This game is great, if notably rough around the edges. Maybe I got the rose-tinted goggles on for this one, but it's just as much a blast these days as it was back in the day. The only problems I'd say it has is its love for turrets and anti-air missiles, and a pretty strict margin for error. TIE Interceptors will absolutely melt you from offscreen.

Oh, and the final main story level is pretty ass. A level that encompasses all of my nitpicks into one mindless sludge of a level to a point where I'm surprised it's not also another damn escort mission. But it DOES get quite possibly the lamest final boss that's ever been in a Star Wars game. Which feels like a far cry from the Star Destroyers I remember taking down in the sequel.

Still a great game. Maybe just turn on the infinite lives cheat for "Moff Seerdon's Revenge."

Maybe by Kirby standards, this game hasn't aged fantastically, but by NES standards, this aged so well that it's second to maybe like, Mega Men 3-6.
Kirby can't quite move with as much grace as he'd later get, which has the unfortunate side-effect that any ability that isn't a projectile or ranged attack of some kind feels really lame to use. It's a good foundational game to set up what would becoming Kirby's most defining feature. It just has a tendency to smack you with an enemy that flew directly at you from offscreen at like, mach 4.

While far from perfect, I have a lot of affection for this game simply for having a level of looking visually inspired more than a lot of the other games trying to hop on the train of Poke-clones. Like, the first half-hour alone gripped me harder than the 7 or so hours I played of Coromon combined.

This is also a game I can see myself coming back to over and over, with how many customization options it has, including built-in randomizer features. Even without those, it has a lot of combinations of creatures to mess with, and this game's "Shinies" come in different types as well, which adds another layer of having a little randomness in your run.

I can't overstate how much this game feels like the impossibly perfect Pikmin game of my 12-year-old self's dreams. Every Pikmin type is present and has a corosponding onion, loads of old enemies are back, and you can brave the surface at night.

They even bring caves back and they're infinitely better now that they're designed by human hands and not a robot. And have also really toned down stuff like enemies and hazards dropping from the ceiling. It's easily the hardest Pikmin game without succumbing to 2's shenanigans.

My only complaints is that this game really shows why 3 didn't have White or Purple Pikmin return in the main story; outside of caves and Dandori challenges, not every Pikmin is quite treated equal (Purples especially feel present out of obligation, beyond a couple 100+ weight objects). And the soundtrack is easily the weakest in the series.

That and I wish the autolock was something you could toggle off. I'd just rather not have it on and it repeatedly has me throwing Pikmin onto the wrong object, or at a couple points feels like it's actively trying to get my Pikmin killed.

Other than that, this is easily the best Pikmin. Like they REALLY knocked it out of the park with this one.

The best Pikmin. It makes Pikmin just about the best speed game it can be, with the "go here" command alone adding so much depth to what you can do. The amount of QoL between Pikmin now behaving much more consistently, having what was the C-stick charging just be on a button now, Pikmin only stopping what they're doing if you whistle on them for longer than a second to cut down on accidentally interrupting them. Chef's kiss.

My only gripe, really, is that story progress isn't as open-ended as 1 or 2, with there being set objective points and a linear progression through most of the levels. It opens up after you unlock the final area and are kinda expected to take that opportunity to clean up what fruits are left, but still.

This game is so cool I wish they'd make a fourth one.

I've played 1 and 3 over and over and over again, over the years. And I've been meaning to play 2 again for a long time but was always afraid of doing so because of how often I heard (and remembered) how full of shit the game is.

I was correct.

I don't know if I can bring myself to dislike Pikmin 2 because at the end of the day it's still Pikmin. It's just the least good Pikmin. Purple Pikmin make combat so trivial most of the time, but at the same time you're having to play the game like you're walking on eggshells because enemies and bombs will just drop from the ceiling unprompted. Some of which will ONLY trigger around Pikmin that are carrying something. Like I swear this game is specifically designed to make the player upset, the fuck is up with that.

As such, the difficulty curve is more like a difficulty stock market line graph. Just shooting up and down for arbitrary reasons. A cave will be a slog to get through but then the boss at the end is completely trivial. Several enemies like Bulbears and Gatling Groinks are disproportionately dangerous but also made a joke so long as you have an ultra bitter spray on you. It's just a mess.

An exhausting game that's carried by the fact that it's Pikmin.

Gameplay - 800
Replayability - 1000
Photography Judging AI - 50

You were close!

This game really is such a stand-out of the medium. So many games, especially these days, really want to be playable Hollywood movies. Which is fine and all, but it does make their video game-ness at least bit interchangable. Like, it's not hard to imagine God of War 2018 as if it were just a movie adaptation instead.

There is no Katamari in a world with no video games. Katamari proves the medium of video games as a form of artistic expression, not by having a touching story or having high-fidelity graphics, but instead purely by being something that can ONLY be done in the form of an interactive medium. Katamari IS video games.

Metroid Prime is a game that could've been perfected with a more from-scratch remake, mainly to heavily retool the bosses that are long, boring, and tedious (especially Thardus), and redesign the map slightly to have less moments where you're running marathons just to get to the next mandatory objective.

That said, it's still the legendary Metroid Prime but for the most part prettier and visually revamped. It's far from perfect, some effects in the original like beam projectiles lighting dark rooms and reflections don't work in the remaster. But for a simple Remaster, they went above and beyond to visually revamp the game into easily one of Switch's best looking games. All the more impressive that they managed to still capture the original's timeless aesthetic, so this game's bound to age just as well too.

Gyro controls are a nifty addition too. If Prime 4's control scheme is anything like this, I'm down with it.