Barbenheimer weekend is behind us. I attended “Barbie,” one of the two films, and liked it a lot. Lot of great jokes, themes and visual pizzazz.
Those two films were not the only items released July 21, however.
Pikmin 4, a long-awaited sequel to the Pikmin video game franchise, also came out that day.
After the “Barbie” screening, I’ve been chipping away at Pikmin 4 over the past week. I am still a few treasures away from nabbing 100 percent completion, and have a massive after game area I have not even touched. The combination of people you are rescuing, treasures you are seeking, caves and Dandori (basically, the concept of multitasking with your crew) challenges make this one of the best entries in the series with a variety of different challenges to face.
Gone from this entry is the countdown clock that was in the first and some of the second game. That is liberating in some ways, as it gives you more time to explore the gorgeous worlds at your own pace and not beat yourself up if the only thing you tackled on a given day was removing obstacles in your path to treasures or caves to explore.
I joked on Facebook that kids today will not know stress the same way I did growing up with one of the quality-of-life adjustments, the ability to do a quick rewind in game minutes prior to a huge mistake. I remember losing most of my flowered fighters called Pikmin in a certain cave in Pikmin 2 just as I was getting ready to head to the next sublevel when a steamrolling boss had just arrived and realized how long it had taken me to get to that point that I would have to replay, and setting the controller down that day and walking away from the game. Not the case in Pikmin 4. An “oops, a charge into that foe was a tactical mistake” is easily rewound. Sometimes, multiple times in a row.
I know the final cave was one of the more rewarding but frustrating experiences in video gaming I have had in a while, where I was faced with 20 levels of some of the toughest foes in the game, and some of them setting you up for failure in the fight if you did not tweak your playstyle. Over the course of play, I only lost 30 little flower people, usually one or two per level, and the five phases of the final boss were fun and infuriating equally when he revealed a new ability and you had to adapt once more.
And I’ll be back to play this one again in the future and seeing how I can improve my dandori to new heights.