New Play Control! Pikmin 2 (Wii) Review

No. I'm going to presume you have all at least heard of Pikmin and most of you have probably played Pikmin 2. Just in case you haven't, though, here's a brief summary of some of the basic changes in the second. You gain a helper, Louie, who bobs alongside Olimar to allow multitasking; there are two new Pikmin colours, purple (strong and beefy) and white (evil and poisonous); and some existing Pikmin have had their characteristics altered slightly (yellow is resistant to electricity now, for example). There's also a multiplayer mode, and the time limitations from the first game have been lifted, as Captain Olimar is there by his own freewill this time in an effort to salvage some precious things to sell to save himself and his company from being the next victims of the space equivalent of the credit crunch. That said, for the rest of the review all I'm going to talk about is what has been improved. In all honesty, not much. What we have is the same game with a nice new control system layered over the top of it. The original game was world class, so it sort of follows on that this one is also a bit of a gem. Albeit a slightly less original one.

So, how do the controls compare to the GameCube version? Movement and orders are certainly much easier, you can select Pikmin and scan around the screen with far greater ease and the Wii pointer certainly adds a greater range and speed of control to the title. Essentially, it gives it a slight PC/mouse slant. Rather unsurprisingly, this makes things a whole lot easier. You have more dexterity and variety in your movements and you can fling Pikmin around with remarkable ease. All the standard commands such as select type of Pikmin, zoom in and out, change character and whatnot are all mapped onto the buttons so all you do with the Wii remote is point and move things around.

This is hardly revolutionary, but then nobody ever expected it would be. What you're getting here is an improved version of one of the GameCube's best games. If you didn't play it before, this is a must-have title. If you did play it before, like me, this is still probably worth a punt if you traded in the old game or fancy some proper gaming fun on the Wii that doesn't involve looking after cats or wiggling your arms around playing 'sports'. Put simply, this is honest, proper gaming.