I decided to play The Coal out of morbid curiosity, thanks to everyone making this game out to be worse than Satan and @ZeusDeeGoose's disdain for the writing. Putting aside the creator's creepy, barely disguised incest fetish with the two mentally ill protagonists flirting, the gameplay is dull puzzle schlock, and the dialogue is something only a middle schooler could enjoy. How am I expected to take this "horror" game seriously when it doesn't even take itself seriously, or have anything of substance to say? Everything's just shocking for the sake of it. Satanism? Murder? Cannibalism? Shiver me timbers!!!

I have been in love with the Pikmin series since day one, being absolutely glued to the screen trying to help Olimar find all his ship pieces, which turned into finding treasure pieces for the Boss, and eventually into various fruits for a dying Koppai planet. I was pretty satisfied with the Pikmin series ending at 3, but I know the online community was especially loud about wanting a 4th one, and to be honest, I was a little curious where they would go with the series after 3, so hey, why not check it out?

I went in fully knowing that this era of Nintendo is no longer what I loved growing up with, but I still wanted to go in with an open mind, and hopefully be happy to find it keeping to its core. But after finishing the game, I couldn’t help but feel unsatisfied and just very… odd about the whole experience. Pikmin 4 isn’t bad, especially compared to other games on the Switch, Pikmin 4 is actually quite good in comparison! But after thinking about it for a little bit, I think I can sum up why I wasn’t quite as happy with Pikmin 4 as I was in the past Pikmin games.

Assistance

Pikmin 4 is too kind to you, so kind in fact, that it takes away the original enjoyment I had with the game. Pikmin 1 & 2, and Pikmin 3 on the Wii U all are games that create an environment with a mission that you need to complete, sounds easy enough, right? Well, no. The whole point of Pikmin is to complete your goal with literally EVERYTHING in the world out against you. It’s you, this tiny little man not even the height of a GameCube disc, and your funny little fellas, out against literally EVERYTHING. Pikmin started as a series called Adam & Eve where you had to control an eventual 100-person tribe of people with their own freewill and get them to complete tasks for you. You were essentially supposed to play God, with your little people as your followers.

I see SO many people complain about how it seems like the pikmin in Pikmin 1 are completely braindead or go against your wishes in order to jump into the water, fall off bridges/ledges, or run right into fire walls, and I can not stress this enough; That. Is. The. Goddamn. POINT. The Pikmin are supposed to be annoying, they’re supposed to go against your wishes, because to put it bluntly, Olimar is finding these creatures and making them into his blooming slaves. They follow Olimar because of the light on his helmet, but in the end, they still have their own wants and desires, and THAT is what makes Pikmin an incredibly amazing and insanely unique game never before seen. It’s a game where you have to fight against nature WITH nature in order to complete your goal.

What Pikmin 4 does that ended up taking the enjoyment away from me was that instead of making it a game of nature fighting AGAINST you, it’s now a game of puzzles that helps GIVE you that push towards completing your goal. Gone is that challenge. Gone is that struggle. Instead, you can rest easy in knowing the game will help you in any way it possibly can. The base is too far, making carrying items back difficult from environmental aspects (water, walls, unbuilt bridges, etc) or there being too many enemies no longer an issue, you can just move the base now. The fear of losing your Pikmin and being low on a certain type is gone, as Oatchi, as undeniably cute as he is, can be trained to withstand any elemental obstacle (minus poison), and can be trained to be as strong as 100 Pikmin to boot! He is a built-in, mandatory handicap to the entire game’s mechanic.

There are other things to critique and there are lots of things to admire, but this review is already long enough, and it’s really not that important. Overall, I would say Pikmin 4 is a good game in the sense that it does what it set out to do, and also seems to have fixed certain aspects that made the game more playable for a wider ranged audience, which I can’t have any serious vendetta against. It’s no longer the game series that I originally fell in love with, but that doesn’t mean I’m upset at people who could never get into the old games and find joy in Pikmin 4, in fact, I feel the exact opposite. I’m very happy to see so many people so passionate and happy about it in a way I felt about the original game, and ultimately, that’s what is most important to me.

P.S. If I was Olimar, I would just kill Louie at this point.

Excellent game.

Very nice to see the beginning of the series before it was bloated and they just handed you supercars left and right. Progressing slowly through the car ranks was very fun!

Docked a point because the world wasn't that exciting. Colorado is probably my least favorite locale they've used.

this game in such a weird spot for me. it's a really bad game with ass controls, really bad voice acting that fucks up the tone of the game a lot at times, and a whole bunch of glitches that i'm not sure are from the actual game, or the emulator.
but on the other hand, the premise is really really interesting. love how you can either make the reporter(s) suffer for some good camera footage, or save them but have no footage at all. too bad I encountered a glitch somewhere near the end, where I kept clipping through the floor and I couldn't continue. it's a shame, if this game had a better dub (or no dub at all) and the game was less buggy (or the pcsx2 devs fix them) this game would definitely be up there as a goated horror game in my opinion