Pikmin

The Good
Rarely does a video game come along that has such an unusual, fresh style of gameplay that, until then, was hardly ever touched upon. Well, meet Pikmin, an presumably obscure game that you are shocked to see that the creators of Mario made. If you thought that, you would be wrong.

The story of Pikmin, at first, seems like the typical "main character is in certain doom" type of story. But wait. There appears to be a bulb of some sort. What could it be? You walk up to it and BANG! It pops out of the ground, turns red, sprouts legs, and produces a seed. And, deep in your mind, you think, "What the hell just happened?". Well, you just started a new species...called Pikmin.

The game play is like none I have seen to often. Basically, you must gather objects into the "Onion" (Pikmin Mother Ship) and place objects such as Pellets and dead insects into it to make more Pikmin... and more... and more... and even more until you have a picnic's worth of Pikmin! Once you've done this, you can gather the parts of the ship you crash landed, getting one step closer to getting home each time. This type of gameplay, in one word, is: unique.

The music sounds almost as if it came straight from a Pixar short film. Not that that's a bad thing. In fact, if you think about it, the Pikmin themselves seem like Pixar film characters. If Pikmin gets a movie, it HAS to be made by Pixar. No one else. And it should NOT be live action.

The Bad
Even though this game is truely inspirational, there are a few problems. For one, and this almost never happens on a GameCube, the frame rate is AWFUL!!! I think the reason for this could be because of the motion blur when you use the camera.

There is also something really strange with the whistle. It seems like when you blow it, it takes Pikmin a second or two to respond. Wait... THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT THE PROBLEM IS!!!!

The Bottom Line
Even though it has some very, very annoying things with it, it is still a truely innovative piece of work. I hope that ,some day, Nintendo, Sega, Valve, or any company comes out with a game within the decade that truely feels like no other and is unique in all ways. Until then...sigh.