Blair Loveday
My history with Pikmin consists of playing Pikmin 3 Deluxe and that’s it.
This iconic series had eluded me until the Switch and it was very much my loss, as I loved that game. Now Pikmin has its first new entry on Switch with Pikmin 4 and it’s a great entry point for newbies.
If you’re wondering if you can jump in at Pikmin 4, the answer is a very strong yes.
There is a short animation at the start to tell you the story so far, which doesn’t take long. Basically a little spaceman Olimar crashed on a planet and his ship fell into heaps of pieces. He discovered some weird little creatures called Pikmin who helped him rebuild his ship by following his orders. Yep you’re caught up.
To be fair there is heaps more plot, but you don’t really need that intricacy for the game. Early on you help Olimar get a SOS signal out and then you bring a new customized person to come and help out, there is more crashing, more chaos, more Pikmin. I enjoyed the actual plot enough, but pretty quickly stopped caring. I am here for the gameplay and gameplay alone.
In short you have run around platforming. To get through areas you need to throw Pikmin, get Pikmin to carry stuff around, and general fun with Pikmin. Throughout levels you find more of them to get through areas requiring more or certain numbers of specific coloured Pikmin. You will also encounter enemies which you will destroy in many creative ways, also generally involving Pikmin.
Like previous games there is a day night cycle, and when you are out at night enemies become more powerful and angry. A change to this game is that there is actual gameplay involved at night time as opposed to the old doom and gloom. Another massive change is you can rewind so when you make a bad decision that loses lots of Pikmin, or if night creeps up faster than you expected, you can just rewind a bit and get yourself to safety. Or make the same mistakes over and over again, this may be a personal experience
On the whole Pikmin 4 is more Pikmin. There are some serious quality of life improvements and a lot to enjoy, but for the most part, it’s Pikmin.
If you haven’t played the series before then this is a damn good place to start.
Released: July 2023
Rating: G
Platforms reviewed: Nintendo Switch
Genre: Platformer
Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo