1,228 Pikmin Were Harmed for the Making of this Review
(Disclaimer: I played this on the Nintendo Switch as part of Nintendo’s Pikmin 1+2 bundle.)
Is there a video game more innately brutal than Pikmin? Disregarding games with sad stories, e.g. The Last of Us, there may not be another game where the player themself is directly responsible for the potential tragedies that occur within. As in Pikmin, the player controls Olimar, an astronaut whose ship crash-lands on a strange planet inhabited by strange creatures. Among the large, hostile inhabitants are the small, botanical Pikmin, who come in red, yellow, and blue. The eager-to-assist Pikmin help Olimar on his mission to retrieve 30 lost ship parts (though only 25 are required) within 30 days, which is when Olimar’s oxygen supply fully depletes.
After a brief cutscene of the crash-landing, Pikmin plops you into its world without providing a shred of guidance, and I note this as a positive thing — openings of games that tell rather than show are exhaustingly tedious (games like the series’ own Pikmin 4). Olimar does often take notes on behaviors and whatnot that will appear as skippable, on-screen text, but only after the player discovers these behaviors for themselves.
Olimar is capable of having 100 Pikmin at his disposal at once, while extra ones reside in their respectively colored onions (essentially their homes, where they can be used later if needed). The Pikmin are capable of transporting materials (such as ship parts and corpses), fighting creatures, overcoming obstacles, and building bridges. Each color of Pikmin have their own unique traits. Red Pikmin are generally stronger fighters and immune to fire, Yellow Pikmin can be thrown to higher ledges and can carry items called bomb rocks to destroy walls, and Blue Pikmin are capable of breathing underwater.
These elements are all useful since the game is built around their distinct abilities, such as with the anteater-like creature that lunges Pikmin forward off its body and torches them with its snout. These environmental threats encourage the player to strategize. Swampy areas containing large pools of water are obviously best navigated with the accompaniment of Blue Pikmin, and a thin pathway littered with fiery spouts is best trekked with Red Pikmin. However, the game also includes a few clever design choices in which the player must carefully utilize more than one type of Pikmin, e.g. having Yellow Pikmin retrieve a ship part in a high place but then substituting them for Red Pikmin, who then finish the transfer over the aforementioned fiery spout pathway.
The game’s five areas all present new ideas and are sizably scaled. The first area, The Impact Site, is a small tutorial area absent of enemies to ease in the player for what’s to come. The subsequent two areas each introduce the Yellow and Blue Pikmin, respectively, while also presenting facets (like water and bomb rocks) that you can’t interact with or overcome, conveying progress not just as a requirement, but something to be excited for, too. The fourth area is the most difficult, followed by a linear area with the final boss that first prompts you to use all three Pikmin types in some capacity in order to reach it. You can revisit any of these areas throughout your playthrough.
Though the cute, little Pikmin are the very tool to Olimar’s success, they are also the very reason the game can be so unforgivingly brutal. An attachment forms because the player becomes dependent on them. Seeing even one Pikmin die is a travesty, and the fact is is that the fragile creatures can die so easily.
Pikmin can be burned, drowned, stomped on, flattened, eaten, exploded, or simply left for dead overnight if not safe in Olimar’s company. The hardest fact to accept in Pikmin is that you can’t save them all; sometimes sacrifice, intentional or not, is necessary. One error in my first playthrough occurred because a bomb rock I was too close to exploded, killing almost my whole squad of Pikmin, making my jaw hang open for a solid minute. At the very least, if any major catastrophes occur, you can always revisit any of the days you’ve played so far.
That said, Pikmin is rough around the edges. For one, the Pikmin are stupid. Simply crossing a bridge over water can lead to the demise of a few (with a full squad of 100, that is) merely due to the game’s default loose travel formation. Even the (very useful) line-up function can’t save the stragglers. This would be an understandably challenging obstacle had the devs actually structured it so. But, no, it’s rendered as a tedious pain.
The controls can be awkward, too. Pikmin color selection, while usefully strategic, tends to have a mind of its own, resulting in more unnecessary Pikmin casualties. The camera can be occasionally awkward, as well, often requiring an excess amount of manual control, especially while facing large enemies whose bodies exceed the frame of the screen.
That said, Pikmin’s brutality isn’t rooted in a world of pure cruelty but rather conquerable adversity. The game draws a very real connection to nature in the natural world: it is savage, unrelenting, and best not to be meddled with. Pikmin, however, is a video game you should meddle with.
7/10
