Pikmin

Here's a treat. One of the oldest games in my backlog, in terms of both original release date and time spent on my shelf, Pikmin has now been vanquished. I liked it! But it could have been much better with a few simple tweaks. Heading into the game, I knew that the consensus biggest issue with Pikmin was the in-game thirty-day time limit; Captain Olimar only has enough life support to last him thirty days, so if you haven't reassembled his ship by then, you're shit out of luck. There are thirty parts of the ship to collect and you only need twenty-five in order to successfully lift off and beat the game; you can average slightly less than a part a day, then, and wind up just fine. That's what I did, and the time limit wasn't really much of a challenge. It was, however, an unfortunate limitation. I wish I had been able to take my time and really explore the nooks and secrets of the well-developed world. First party Nintendo games rarely disappoint, and this was one I'd have loved to slow down and really enjoy. But no! There's simply no place for idle wandering in Pikmin, where days pass in fifteen minutes' time and any time wasted could render an entire day mostly useless. I had a few such days during my time with Pikmin, where I didn't collect a single ship piece, and they were a little frustrating. They were easily compensated by the days where I found two or three ship parts, but they left a bitter taste in my mouth all the same. Also, the real-time elements of Pikmin gave the game an emphasis on pipelining your engine, so to speak; any of your one hundred Pikmin not engaged in a task at any given time are being wasted. I worry enough about time management and scheduling algorithms at my day job, and prefer my video games to be relaxing and to unfold at a taste suited to my own preference. Pikmin wasn't a frantic or chaotic game by any stretch, and people have hundred-percented it in eight or nine days out of the thirty available, but I'd have liked it a lot more had it been a take-your-time-and-figure-out-this-puzzle type of game. Granted, that would have made it just a little more like Metroid and Zelda, and I suppose it's good for Nintendo to branch out. Also, apparently Pikmin 2 has done away with the thirty-day time limit. I haven't heard that the concept of discrete days has gone away entirely, which likely means it hasn't, but still, I'm looking forward to something I can take my time with just a little more. All the same, if you're looking for a highly-polished Nintendo game that doesn't take more than eight hours to beat (by design) then you can't go wrong with Pikmin.