Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Nintendo Selects: Pikmin 2 Review

Nintendo Selects: Pikmin 2


Please, please, please, pick up Pikmin 2 for Wii! Though this game was announced with retrofitted controls for the Wii eons ago it was well worth the wait. Pikmin 2 might be the last Wii game you buy before you get a brand new Wii U this holiday season, but you'll be playing this game until then.

If you haven't played Pikmin before it's simple, you control a bunch of tiny plant based life forms you pick out of the ground like vegetables. You use them to pick up heavy objects and fight off other weird creatures.

Pikmin 2 starts off right after the events of the first Pikmin game. Capt. Olimar returns back to his home planet to find his business in debt and the only way to get it out is to go back and get treasure from the mysterious planet he found the Pikmin on. You get a new crew mate Louie, which lets you control two sets of Pikmin and take them to separate locations and perform different tasks independent of each other.

What Olimar sees as treasure, we see as a Duracell battery or part of a lost Gundam toy. You see Pikmin and Olimar are extremely tiny, that's why a battery is so big and it's up to you to fight weird bugs and gather as much treasure as possible. When I mean weird bugs I mean, self balloon inflating bomber bugs and bio-mechanical spiders with laser gatling guns.

The game is both cute and and silly as well as action oriented as battles can cost Pikmin their lives which has an anime style ghost float off from the dead Pikmin. Little details like that and the Pikmin humming while in large groups shows a lot of work went into the game. Can't forget the fact it's a kids game with a backstory of a company being in debt and the e-mails you receive from your boss about running away from debt collectors becomes quite silly, like how he lived under a bridge nd started living with animals.

There's many treausre and bizarre enemies to defeat with a style that only Nintendo can pull off, do yourself a favor and delve into the dirt and maybe get ready for Pikmin 3. Now only if the Pikmin series made it to the 3DS, that would just be sweet.