Since June, the gaming release schedule has been hectic as hell. Most of us were (are?) still playing The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, which came out in May. In June alone, our attention turned to Diablo 4, then Street Fighter 6, and then Final Fantasy XVI. Just as you started to maybe clear out that giant roster, Baldur’s Gate 3 came out on August 3. You have barely a month if you’re aiming to use that same PC to play Starfield. Look to October, and Spider-Man 2 and Super Mario Wonder (featuring a brand new Mario voice) come out on the same freaking day.
Now, I get it. Tears of the Kingdom, Baldur’s Gate 3, and Starfield especially are giant games that most people will spend over 100 hours playing. On one hand, it’s an obscene embarrassment of riches, making 2023 one of the greatest years for gaming in recent history. On the other, trying to stay on top of this schedule is genuinely overwhelming, even for people who have as much time for gaming as the rest of us wish we had.
Back in July, in the middle of all this mayhem, the best game of the summer dropped (TotK is a spring game, lest you forget). And it went largely unnoticed outside of Japan. I’m talking about Pikmin 4.
I know. We have to pick a game (or two, or four) to skip. Unfortunately, for many, that game was Pikmin 4. Hell, if not for Nintendo kindly slipping me a code, I might have never played it. I wouldn’t even have called myself a “Pikmin fan” before a few weeks ago. Now, I want to spread the gospel of this absolutely beautiful, weird, delightful game that no one else I know is playing.
What about the weird little guys?
Before I played Pikmin 4, I did not think I liked the Pikmin series. Mostly because I feel deeply guilty about killing the little guys. Throwing them at creepy-as-hell monsters and watching them get eaten, and knowing it’s all my fault, was not my idea of a good time. They’re helping me out as a guest on their planet and look what I’ve done to repay them.
Granted, the series is very aware that it’s playing with this balance of cuteness and the darkness of Survival of the Fittest. You can see this in the (absolutely genius) lyrics of one of the main themes of the series, “Ai no Uta (Love Song)”: “Uprooted, we’ll follow you alone / Today, once again, we’ll carry, fight, multiply, and get eaten.
Look, I know they’re not real. That’s not the point. The point is that I love weird little guys. And Pikmin are class-A weird little guys. When you pluck them out of the ground, they say “Ee-hee!” or sometimes even “Hello!” In Pikmin 4, you can have them charge at something en masse, and their battle cry is absolutely exquisite.
Pikmin 4 reimagines the game in several key ways to make it easier than ever for people like me to play it and enjoy it. For one, you now have a dog. His name is Oatchi, and he’s a very good boy. And Oatchi can be knocked out, but he can’t die like Pikmin do. Which makes him a great asset for vastly decreasing the loss of Pikmin life.
The other thing is that you can now rewind time. If you throw Pikmin at a boss and they get eaten, you can have another shot. It’s kind of like playing Fire Emblem on Hard difficulty and pledging not to let a single member of your team die. Also, you can throw bombs.
And friends, so far, I’ve done it. I have not allowed a single little guy to perish. It hasn’t been easy, but it also hasn’t been outlandishly hard, either. (Except for the Glow Pikmin, who we are explicitly told can’t die. Probably because Nintendo knew people like me, who find a single Pikmin death intolerable, exist.)
Why you should not buy that other game and play Pikmin 4 instead
Now that we’ve addressed the “weird little guys” concern, let me really sell you on Pikmin 4. If we remove the engineering marvels of Breath of the Wild / Tears of the Kingdom from the picture, I think there is an honest argument to be made that Pikmin 4 is the most beautiful game available on the Switch. It puts to shame the argument that the Switch isn’t capable of top-notch graphics. I mean, look at this.
It might be hard to believe, but the actual gameplay looks this good as well! The way the light hits, the masterful blend of the realism of objects like the lemon with the cartoonishness of the Pikmin—it’s truly stunning. (Not me giving another betrayed side eye at Game Freak.) The worlds are all an absolute joy to navigate because not only are the levels beautiful, but they’re also laid out in a way that fulfills the desire for both an adventure and a puzzle.
Furthermore—and here’s the kicker for those affected by how this article began—Pikmin 4 is short! It takes about 16 to 20 hours to beat. That makes it even shorter than the average estimate for Street Fighter 6‘s story mode. In other years, that might be a downside, but in 2023, the “doable-ness” of Pikmin 4 feels like a blessing. Besides, if you want more, there’s a very satisfying post-game in addition to a fun two-player mini-game (of sorts?) called “Dandori Battle.”
And we haven’t even gotten to how your ship’s AI will name the treasures you’ve brought back. I don’t know if this is intended to be a critique on how dumb AI is, but I’m sure taking it as one. My favorite so far was when it named a little bell—like the kind you’d put on a cat’s collar—a “Spouse Alert.” A bottle topper for a baby? “Maternal Sculpture.”
I honestly can’t believe how hard I’ve fallen for Pikmin 4. I just wanted to take a quick breather before the endgame of Tears of the Kingdom, and I wasn’t expecting to be knocked off my feet. This is an incredible game. It’s weird and charming and funny, but also has that trademark Pikmin appreciation of nature as both beautiful and dark. Every dark cave is balanced out by lands filled with sunshine—the perfect fare for summer.
(featured image: Nintendo)
