Almost time for more Pikmin adventures! (thoughts on the Pikmin 4 demo)

    It's a rare time right now. A new Pikmin game is getting ready to launch in the middle of July for the first time since 2013's Pikmin 3. Pikmin 4 launches on July 21, and to give us a little taste, Nintendo has released a demo for the long awaited title. What do I think so far as someone who is not a die-hard Pikmin fan, who never beat the first or second games, even though I really enjoyed the second one, and also enjoyed the third, which I did finish? Let's talk about it.

A weird retcon or something more?

    The demo for Pikmin 4 seems to go through the whole opening sequence of this new game, beginning with Captain Olimar searching for parts of his ship, just like he did in the first Pikmin game. He befriends the Pikmin and a big green dog who all help him to find the parts of his ship, just like he did in the first game in the franchise (other than the dog), but we actually take control of Olimar inside a house, which is a first for the series, though we saw houses in the most recent trailer. This opening sequence does a good job of tutorializing how the dog works in this game, even if Olimar's companion isn't quite as cute as Oatchi, the custom character's pet. The Pikmin all run out of the onion, and Olimar has to charge, jump, and sniff, relying on Moss, the big green dog to do all this, while whistling to get the Pikmin back to him. I will say, I didn't think about this game adding a jumping mechanic through the rideable rescue pups, but they're a cool edition to the game for sure! Olimar rounds up the Pikmin and defeats a beast that has swallowed the communicator for the ship, and upon reinstalling it, he sends a message to the Rescue Corps to come rescue him. Unfortunately, they crash onto the planet as well when they arrive! That's where your created custom character comes in. I have to pause for a moment here, since this game does indeed seem to be a retcon of the original game in the series, but instead of Olimar getting back in the designated time after finding all of the pieces of his ship, others come looking for him and he apparently doesn't make it. In the original game, Olimar died if you didn't get all of the parts in 30 days, so... this seems like this game could be very bad time for the Captain. Back to the plot though, you play as the newest member of the Rescue Corps, and it's up to you to rescue everyone and get them back home safely. One cool thing that I learned from the demo, whatever color you choose for your spacesuit becomes the primary color for the whole Rescue Corps. For example, I chose Green, so the tips of the large space ship (the S.S. Shepherd), your ship (the S.S. Beagle), the flag planted at every cave, and the space suits are all Green. It's just a neat bit of customization that I didn't expect.

Let's talk about how it plays!

    In terms of the gameplay, the major additions to this bit that you play in the demo come from Oatchi, the rescue pup. In the beginning of the first day, you don't even get any pikmin right away. Oatchi does the heavy lifting until right at the end of the first day when you get back to the S.S. Shepherd and Oatchi digs up the red onion. Oddly enough, the onion will only spit out 20 Pikmin, while in all the other games you're able to have up to 100 Pikmin out on the field at a time. What's going on here? The answer soon reveals itself as you find some Ice Pikmin in a cave. Ice Pikmin are new to this game, and do basically what they say on the box. they freeze things, either bodies of water, enemies, or even jelly blobs that the Pikmin cannot destroy any other way. The fact that there are more Pikmin down here says to the crew that you've already rescued that you can have more than 20 under the surface of the planet. while on expedition though, you find some garlic, which allows 10 more Pikmin to roam around the surface, so by the time I was nearing the end of the demo, I had 30 in my party on the surface. This makes for an interesting bit of strategy, on top of all the treasure which will unlock the different areas of the map, there is also the garlic which will really come in handy to have a full party. It's not even out of the question for our characters to be able to command more than 100, though it may get a bit unwieldy past that point, so we'll definitely have to see. 

    Yes, I did mention treasure, which is back from Pikmin 2, and I'm very happy about that. We've already seen a Game Boy Advance SP in the demo, along with a toy train, a Russian Nesting Doll, and some other great additions. The goal is a bit different this time around, since the treasures are all filled with a substance called Sparklium, which gives the S.S. Shepherd more power to locate new areas of the planet, and eventually will allow it to take off. Along with finding the treasures, we also have Rescue Corps members and Captain Olimar to find, which is a similar task, it seems. The demo had us finding 4 or 5 of the members that we're looking for, though a few weren't related to the Rescue Corps at all, begging the question... how did they get here? We do have a lot of people involved in the corps operations, the three that we find are the communications officer, who does most of the tutorial speak it seems, the captain of our little team, who doesn't quite seem to know what she's up against, and the inventor, who runs the lab and can design upgrades for your character while also teaching Oatchi some new tricks. The Sparklium also comes into play with this component since you need it to buy the upgrades. A good way for one element of the game to bleed over into another.

    I was happy to see this demo already showing us how useful the Ice Pikmin are, with a few treasures being held on the other side of a pond. Even though Oatchi can swim through water, and carry the Pikmin along with him while he's doing that, there is still the issue of having the Pikmin carry the treasure back to the Beagle. With the Ice Pikmin, you just have to toss in a few of them to freeze the body of water, and you are able to walk right across with your whole party. I like how it requires a lot more Ice Pikmin to freeze a large body of water, since that could potentially be a broken mechanic and I would question the use of Blue Pikmin this time around. With things the way that they are, however, I do think that Blue Pikmin could be a little less useful, but it opens up a wide variety of new ideas for them. We didn't get to experience any of the nighttime elements in this demo, but I'm excited to see what those areas have in store.

    This demo did a great job of getting me excited for Pikmin again. I feel like I always really enjoy the games, but there's so much time between each one, I forget what it's like to play a new one for the first time. One thing that did disappoint me is the tacked on Co-op mode in the same vein as Super Mario Galaxy, but it's better than nothing I suppose. I was definitely on the fence with this game at first, but after playing the demo, I look forward to picking it up when it comes out on July 21!

    Thanks so much for reading my post, friends. I really hope that you enjoyed the demo as much as I did, and that you're looking forward to the game! Are you looking forward to picking it up? This is a pretty packed time for games, so there's a whole lot out there. Until next time, friends, I've been Jonathan, your Self-Proclaimed Captain, and I'll talk to you again soon!