Shigeru Miyamoto, deified by gamers worldwide, has been the creative force behind a few games of which you may have heard - namely, Donkey Kong and the respective Mario, Zelda and StarFox franchises. Apparently, when he's not directing masterpieces or walking on water, Shiggy (as Nintendo fanboys affectionately call him) enjoys tending to his garden. Miyamoto's adventures in agriculture served as the inspiration for Pikmin, his first original game for the Cube. While its concept is innovative and compelling - par for the course for an EAD title - Pikmin is regrettably flawed enough in the execution to make it more of an acquired taste than a universal favorite.

Pikmin features Captain Olimar, a diminutive, talkative hybrid of Professor Jonathon Frink and Ziggy, struggling to repair his broken spacecraft after an accident forced him to crash-land in an unknown, hostile world. Olimar quickly stumbles across a round, tripod-based structure that looks nothing like an onion and names it the Onion. The Onion soon spews out a red seed which sprouts a single leaf, and when Olimar plucks the tiny, big-eyed creature that looks nothing like a Pikpak brand carrot, he, of course, names it a Pikmin. Our erstwhile space cadet soon learns that these Pikmin will (theoretically) respond to his every command, and quickly begins ordering the little monsters to collect Pikmin "food" (to breed more of them), defeat hostile creatures, knock down obstacles and ultimately acquire the scattered pieces of his ship so he may return to his home planet of Hocotate.

Olimar will find the little Pikmin in each of the three primary colors - red, yellow and blue. The red Pikmin, found on the first day, are the workhorses of your army - they fight ferociously and they're unfazed by fire. The yellow Pikmin aren't as hardy as their red cousins, but they are lighter and can be thrown twice as high, and they're also the only creatures that can attack enemies and obstacles with explosive bomb-rocks. Finally, the blue Pikmin don't really do anything special other than swim in water where other Pikmin would drown. Each breed of Pikmin resides in a like colored Onion, and each Onion will follow you through your planetary travels once you discover it in the field. Other than their color, the growths atop their heads serve to distinguish Pikmin - immature Pikmin will sport a leaf, growing ones sprout a bud, and the fully develop bear a flower. Pikmin mature by spending time in the soil before being plucked or finding nectar in the field. More mature Pikmin will move faster, and flower Pikmin might leave a seed if they fall in battle, but I'm of the opinion that all Pikmin are equally mindless, regardless of their development.

Olimar begins each day after the first by choosing one of five areas to explore - initially, only one area is available, but more are unlocked as ship pieces are recovered. Next, he summons Pikmin from their respective Onions, matching the types of Pikmin to the tasks he seeks to accomplish. Only 100 Pikmin may be out in the field at any given time, regardless of whether they are under Olimar's direct control, idle, out on a task, or still buried under an Onion. Olimar will spend the bulk of his day ordering his Pikmin around. Pikmin can carry primary-colored food tablets back to the Onion to produce more seeds, which Olimar can later pluck out at his leisure. Each tablet has a number on it, which indicates the minimum number of Pikmin required to carry it, but additional Pikmin can be assigned to hasten the trip. Pikmin will carry a tablet to their own Onion, regardless of its color - meaning blue Pikmin will carry a red tablet to the blue Onion - but more Pikmin seeds will be dispensed if the tablet color matches the Onion.

Also, Olimar will encounter various obstacles like walls and bridges that he can direct his Pikmin to overcome - again, the more Pikmin, the faster the job will be done, although some walls can only be destroyed with explosives. The Pikmin will encounter countless enemies, including oversized bosses, which Olimar can attack (indirectly, of course) with general commands or with (somewhat) precise targeting and tossing. Each enemy has an energy gauge that swarm of Pikmin will wear down - sooner or later. In battles, as always, more Pikmin will be more effective. Finally, Olimar will happen across the scattered parts of his craft in the five areas. The Pikmin ensemble will carry both enemy corpses and ship pieces just like tablets - the former are absorbed like tablets by the onions, the latter are returned to the spaceship.

Unfortunately, Olimar only has thirty days - from sunrise to sunset - to collect enough of his spacecraft before his life support is spent. Olimar doesn't have to acquire all thirty pieces of his ship to escape, but he must find a number of required parts to lift off, and players won't see the game's best ending unless he finds all 30 and defeats the final boss. Adding to the time pressure is the day-based system, in which Olimar must collect all his Pikmin at the end of the day before going into orbit, or else hostile creatures will devour them during the night. Pikmin left in or around the Onions or under Olimar's direct command will be safe at nightfall, but any Pikmin out on assignments or standing idle outside the home area will be lost. As a result, Olimar isn't able to order any time- consuming tasks in the late afternoon, and generally must spend the waning hours of each day collecting stray Pikmin.

Like any Miyamoto game, Pikmin has a straightforward and intuitive control scheme. Olimar moves with a touch of the main analog pad, along with a targeting cursor used for aiming airborne Pikmin. The A button causes Olimar to grab the nearest Pikmin and throw it in the direction of the cursor; it is also used to uproot growing Pikmin. In an innovative use of button mashing, rapid tapping of A will cause Olimar to repeat the same action, whether that action is throwing yellow Pikmin or harvesting blue ones, for example. The B button calls nearby Pikmin to attention, while the X button dismisses the Pikmin under Olimar's control and causes them to line up by color - this is useful for tasks that call for Pikmin of only one color. Olimar can more precisely control his Pikmin's movements and assign them tasks with the C stick. The Y button displays an information dialogue window, which tracks the Pikmin's statistics and provides a map of the area once the ship's radar is recovered. The triggers control the camera angle, allowing for rotation, zooming and angle changes.

Visually, Pikmin is stylistically beautiful, but the aesthetics often hamper the gameplay. The character designs are typical Miyamoto - other than Olimar, of whom I don't know what to think, the Pikmin are simple but adorable, and the enemies look like they would fit as well in the next Mario or Zelda as they do here. The environments are just as well done - they aren't so over the top as to be unbelievable, but they convey the feeling of a mysterious, somewhat hostile foreign world. One small issue with the level design is that a few of the levels - the first two - are visually busy with jungle flora, and it is easy to lose track of Pikmin in the backgrounds. However, the camera system, while ambitious, does not solve the admittedly difficult problem of managing lots of tiny creatures in a relative large playing area. If the camera is zoomed out, it's difficult to distinguish between Pikmin (at least for me - I'm colorblind), but if it's zoomed in, it's impossible to know what's ahead. If the camera is left alone, the level will obscure the characters, but if it's rotated, the player will lose his bearings. The system allows for a myriad of camera angles and zooms, but none of them ever seem comfortable. I've been told that the "mystery" of the camera adds to the suspense of exploring an unknown world, but in my experience, it only added a lot of loud, foul language to the atmosphere in my living room. Fortunately, as opposed to the swearing, all the sound that Pikmin directly produces is very comforting and fitting. The sound effects are simple and well-done, starting with the cutesy "Pikmin" voice at the startup screen, and continuing with various cutesy Pikmin sounds as they are uprooted, thrown about, and laboring. Olimar's effects are a mixed bag - his shrill whistle is almost Baby-Mario-level annoying but the rally tune that plays when he orders with the C stick is neat. The musical score is a perfect mix of whimsical and ambient - especially the track to the first level, the Impact Site, which I have been whistling since the first day I played. The songs change subtly as the day grows longer or if Olimar confronts an enemy, much like Zelda: Ocarina of Time or Banjo-Kazooie.

Despite its innovative features and inviting interface, Pikmin has a series of small flaws which; taken together, render the game basically unmemorable. In a nutshell, the stupidity and fragility of the Pikmin, the tedium of breeding replacements, the time pressure (both overall and daily) and the awkwardness of the camera all conspire to make me want to play something else. One of these issues wouldn't even be noticed - two or even three would be tolerable - but all four, together, kill what would otherwise be a great game. Walk across a bridge, and some of your troops on either side will miss the bridge and walk right into the water. Dead Pikmin. Stroll behind a foreground wall into the inevitable stream that couldn't be seen. Dead Pikmin. Stumble into a large, black Octorok-looking creature and watch him shoot a boulder without warning. Dead Pikmin. Or just go about the day's business, losing a few Pikmin here and there at every turn in the road, and watch their fate at sunset. Dead Pikmin. I don't mind the senseless killing of so many cute creatures, but I want to be able to kill them myself, and I want to be rewarded for it, not punished. Instead, after witnessing yet another day of massacre, I could only start the day over, spend the next valuable day rebuilding my numbers, or pressing on for ship parts with a weaker (and more easily slain) force.

To be fair, I don't know of anyone else who has played Pikmin and disliked it as intensely as I do. As a result, it's definitely worth a rental. Even if you don't mind Pikmin's flaws as much as I do, however, it's still a very short game with little replay value. A good player with patience and tolerance (i.e. not me) could conceivably receive the best ending in six hours, and the more persistent will easily succeed on their second play through. The challenge mode, which gives Olimar one day to breed as many Pikmin as possible, is a fun diversion (without all the dire consequences of the mishaps in the main mode) but won't add much playtime. In short, I was looking forward to Pikmin, I really wanted to like it, and I can appreciate its novel concept and endearing design, but its faults put enough of a damper on the experience to make me dread playing it. Perhaps the next installment of Pikmin, if its issues are solved, will grow on me, but I'm going to bury this one out back and anxiously await the next game Shiggy digs up.

· · · Burgundy