![]() ![]() But we do our darndest to stave off the inevitable. At the time of writing, I witnessed the end of 366 tiny lives, each rising off the screen, a blue spectre wafting up like smoke from a burnt match. At the end of each level, your lost Pikmin are tallied, the final amount of deceased given a number colored an off-white. Never before has a game exhibited the stark faceless truth of mortality in such colorful packaging. ![]() And like a newborn, we coo and “aww” at its fragile beauty, all the while understanding fully the dark secret buried inside. So the father of Mario, Link and Donkey Kong saw fit to reintroduce his lesser-known baby to the world. With the series dormant since 2004, nearly a decade has passed, plenty of time for some enterprising designer, perhaps Lemmings’ David Jones or Sim City’s Will Wright, to evolve franchise creator Shigeru Miyamoto’s template of miniature explorers growing and commanding plant-like servants on a hostile but familiar-looking planet. The game is like nothing else you’ve played–unless you’ve played Pikmin or Pikmin 2. That’s Pikmin 3 in a seedpod: a lush exterior giving way to cruelty and nature’s harsh rules of survival. Whether it was to secure her own pretend livelihood as a Pikmin, or to leave scores of fake me’s behind, wandering helpless and afraid before a swift devouring, she does not say. Even better, she says she might want to start playing the game, too. “What if that was me, Jon?” she asks, kidding but kind of serious. ![]() ![]() And, when I failed to save every one of them, the requisite grief. “What just happened, Jon!”Īfter minutes of passive observation, she felt a modicum of love for these creatures. We hear a tiny squeal as the camera pans up, mercifully, following the ship and its safe inhabitants. The slug opens its slobbery maw and lunges. “What’s going to happen, Jon.” This is not stated as a question. On-screen, a bipedal slug approaches the pikmin, now looking lost and confused. “Oh no.” My wife realizes something is wrong. A single yellow pikmin saunters back toward the launching area, wondering where its friends have gone. The engines fire my ship and its cargo rise into the sky as the camera lingers on the planet below. My miniature astronaut waddles back to the ship, a horde of yellow and red pikmin scrambling to keep up. Time to saddle back to the spaceship and blast into orbit until daybreak. But it was getting dark on planet PNF-404. “They’re so cute!” she says.Īnd indeed, the tiny pod-people called pikmin, with bulging eyeballs and leaves sprouted from their heads, are adorable. My wife sits on the couch as I play Pikmin 3. ![]()
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January 2023
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