Pikmin was a mentally addictive game when it first hit the shelves on the Nintendo Gamecube back in 2001. Captain Olimar, a funky looking alien dude, crash lands on a wild and crazy planet and needs to use the native Pikmin, a sort of plant and animal crossovers, to retrieve the missing parts to his space ship so that he can get back home. The good news is that the little fellers are back once again and this time they’ve been rendered in stunning HD beauty in Pikmin 3 for the Nintendo Wii U.
The graphics look amazing with a lush re-imagining of the Pikmin home planet. The increased power of the Wii U takes the series to uncharted levels of pixel brilliance with some cool looking landscapes, very mean baddies baddies and ultra cute Pikmin dudes.
Controlling one of four space-flight wanderers, you get to battle the planet’s obstacles and nasties to get their space drive key back so they can blast off properly with some life giving fruit for their home planet. The bad news though is that Captain Olimar is not down on the list of playable characters at the beginning of the game, so get set to meet a whole new bunch of lost and resourceful characters, however, he gets a number of early mentions so features in the game before the end.
The trailer looks amazing and the addition of Rock Pikmin looks like a good move, along with the added strategy of having more than one space cadet along for the ride. The trailer also features a bizarre flying pink Pikmin, so who knows what to expect from the game.
The genius strategy engine of the original games is at the heart of the game with a whole world full of puzzles, scrapes and alien evolutionary freaks to circumnavigate by amassing as many Pikmin as you can find and hurtling them into harms way. However, the Wii U’s tablet controller will add a few more layers to the strategy by the looks of it with a mapping function control, plus it also features the off-TV playability that’s such a cool part of the Nintendo Wii U.
Pikmin 3 was originally set for a release date with the launch of the Nintendo Wii U, but it was put back to spring 2013, and then again to early summer, hitting the shelves on the 26th July 2013 in the UK. There’s no online function or multi-player as of yet, but hopefully there will eventually be a Pikmin 4 that include these.
Read our Pikmin 3 review to find out how the game stacked up in terms of graphics, gameplay and storyline.
