Pikmin 3 was supposed to be a launch title for the Wii U, but there is still no release date. Regardless, I enjoyed the demo at PAX East 2013. Although I’ve watched Pikmin games in action before, this was my first time actually playing one.
The demo for Pikmin 3 was set up in a similar fashion to the Wonderful 101 demo: there was a timed playable area to explore, followed by a timed boss battle. The features that stood out the most to me were the fast, reactionary camera and the fact that I could call my Pikmin to me by aiming at them with the Wii Remote. I had a bit of fun navigating my Pikmin around and bringing back dead bugs to my spaceship. The boss battle forced me to mix up my tactics. First, I had to use my rock Pikmin to break the shell of a large, worm-like creature. Once I broke the shell, I was then able to attack the creature with red Pikmin.
I wanted to try out Pikmin 3 with the GamePad, but it looked like they weren’t ready to show this. Either that, or the person walking me through the demo did not know how to switch it over. I would have liked to see how different it was to call the Pikmin to me without using the Wii Remote. The demo really existed to show off the mechanics of the game and its graphics. While I am okay with this, I would have liked to see a tiny bit of story. Regardless, the gameplay certainly looked and felt like a Pikmin title.
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