Sunday, November 9, 2008

Pikmin!

I recently found a copy of the Nintendo Gamecube title Pikmin.
It's excellent! It plays a lot like Lemmings, except you have slightly better control over the little helpers.
You take the role of an alien whose rocket ship has crashed on an unfamiliar planet. You encounter a number of small beings, the "Pikmin", who follow you and perform directed tasks (like destroying walls, building pathways, etc). You also use the Pikmin to collect the missing parts of your rocket ship, so that you can rebuild your ride and escape from the planet before your life support systems fail.
My only (minor) complaint is the camera control. Many times I've tried to navigate my player through the landscape, only to struggle with an unfortunate viewing angle because I keep forgetting to reposition the camera. I suspect this is because the game came out early in the console's lifetime, and the designers didn't have the familiarity with the controls to come up with something more comfortable.

I played it for about three hours last night, but realised that I couldn't save my progress because my memory card was too full! On the other hand, I'll be better equipped to do the first few stages now that I know where all the parts are hidden... ;)

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