![]() Granted, you revisit old areas, but the gameplay calls for entirely new tactics. If that’s not enough, Pikmin 4 eventually lets you play spooky tower defense missions at night. Several boss fights had me hooting and hollering. Like shrines and the depths in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Pikmin 4 uses caves to deliver bite-sized bursts of the game’s most intensely imaginative heights. Instead, you focus on overcoming even more challenging encounters. In these mini-dungeons, time slows so you don’t need to worry about returning to your ship. This time around, the caves feature expertly crafted designs instead of randomized layouts. Pikmin 4 also has caves, a returning feature from Pikmin 2. Even after you see the credits, Pikmin 4 has plenty more to show you. The areas you visit are deceptively dense overworlds, offering many puzzles to solve, treasures to collect, and challenges to tackle in whatever order you deem most efficient. As you find more castaways, your community expands with new side quests and details about the Pikmin universe. Although you only play as one captain, you arrive as part of an entire rescue team. If not for the time limit, I could spend hours marveling at this ant’s-eye view of the natural world, with its calming gentle music and ambient noises.īut Pikmin 4 is also the biggest Pikmin game so far. Pikmin 4 is an absolutely gorgeous release that captures the mundane beauty of “treasures” like a pile of grapes on the beach or a child’s lost toy caught in a spider’s web. ![]() With the closer camera angle, Pikmin 4’s adventures feel even more intimate in these richly detailed natural settings. The Pikmin series loves to play with scale, and that continues here. You can only have three types out at any given time, which also makes puzzles easier to wrap your head around. These Pikmin are powerful, but you must carefully manage them, adding another satisfying strategic layer. This includes more specialized Pikmin from early games, such as poisonous white Pikmin and tough rock Pikmin. However, similar to Pikmin 2, you can’t spawn all Pikmin at will certain Pikmin species can only be found in the wild. Be sure not to leave any allies alone at night or you will lose them.Īll Pikmin types return in Pikmin 4. In Pikmin 4, you can reposition your base so Pikmin don’t have to travel as far to bring back resources, such as upgrades to increase the size of your squad. On the surface, you only have so much time to explore during the day, about 15 real-world minutes, so you must plan accordingly to make the most of every second. It gives you the genre’s joys without the headaches.ĭuring my treks, I used red Pikmin to cross fiery hazards, yellow Pikmin to disable electric walls, and the new ice Pikmin to freeze enemies. Pikmin’s charm has always been repacking overwhelming strategic gameplay in a far more approachable form. Nintendo's representatives stressed that this entry should be an excellent jumping-on point, and I agree. Like Splatoon, Pikmin is pretty different from anything else in gaming, so the familiarity feels acceptable, especially considering how Pikmin 4 later builds on this foundation. Subtle, almost unnoticeable tweaks to Pikmin behavior and auto-aiming make the title a smooth play, especially when you replay the older series entries. In fact, my Pikmin 3 Deluxe muscle memory instantly kicked upon firing up the game. Strategy is an inherently tricky genre, especially on a console, but the game's combination of traditional buttons and a motion-control cursor feels as intuitive as in past titles, if not more so. Pikmin 4 will feel immediately familiar to Pikmin veterans, even with the developmental switch to the Unreal Engine. Pikmin 4 explains this through the Japanese phrase “Dandori,” which roughly translates to “the art of efficient multitasking.” Combat helps your troops survive dangerous local predators, but the series is as much about collecting treasure and navigating the map as it is about warfare. Instead of playing a general who commands soldiers to defeat enemy armies, you play as a tiny astronaut who plucks obedient plant-like creatures (Pikmin) from the ground. ![]() Serene StrategyĪside from spin-offs like Pikmin Bloom, the core Pikmin titles are real-time strategy games. ![]() It's an easy Editors’ Choice pick for Nintendo Switch games. Featuring a combination of smartly streamlined and greatly expanded mechanics, as well as numerous beautiful locations to explore, Pikmin 4 delivers the franchise’s most exciting and strategic fun yet. After a decade of teases and vague confirmations, Pikmin 4 ($59.99) is finally here, and it was absolutely worth the wait. The Switch is showing its age, but Nintendo still has exciting releases in store for the console/handheld hybrid. ![]()
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