2 reviews liked by Atomic
VVVVVV
2010
Been a while since I've played this one. A classic indie banger! Wonderfully crafted precision "platforming" with an interesting bunch of gimmicks that don't overstay their welcome.
The greatest praise I can give this game is how intuitive the mechanics all feel. Through both their simplicity and the environments in which they're taught, things like gravity-flipping, screen-wrapping, platform-disintegrating and more are all very easy to pick up.
My biggest complaint is that it's short. I can grind for time trials and Super Gravitron runs, but otherwise there's not too much else to do post-game aside from play it again. At least that's incentivized via death count related achievements.
Amazing soundtrack too!
The greatest praise I can give this game is how intuitive the mechanics all feel. Through both their simplicity and the environments in which they're taught, things like gravity-flipping, screen-wrapping, platform-disintegrating and more are all very easy to pick up.
My biggest complaint is that it's short. I can grind for time trials and Super Gravitron runs, but otherwise there's not too much else to do post-game aside from play it again. At least that's incentivized via death count related achievements.
Amazing soundtrack too!
Pikmin 4
2023
With my previous favorite Pikmin game being 2, I was very happy with this Pikmin. The world has a nice mix of over world adventures where you have to race against a clock, and underground caves that let you go through more linear, curated experiences at your own pace. This game every Pikmin is available and some have more expanded "features" and specialties. This means that enemies and environment hazards can play off them more for more creative designs as well as more open ended approaches to finding a "solution." The actual gameplay in Pikmin 4, and the world you explore is so incredibly in depth and polished and damn fun to explore. Which makes it such a shame the controls are so unabashedly bad.
The game definitely tries to make things easier for new players but locking on to things and refusing to let go. This means you can't even toggle to other targets. You just have to run far enough away from them or send the maximum amount of Pikmin to it. So if you want to target enemy A who's eating your Pikmin, but the game has locked your reticle to treasure A, you have no choice but to run away, then run back, and hope the game locks on to the enemy. This usually results in Pikmin dying in every instance.
Then if I want to send my whole Pikmin hoard to carry an item, it will ONLY let the bare minimum of Pikmin grab on to the item. I have to wait for the Pikmin to start carrying it, have my Pikmin return back to me, THEN I can send my whole squad again to add more Pikmin on to an object to carry it faster. This is awful. Why can't I hold the Y button when I send them so it sends the max amount on the item?
Then there's other baffling decisions the AI makes. If I leave 10 Pikmin waiting in an area without any commands, they're just simply waiting, and a group of Pikmin carrying a treasure walks by, the idle Pikmin don't do anything. They just sit and stand there in place, they don't join in to help carry the treasure. Why? They are being completely and utterly useless standing there, if the day ends they're just gonna die. So why don't they join in to help if someone wanders by? The really bonkers thing is if you use the Idler's Alert, the spot that the Pikmin congregate to, if there's an item nearby they WILL automatically run to it and start carrying it. WHERE IS THE CONSISTENCY?!
All of this may sound like nitpicks but there are 2 very important things to consider. 1. This your controls. You don't do anything in the game, the Pikmin do. They do everything. So controlling them is how you do anything in the game. Having poor or loose or inconsistent controls for that is like a platformer with a crappy jump. It may be "Just a jump" where everything else is good, but it's how you interact with everything. Same here. The controls are so god damn bad it really ruined my experience a lot with how unresponsive it all felt. 2. The entire thing this game is going for it Dandori. Doing multiple things at one for peak efficiency. The whole idea of the game is doing things as quickly and perfectly as possible. To the point that they have bonus challenges that are DAMN hard and allow for VERY little margin of error for any game, let alone a Nintendo game. The fact they have such stringent clear times, but have such awful controls is baffling and was down right tilting at times. Nothing feels worse than being short of a Platinum mettle in a Dandori challenge and the controls not doing what you want them to costing you 5 seconds.
Overall, the game itself is very very good. It's very polished, it's beautiful, holy shit the amount of content this game has is absolutely absurd, enemies and environments are varied, there's so much choice, the music is great, the game itself is fantastic. So it's such a shame that the controls, the way in which you yourself actually plays and experiences the game, feel so unresponsive and frustrating. Luckily something like this can be easily remedied with a patch and some tweaks/additions to the settings. But until then the game is just so damn frustrating when it gets to any of the actual difficult and rewarding content.
The game definitely tries to make things easier for new players but locking on to things and refusing to let go. This means you can't even toggle to other targets. You just have to run far enough away from them or send the maximum amount of Pikmin to it. So if you want to target enemy A who's eating your Pikmin, but the game has locked your reticle to treasure A, you have no choice but to run away, then run back, and hope the game locks on to the enemy. This usually results in Pikmin dying in every instance.
Then if I want to send my whole Pikmin hoard to carry an item, it will ONLY let the bare minimum of Pikmin grab on to the item. I have to wait for the Pikmin to start carrying it, have my Pikmin return back to me, THEN I can send my whole squad again to add more Pikmin on to an object to carry it faster. This is awful. Why can't I hold the Y button when I send them so it sends the max amount on the item?
Then there's other baffling decisions the AI makes. If I leave 10 Pikmin waiting in an area without any commands, they're just simply waiting, and a group of Pikmin carrying a treasure walks by, the idle Pikmin don't do anything. They just sit and stand there in place, they don't join in to help carry the treasure. Why? They are being completely and utterly useless standing there, if the day ends they're just gonna die. So why don't they join in to help if someone wanders by? The really bonkers thing is if you use the Idler's Alert, the spot that the Pikmin congregate to, if there's an item nearby they WILL automatically run to it and start carrying it. WHERE IS THE CONSISTENCY?!
All of this may sound like nitpicks but there are 2 very important things to consider. 1. This your controls. You don't do anything in the game, the Pikmin do. They do everything. So controlling them is how you do anything in the game. Having poor or loose or inconsistent controls for that is like a platformer with a crappy jump. It may be "Just a jump" where everything else is good, but it's how you interact with everything. Same here. The controls are so god damn bad it really ruined my experience a lot with how unresponsive it all felt. 2. The entire thing this game is going for it Dandori. Doing multiple things at one for peak efficiency. The whole idea of the game is doing things as quickly and perfectly as possible. To the point that they have bonus challenges that are DAMN hard and allow for VERY little margin of error for any game, let alone a Nintendo game. The fact they have such stringent clear times, but have such awful controls is baffling and was down right tilting at times. Nothing feels worse than being short of a Platinum mettle in a Dandori challenge and the controls not doing what you want them to costing you 5 seconds.
Overall, the game itself is very very good. It's very polished, it's beautiful, holy shit the amount of content this game has is absolutely absurd, enemies and environments are varied, there's so much choice, the music is great, the game itself is fantastic. So it's such a shame that the controls, the way in which you yourself actually plays and experiences the game, feel so unresponsive and frustrating. Luckily something like this can be easily remedied with a patch and some tweaks/additions to the settings. But until then the game is just so damn frustrating when it gets to any of the actual difficult and rewarding content.