Preview: Pikmin 3

Format: Wii U
Genre: Action-Strategy
Release Date: November 2012 (subject to change)
Publisher: Nintendo
Hype Rating: 10/10

It's been a while but it's finally time for another delivery of Spicy Chicken Bites straight to your computer! Today I'll be taking a look at the upcoming release of Pikmin 3 on the Wii U which will be coming out (hopefully) in November this year. It's safe to say my co-workers of SpicyChickenCow aren't big on Nintendo, no wait, scratch that, they pretty much hate the stuff, but I grew up with it and Pikmin is definitely one of my all time favourites.

For those of you that don't know, the very first Pikmin was released just over 10 years ago in 2002 on the Gamecube, with it's only sequel released in October 2004, just under 2 years later, yes, it's taken 8 years for Pikmin 3 to come to us, so it better be good - Duke Nukem certainly wasn't and God only knows how long they were working on that.

The Pikmin games are kinda like those real-time strategy games on the market, the aim being to command a group of up to 100 pikmin in order to carry out tasks you can't do as their commander and ultimately achieve  a goal which requires carrying many over-sized objects back to your rocket-ship. In the first game, you had 30 game days to collect 30 pieces of your destroyed ship that crash landed on the Pikmin's home planet and in the second game you were collecting 201 treasures from the planet (that happen to look a lot like some of the things we use and have used in the past) in order to pay off your freight company's debt and ultimately get rich. So what does Pikmin 3 have in store for us? Well, to be honest, right now, nobody knows, Nintendo were very secretive about the plot and the goal, though fans have their own guesses as to what the plot will be. One noticeable thing mentioned at the E3 unveiling was that the heroes of the previous games - Captain Olimar and Louie - will not be playable in Pikmin 3 and you instead control 4 (can we expect 8 if they make Pikmin 4?) completely new space commanders, which has lead to particular fan theories such as 'scientists exploring the planet Olimar and Louie discovered' or my own theory 'Olimar and Louie's families searching for them after they got stranded.' Least said, they've not given anything away here, which leads me to hope they're brewing something brilliant that hopefully nobody could have thought of.

The 4 new Captains, just.... Who the hell are they!?

As fans would expect, some new species of pikmin have also been unveiled in pikmin 3: Pink Pikmin (which can fly but are not confirmed as playable) and Stone Pikmin (which look like rocks and can shatter hard objects), to me they seem a lot like the purple pikmin from Pikmin 2, so may be replacing them but again I can't say for certain. Pikmin 3 is holding a lot of surprises, including the possibility of even more pikmin that are currently unannounced and with the Wii U's new graphics, it looks beautiful.

See what I mean? All it would take is David Attenborough and Nintendo could air this on National Geographic

Nintendo announced there would be a new Multiplayer mode for Pikmin 3 as well, unfortunately it won't be online, however, as I'm still getting playability out of Pikmin 2's multiplayer, I can't wait for what they have in store, a battle mode similar to Pikmin 2's would be lovely, but what I'm most hoping for is that the main story mode will be playable in co-op, that was the one thing I've always felt Pikmin 2 was lacking and if they can get it in 3, well, 3rd time's the charm, or so they say
That just leaves me to talk about pretty much the only fully confirmed part of the game which is the new Challenge mode. Pikmin 3's challenge mode is a time based trial for you to collect as much fruit as you can with a limited number (I think) of pikmin, it's all about time management and efficiancy, which will probably be a great experience for hardcore score chasers as they try and find the quickest way to all the fruit, though personally I'd prefer a complete new set of stages like Pikmin 2's Challenge mode, but in all honestly, after 8 years of playing Pikmin 2, it is all a little bit boring now, so hopefully they'll be enough new experiences and features in this game to keep me as hyped up as I have been over the past few days until I actually finish it.

A typical Challenge mode game screen... Uh... Yeah I have nothing else to say about this... Oooohhhhh look at the new rocket pod...

What more to say? Well there's a number of new enemies which have been added to the mix, again each with unique new ways to battle them, and new ways to kill your precious little troopers, but the hush-hush level of the new Pikmin leaves many unanswered questions - questions that I hope I can answer sometime in the near future.

One of Pikmin 3's new bulborbs, looks like it could be very annoying...
... It also looks like it could be setting up for some tenticle porn

I look back on this preview and I think: 'Wow, I usually try to be funny in the stuff I write' but this time I honestly couldn't really think of anything funny to say about it despite the fact that I'm talking about a game that should practically sell it's self to humor so in one last bid for a laugh, I leave you with this:

"Daddy! Daddy! The Pikmin are attacking me!"
"Piss off, I'm sleeping"

So that's all for today, which just leaves me to blast off into the planet's atmosphere and let the nocturnal creatures have their way with you, repeatedly!