Pikmin 3 review

I’ve never really played a Pikmin game. Sure I know what it’s about but I’ve never actually been compelled by the cutesy graphics or felt the need to boss loads of little aliens about with flowers and leaves popping out the top of their heads. This time though, in Pikmin 3, it’s all in beautiful HD so I thought I’d give the game a go and see what it was all about.

So the gist of the game is that you play as three astronauts who have crash landed on a planet when in search of food for their home planet that’s running out of the stuff. Luckily, you happen upon these little Pikmin creatures that you can boss about with your whistle and make do all manner of stuff. Just point and whistle over them and they’ll follow you about, you can then point on things in the environment to make them build bridges, attack creatures, break down walls and gather materials and items to take back to your base.

There are also new types of Pikmin to do your bidding. Red Pikmin are good fighters and fire-proof, Yellow Pikmin can withstand electricity, some of the Pikmin can fly and Rock Pikmin can be lobbed at stuff to break it or carry lava bombs about which can devastate the landscape and enemy creatures. Every day you have a set limit of time to explore and find fruit as you play through the story which adds some strategy. Run out of fruit and it’s game over so it’s a good job they’ve added the option to go back through previous days and tighten up your tactics if you feel you wasted too much time puzzling something out earlier on.

Once you reunite the three explorers other tactics come into play, where you must throw Pikmin to your buddies in order to make progress or just multitask, performing many tasks at once.

It’s hard not to fall in love with the look of this game, the clever tilt shift effect makes everything really feel miniature and you can’t help but feel a pang of guilt if you leave any Pikmin behind once the sun sets or if they get gobbled up by a predator. The Gamepad also lets you trace where you want people to go without the need to follow them on-screen, and you can also switch the entire game to the Gamepad if someone wants to watch TV or do something else - always a welcome addition! There’s also a Mission mode for extra single player capers and a multiplayer Bingo Battle mode which can prove fun but it would be nice if you could take it online.

Pikmin 3 isn’t quite the killer app the Wii U desperately needs but it is a quality Nintendo title that will provide some strategy for younger gamers and still give adults a thing or two to think about. It gets 8 out of 10.

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Related: Pikmin for the Wii review, Pikmin game, Pikmin 3 review on Youtube