Skip to content
Dom Robinson reviews
Distributed by
Nintendo
- Price: £39.99
- Players: 1
Pikminwas plucked from the mind of Shigeru Miyamoto as he indulged in some gardeningone weekend, leading him to think up the spaceman Captain Olimar whose spaceship,Dolphin, is hit by a stray meteor and is forced to crash-land in a mysterious forestwhich he names the ‘Forest of Hope’ once he’s worked out what he needs to do.
You have 30 days to find the 30 items required to repair your ship, so it’sa good idea to find one item per day (eg. the ship’s engine on day one), butyou need to be quick because after the first day, which gives you some extratime to acclimatise to your surroundings, each day will only last around 15 minutes of game time.
But what of the little creatures who you come across and have to plant beforeplucking them out? Olimar calls them Pikmin and you can have up to100 following you around at any one time, but they all have different attributes,such that red ones can withstand extreme temperatures, blue can swim andyellow can be thrown great heights. Mix them up and the wrong ones won’t survivethe wrong environment.
Also, you must avoid Pikmin-hungry beasts which hang about to eat your new-foundfriends and must be dealt with swiftly. Kicking some of them from behind canwork a treat.
I’d seen the game being played on TV several times and it looks just ascolourful and fluid at home as you roam around your new home for the next month,trying to make sense of it all. Watch as you walk back and forth and the Pikminfollow you, swarming around in a similar fashion. Now marvel at the mixtureof colours and the way in which everything blends together seamlessly.
Sonically, things are fine but not quite as impressive. Sound FX and theconstant theme tune go on in the background, but do go on a little too long.
Something else I noticed when I saw this on TV, I didn’t think I’d get into it half as much as Idid, but once you begin and get into it, the ease in which the gameplay can bepicked up is suprising and you get help along the way as text appears todescribe certain events the first time you come across them.
SOUND EFFECTS AND MUSIC
PLAYABILITY
ENJOYMENT
OVERALL
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.