Pikmin 2 – It’s Like Playing God with a Nintendo Twist

The original Pikmin game was released three years ago and, even with its terrific reviews, I never managed to get my hands on it. This summer I actually read a few reviews about that game here on Epinions, and my interest level peaked. Oddly enough, two months later Nintendo has released a sequel, Pikmin 2, which was supposed to improve upon its predecessor in every fashionable manner. My friend rented this title the day it was released and I’m glad I was there to enjoy it with him.

I have read that in the first game, the story was as follows. Captain Olimar’s ship was hit by an asteroid and crashed on an unfamiliar planet. Thirty parts of the ship were scattered throughout this unknown planet during the crash, and retrieving them and repairing the ship was the only way to return to his home planet. To make matters worse, he only had a thirty day supply of oxygen with him, so he only had one month to succeed or die. On this planet, he soon discovered creatures that resembled plants, which he decided to named pikmin. These creatures obeyed his every order, and eventually he was able to repair his ship in time with their aid.

In the sequel, the story picks up exactly where it was left off. As soon as Olimar returns to his home planet, his ship is repossessed and he learns that his employer, Hocotate Freight, is nearly bankrupt. He learns that his in his absence, his co-worker Louie was delivering a large shipment of space carrots when all of a sudden he was attacked by a starving space rabbit and all of the cargo was eaten. Olimar’s employer took out a handsome loan in order to salvage his company, however they are in deep debt. All of a sudden, Olimar drops a small item that he had found on the planet inhabited by the pikmin, and we soon learn that that item is worth a handsome amount of money. Therefore, Olimar and Louie are sent back to the planet in hopes of finding 10,000 Pokos worth of loot.

Soon enough, our two heroes arrive at their destination, and they come across a few pikmin momentarily. Some of you are probably wondering: what the heck are pikmin? Pikmin are actually tiny plant-like creatures that are merely one inch tall. They come in five colors: red, blue, white, purple and yellow. The red pikmin are the most common, and they are stronger than most of the other colors and are immune to fire. Yellow pikmin are immune to electricity and can be thrown higher than the others. Blue pikmin are actually the only kind that can tread water, therefore they are very valuable. Purple pikmin are the slowest, however they are ten times stronger than any other pikmin. Finally, white pikmin (with the bulging freaky red eyes) are immune to poison, yet they are poisonous at the same time. White pikmin are also very fast.

Acquiring more pikmin is also a point of interest, due to the limited amount of them that you have at the beginning. The red, blue and yellow pikmin all have their own headquarters, known as onions. If you bring back the carcasses of defeated enemies to an onion, then you will be rewarded with seeds. Bringing back special pellets with numbers on them will also result in seeds. The number of the pellet resembles how many pikmin are necessary to carry the pellet to an onion, as well as how many seeds will be given to you.

The seeds should be planted in the ground. Shortly thereafter, they will sprout a leaf. If you want to use this newly sprouted pikmin right away, you can pull them out of the ground and they are good to go. However, if you leave them in the ground for a bit longer and wait until they grow a bulb and develop a flower before plucking them out of the ground, then the new pikmin will be faster and stronger due to the leaf on their heads. Drinking nectar also has the same effect on pikmin. Those of you that have been reading will have probably noticed that I said that only the yellow, blue and red pikmin have onions, and that means that seeds will create pikmin only of those colors. If you want to produce more white or purple pikmin, you will have to locate special flowers in order to magically transform yellow, red or blue pikmin into white or purple pikmin.

Now that you know a bit about the creatures, you’re probably wondering what exactly you’re supposed to do in this game. Let’s see: you need to find lots of items, you’ve got lots of creatures that will follow your every command, therefore you must use your pikmin army to help you locate treasure. Controlling the pikmin seems complex at first, although it becomes second nature within half an hour. When you need to gather a group of pikmin, you simply whistle, thereby calling their attention, and they will follow you from then on. You can separate your group of pikmin by color, which is sometimes necessary. You can even divide your pikmin into two groups, and have Olimar and Louie control a division each in hopes of completing two tasks at the same time.

The maximum amount of pikmin that you are allowed to control is 100. Keeping track of all 100 can sometimes be a little frustrating due to the less-than-perfect control system. There were times when one or two pikmin were stuck somewhere and I had to come back and get him out. There were times that I wanted only a group of blue pikmin to follow me to cross a river and build a bridge, but a few other pikmin also began to follow me after I blew my whistle. Obviously, with so many creatures it is nearly impossible to have perfect control on a console system, therefore I knew that these minor bugs shouldn’t take away too much from my fun, although it can be a bit irritating at times.

As I have previously stated, your goal in Pikmin 2 is to find 10,000 Pokos worth of items. Therefore, you will have to move out with your army of pikmin and investigate the four overworld areas found in this game. There will be plenty of tasks to complete if you wish to succeed. You will have to command your pikmin to build bridges, destroy walls, carry items back to their onions and a lot more. You will sometimes be attacked by wild creatures, and fighting creatures is one of the most exciting tasks in this game. You are supposed to throw the pikmin onto the predators, while they slowly damage them until they die. A few casualties are experienced most of the time during battles. Strategy in battles is also key, as for example you might wish to sacrifice a few poisonous white pikmin in order to quickly win a battle.

Besides the four large overworld areas, there are quite a few underground cave areas to explore. While you are exploring these caves, time stops and you your seeds won’t grow either. These caves are very rewarding because the majority of the high-valued items are located here. Some of the caves are multi-tiered, and due to their large size sometimes you will not be able to explore an entire cave in its entirety because you will have suffered quite a few losses. At the end of each cave a boss will await you, and although defeating them is rewarding, having enough pikmin at the end of a cave might sometimes be a problem.

The items that you will be collecting in Pikmin 2 are part of what makes this game so creative. It turns out that everyday trash such as 7UP bottle caps, Nintendo collectable cards, seashells and other strange items are valued on Olimar’s home planet. After you locate an item, you will need a certain amount of pikmin to lug it back to the ship, where you will be shown how much it is worth. The items will also be given a hilarious new name and entries will be recorded in your Treasures and Piklopedia. If you wish to browse these two records, you will see every creature and item that you have come across, and you will even be able to read an entertaining and lengthy description about each item. In the Piklopedia, which is the where you can see the creatures that you have encountered, you can even see how they react to pikmin by throwing carrots at them.

According to everyone that has played the original Pikmin, the only major problem that plagued that game was its brevity due to the 30-day limit. Each day lasted less than half an hour, therefore you could play the game for no more than 10 hours. Thankfully, the time limit has been lifted and you can keep playing even if you have collected enough items to beat the game. However, the day/night system is still intact. This means that your pikmin must return to their respective onion or ship before it gets dark, otherwise they will be devoured by night-dwellers.

In order to extend the replay value of this game, a challenge and battle mode have been included. In challenge mode, you must play through as many as twenty-five levels in a short time span. In each level, you start out with a small amount of pikmin and your goal is to find the key to advance to the next level. You will encounter enemies, can bring back treasure to increase your score and the difficulty level goes up rather quickly. The Challenge Mode can be played by one player or two players simultaneously.

Battle mode can only be played by two people. One of the players is in charge of Olimar and a team of red pikmin, while the second person gets Louie as his team of blue pikmin. There are three ways to win: steal your opponents red or blue marble, locate and bring back four yellow marbles that are scattered on each level or kill all of your opponent’s pikmin. There are ten different arenas for this battle mode, and they are all well designed.

Graphically, Pikmin 2 is a very interesting game. At first you’d think that this is strictly a kids game and that is why the colors are so colorful. However, despite the nice and bright colors, this is not a solely kids game. Besides the bright colors, Pikmin 2 has a lot of graphical substance too. The water effects are marvelous, and all of the ripples are extremely realistic. The ground textures also look fairly nice, but don’t look at them too closely. The pikmin, as well as Olimar and Louie are modeled appropriately and their animations are very smooth. What’s even more impressive is the fact that I never experienced any slowdown despite the fact that there are a hundred pikmin running around the screen at the same time. Finally, the cut-scenes, especially the ones at the beginning and end, were very well designed and do a great job of carrying the story forward. The ability to view all of the cut-scenes that you have already seen in a special gallery is just the cherry on top.

The audio department did a decent job with Pikmin 2, although the gameplay and graphics certainly overshadow it. The character voicing was done tremendously, mainly because hearing the pikmin burst out into a song is hilarious. Olimar, Louie and their boss were also voiced fairly well in the cut-scenes. The sound effects are nothing too special, although they certainly get the job done. The music fits in with the game, even though it is not orchestrated at all times. Sometimes the music is a bit creepy, and it changes to a much more pulsating beat prior to an encounter with an enemy.

Overall, Pikmin 2 is a very unique game. The creators managed to successfully combine adventure, puzzle and strategy elements. For those of you that have played the original game and were disappointed by its brevity, that should trouble you no more as it will take you around thirty hours to beat this game. The Challenge and Battle modes extend the replay value quite a bit, thus making this a game that you should buy, not rent. I recommend this game to everyone that enjoys unique Nintendo games, strategy games or adventure games. Despite the fact that this would be a perfect present for a kid, I’m sure that adults would enjoy this title too. Pikmin 2 is Nintendo innovation at its finest.