E3 2003: Pikmin 2 Hands-On

Two E3's ago, we stumbled across a unique looking game in Nintendo's booth known as Pikmin. Here are impressions of this E3's sequel, plus new screens.

At E3 2001, Pikmin was a bit of a sensation. Drawn to the game by its enchanting music, I made my way over to the game numerous times to watch it in action, thanks in part to the very nice music. The game had a unique presentation with lush looking well textured environments, but I honestly never really understood the gameplay mechanics, nor did I ever bother trying to find out what they were due to lack of interest.

Fast Forward to this year's E3 and still not having played the original Pikmin (yes I'm a heathen), history almost repeated itself with me initially looking past Pikmin 2 during the first two days of the show and focussing my attention on the other games at the Nintendo booth. However, fate made sure things turned out differently this year as I hesitantly picked up the game controller of Pikmin 2 to see what the game had to offer and came away quite pleased with Pikmin 2. Since I never played the original, I played alongside a friend in split-screen two player mode and picked up the gameplay mechanics by watching him initially and figuring out the rest on my own.

Pikmin 2 kind of reminded of the 'Lemmings' with its tiny work force group known as the "Pikmin" being directed to perform tasks by a lead character, which in the Pikmin's case is Captain Olimar, who has returned to the Pikmin's planet to try and save the company he works for from going bankrupt. In order to do so, he has to salvage the treasure buried all over the Pikmin's planet. Also known as stealing. The company's debt is a nice chunk of pokos change, 10,000 pokos to be exact, and Olimar's brought an assistant with him to help speed things up.

If these two lazy bums can get their act together and delegate their work effectively to the little work-aholic Pikmin, they should be able to wipe out that debt in no time! The gameplay features of Pikmin 2 allows you to alternate controlling the main characters and command your Pikmin to defeat enemies, collect items, solve puzzles and propogate more Pikmin.

With the two-player co-op mode, new Pikmin colors and no time limit, Pikmin 2 is said to improve on the original in every way, something I find to be quite arguable. The graphics weren't as pleasant as the ones in the original and were just average at best in my opinion, but the verdict is still out on the visuals as we only played through two levels. The music certainly wasn't anywhere near as enchanting as the music of the first Pikmin and was pretty mediocre. Hopefully it was just a small portion of the soundtrack and there's more memorable stuff to come.

I have to admit, I was a bit apprehensive about playing Pikmin 2 at first, and having not played the original I didn't know what to really expect from this game.

But in the end I found Pikmin 2 to be alot of fun, sporting highly addictive gameplay and some cute little Pikmin characters that in away reminded me of the Lemmings. This is definitely a game we plan to keep a beady red eye on.

Joseph Jackson
Staff Writer, Kikizo Games