Prior to Pikmin 4, I had never actually played a Pikmin game before. When the original came out on the GameCube, I was a kid who had to pick and choose which games to ask for, and Pikmin’s hectic-looking multitasking and puzzle elements scared me off. My first exposure to Captain Olimar and flower-headed children/soldiers was in Super Smash Bros. Brawl for the Nintendo Wii. For Nintendo’s part, they didn’t seem too pressed to move new Pikmin games out the door, as Pikmin 3 released a literal decade ago in 2013. If the game’s developers weren’t thinking about Pikmin, why should I?
Pikmin 4 is why.
After getting thoroughly lost in Pikmin 4, I’ve come to realise that I need to check out those other Pikmin games, because Pikmin 4 is one of the most infectious and impossible-to-put-down games I’ve played this year. The core loop of exploration, collecting treasure, fighting monsters, and running back to safety is extremely satisfying. Nintendo dumped a toy box into my lap, a toy box I had seen in the corner of the gaming world for years and never bothered to poke at, and revealed a treasure trove.
In my defence, Pikmin 4 takes a little while to fully open said toy box. At first, you play a brief tutorial as Olimar himself, running around, hurling Pikmin at obstacles with wild abandon. What’s better, you do all of this not in the usual lush outdoor environments, but instead in a giant modern home. ‘What’s up with that,’ you may ask yourself, but the game’s in no rush for answers. ‘What a fun hook for the adventure to come,’ you think.
And then the tutorial ends, at which point Pikmin 4 hits the brakes. The next sequence, in which you learn that your player-created avatar (a first for the series) is a member of a rescue squad sent to rescue usual Pikmin protagonist Captain Olimar before crash-landing themselves, unfurls the various systems and concepts of Pikmin at a slow, leisurely, slightly patience-testing pace. You read a lot of chatter from your crewmates, you experience a slow, slightly redundant tutorial on how to use Pikmin, and you get your first experience in one of the game’s many caves – subterranean levels that slow the flow of time up above, and present a tighter, more meticulously-constructed puzzle chamber to navigate.
Only after you wade through this half-hour-or-so of campaign set-up and exposition does Pikmin 4 finally rev up its engine and cut you loose.At the start of each day, you can explore your base camp, talk to your crew members or other castaways you’ve rescued, and buy upgrades to help you explore further. Once you leave camp, you drop into an area to explore (there are ultimately six areas to pick over, unlocked one at a time as you collect more treasure and upgrade your ship’s sensors). You deploy into an area for one in-game day at a time – the days are long enough to feel accomplished and make meaningful progress most of the time, yet short enough to make it very easy to justify “just one more day” five or six times in a play session.
Each of these areas, ranging from sandy beaches to overgrown forests to the aforementioned inexplicable suburban house, are dizzying feats of level design. Every area is stuffed with clever secrets and environmental quirks – chasms that you need to build a bridge over, secret tunnels, sticky marshes full of poisonous mushrooms you need to carefully disarm before you can continue. These quirks of world design give Pikmin 4 a tremendous amount of charm, as there’s constantly some new trick around the corner.
It reminds me of a speech given by veteran Nintendo designer Yoshiaki Koizumi at the Montreal Games Summit in 2007. Koizumi speaks about the levels in Super Mario 64, and how they were meant to feel complete, distinct, and uninterrupted, much like miniature gardens in boxes that are popular in Japan. This “garden in a box” mentality is absolutely present in Pikmin 4 as well – you can picture every single area as a terrarium you might hold in your hand, as tiny little Pikmin crawl around inside.
Each area has its own completion percentage, viewable on the pause menu and before choosing a stage each day. These numbers are tantalising and entice you to go back in for one more round, one more pass, one more expedition to find those last few pieces of treasure. I’ve never been a completionist, but Pikmin 4 makes 100% completion seem frighteningly possible. The accomplishments and progress come so frequently, and the new ideas and challenges appear with such consistent regularity, that the itch for higher percentages is never gone for long.
Each biome is distinct and unique, and also full of downright heartstopping surprise enemy encounters. While the combat in Pikmin 4 is never too terribly challenging (though some late-game encounters will definitely make you sit up and pay attention), the shocking suddenness with which enemies can rise out of the earth or drop out of the sky will quickly teach you not to let your guard down too much. Navigating these areas, and these enemies, is made easier by the wide range of Pikmin you have at your disposal.
Pikmin 4 introduces two new types of flower-headed followers: Ice Pikmin, which can freeze enemies and bodies of water, making them easier to cross, and Glow Pikmin, which can only be used at night or in low-light caves, and can be called in to patch up your ranks when you’re lacking numbers. They join the seven existing flavours – Red (immune to fire, good fighters), Yellow (immune to electricity, good diggers) Blue (immune to water), Purple (very strong), White (immune to poison, poisonous to enemies who eat them), Rock (very strong, can break barriers), and Pink (can fly).
While you can only control three colours of Pikmin at a time, mixing and matching your crew is easy to do, and you’ll be rewarded for experimentation. The real-time strategy element of Pikmin 4 starts slow and easy, but in no time you’ll be dividing and conquering your troops on multiple fronts, doing on-the-fly risk calculation with no time for second-guessing. The learning curve is extremely well-balanced, as each new challenge gives you just enough friction to get your attention, without ever feeling like things are unfair.
In the face of these mounting challenges, there is one other tool you have besides your Pikmin: your “dog” (called such despite only having two legs) Oatchi. This adorable yellow pup has been a central element of Pikmin 4’s marketing, and it’s easy to see why: Just look at him, he’s a picture-perfect cute game mascot. He’s also a fundamentally different means of playing Pikmin. Oatchi can move a lot faster than you can, and you and all of your Pikmin can hitch a ride on him to cross treacherous terrain. With some training, he can even pull heavier objects, with power equalling hundreds of Pikmin on his own. This added element makes strategizing much more complex – Oatchi has some autonomy, but can be given more specific commands in the field, like patrolling an area or scouting ahead – but do you really want to be without him in case you fall into a tough fight? Trying to balance scenarios like this is a constant feature in Pikmin 4, and Oatchi’s inclusion makes it a richer, more complex calculation overall.
Speaking of new elements, Pikmin 4 also introduces new “Dandori Challenges.” Dandori is a Japanese word that loosely translates to efficient planning and problem solving, and these challenge areas involve pitting you against an enemy squad of Pikmin and seeing who can collect more treasure in a set time limit. These challenges are dazzling and chaotic affairs, complicated by added elements like Mario Kart-esque items that mess with your opponent, and ever-changing bonuses that give more points for specific treasures. These challenges are the high-points of Pikmin 4’s difficulty, and while some late-game challenges can have you pulling out your hair, the thrill of scoring a massive lead on your opponent and the drive to keep going and widen the lead as much as possible is incredibly alluring. You can also play a multiplayer version of these challenges, if you want something to replace Mario Party as your go-to friendship ruining game.
Regrettably, the Dandori Challenges also highlight the most irksome element of Pikmin 4: its sometimes spotty AI. The Pikmin themselves are meant to be a little bit unruly and imperfect in their execution of your commands – that’s where the strategy comes in, and it also makes sense, as these are organic creatures following your command, not robots. But every now and then, in the heat of the moment, you’ll toss your Pikmin at an object, sweating how quickly they’ll attack an enemy or break down a wall, and the Pikmin will just…stand there…doing nothing. When you’re trying to juggle multiple projects at once and being very precise with your Pikmin allotment, false starts like that are miserable, slamming your momentum and your immersion to a screeching halt. Your enemies never seem to have this problem, and animals in the world won’t pass up a chance to munch on your buffering Pikmin, which means a frustrating moment can quickly snowball into catastrophe. Thankfully, resetting is easy and checkpoints are usually very forgiving, but these hiccups definitely diminish what is, when it’s all working right, a stellar gaming flow.
For fans of the Pikmin series, Pikmin 4 takes everything you loved before and builds it out in clever, unexpected ways. For people who’ve never touched a Pikmin game before, Pikmin 4 is an incredible demonstration of the series’ potential, and a masterwork of world design, real-time gameplay, and artistic vision. Who knows how long it’ll be before Pikmin 5 – but Pikmin 4 promises to keep us busy until then.
A copy of Pikmin 4 was provided by PR for the purposes of this review.
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