Pikmin

[TheFlyingGerbil]

 

So after a looong wait Pikmin 3 is being shown at E3 this year which hopefully means it will have a pre-Christmas release.

 

I hope everyone is suitably excited and we can all enjoy a little bit of wild speculation. What do you want from the game? New pikmin, new art syle? Do you think the play areas should be bigger or more varied?

 

It probably started development on the Wii, do you think it will make a difference? E.g. to how well integrated the tablet is.

[CorgiShinobi]

I think the tablet would be a fantastic addition to Pikmin. I imagine it would allow for better management of all your Pikmin, and I bet this time around there will be a few new types like what Pikmin 2 did.

 

Maybe people who have played the "New Play" versions of the Pikmin series can comment because I don't know how much the Wiimote added to the series. I one thing I sincerely hope for is that Pikmin 3 is more of a WiiU game than how Twilight Princess had minor tweaks to become a Wii platform game.

[UnstableArk]

I always imagined being able to view the progress of your other captain(if applicable) or any Pikmin currently tasked with carrying or fighting while the tv is reserved for your primary captain. Maybe a mini-map? One thing that bothered me about the GC pikmin games was going through the pause menu to get a view of the map.

 

As for the Wii controls for the first two, I can take it or leave it. I was able to play the game perfectly fine in either control scheme, though the fact that you can toss opposite the direction you're running in the Wii versions was definitely a bonus, even if the further tossing distance did cause a number of sequence breaks. But I agree that either version can work just fine. Maybe more so on the Wii U.

[UnstableArk]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=WxWIvaD2XQI

Official E3 trailer for Pikmin 3. Better to look at than the conference feed. Certainly looks pretty, and as a fan of the series, it has my interest.

[FMW]

Will Pikmin 3 give the player a limited number of days to complete the single player mission? I hope so.The timer in Pikmin is a fascinating thing. I think it improves the game for people who are willing/able to deal with it, but it makes the game inaccessible to people who don't wanna handle that much stress from their video game. The timer in Pikmin is pretty hardcore.

 

If you get into Pikmin 1, you can have a fantastic and unique experience with that game. Nothing else is quite like it. It's a big scary world out there in Pikmin, and your little minions can die by the truckload with just one or two poor decisions. The enemies are big, the traps dangerous, and your resources are limited - if you run out of Pikmin your pretty much up a creek. So all of this would encourage a player to play slowly and methodically, right? Take it slow, make sure you've always got Pikmin in reserve, and master the dangers of these supersized nature wonderlands one at a time.

 

Except you can't! Because of the timer, the player is forced to throw themselves forward into the unknown. It makes the game incredibly tense sometimes. You don't know what's ahead, you don't have a ton of Pikmin left so you aren't even sure if you'll be able to handle it, and the day is coming to a close. But you go forward anyway, because otherwise you will run out of oxygen to breathe. You need to to play dangerously, and because of this the player ends up in a ton of really close call situations where they <i>almost</i> have overextended themselves.

 

I recognize that this kind of game isn't for everyone. Players like to feel like they're in control when they play a game - that's comforting. Pikmin 1 didn't truck with that. It put the player in an uncomfortable position right from the get go and never really relaxed. Did that make the game less 'fun'? For someone just picking it up to play casually, certainly. It was stressful. But that kind of stress is very rewarding to players who aren't turned away from the very idea of it.