. It's basically like Pikmin 2's Challenge mode, it's really not too spectacular to be honest. Although you can refight each of the Major Bosses and try to see how quickly you can beat them! I would talk about Bingo Battle, but I haven't had an opportunity to actually play it properly, and honestly I probably never will, but it's the game's multiplayer mode, and I've heard good things about it. All in all, Pikmin 3 is an AMAZING game. If you're considering buying a Wii U in the near future, GET. THIS. GAME. Nearly everything about it is simply astounding. The refined gameplay, the genius level design, the charming story, I can't think of any major flaws with this game. Every issue I had with this game was too nitpicky to pass off as a genuine complaint. This is currently my favorite Pikmin game, and you need to play this game. It's just that good, and it was worth the wait. (But Nintendo, if you end up making Pikmin 4, please don't tell us about it until you have a trailer ready, ok?) Edited by Complete_Dweeb, Sep 7 2013, 01:15 AM.
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| Caped Godot | Sep 16 2013, 12:06 AM Post #2 |
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Co-host of DOOM!
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Well said. I agree with you on most counts. It's a great game. I wish I had time to play through it again. |
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| krismaster4 | Sep 17 2013, 05:54 AM Post #3 |
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Stayin' Cool, in Sanfransokyo. AS A MILLIONAIRE!
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Agreed. |
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| DreamyBeachsideDream | Sep 17 2013, 12:54 PM Post #4 |
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Oh no! Look! It's all broken and on the floor!
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A great review for a truly great game. It was worth the wait! (Maybe) |
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See if I ever use Photobucket for anything ever again.









2:22 PM Jul 11