Hey! Pikmin (Nintendo 3DS) Preview

Captain Olimar, at least in the plot, does crash land once more onto an alien planet, although he will not be looking for ship parts this time, but instead for Sparklium necessary to get the S.S. Dolphin back in working order. Sparklium can either be found in pure form, as little golden acorns units, larger red, or even rainbow coloured ones worth several units. As in previous instalments, Olimar will still be able to find and collect man-made objects that he still Christens with weird names. These objects always come in threes in each stage and are usually worth several hundreds. 30,000 Sparklium will be required for Olimar to be allowed to leave the planet, so the goal of the game is to collect as much of it as possible, as well as the aforementioned items that are worth a lot of it.

This is done by exploring 2.5D side-scrolling stages that act a lot more like platforming levels than any previous Pikmin entry. Gameplay-wise, this is done entirely and exclusively with the Circle Pad and the touch-screen. Simply put, buttons are not used at all in Hey! Pikmin. Olimar is controlled using the control pad and some of his basic actions are called upon by tapping dedicated icons on the touch-screen of the 3DS, such as whistling for Pikmin to come back or throwing them at targets on the screen. This is all responsive enough and gameplay rarely gets in the way of the experience, except in one specific instance that will be mentioned later. The view of the area spans both screens of the 3DS but it is always on the bottom screen that the core of the action takes place. Olimar can send Pikmin flying in the air by throwing them, especially yellow Pikmin, where they may land in the upper screen, but because of the reliance on the touch-screen for controls, the upper screen mostly acts as an expanded view of the area and this is put to play in puzzles where an object may be seen, unreachable on foot, in the upper screen, and it's then up to the player to figure out how to get Pikmin up there to get them to bring back the object.

The world of Hey! Pikmin is divided into several areas, each with a local map that actually works a lot like a Mario game where stages are interconnected dots on a larger local map. Clearing any given stage will open up the path to the next one and certain stages also have alternate exits that will open up paths to extra, optional ones, some of which play exactly like the normal areas, some that play more like much shorter puzzles housing large pellets that can be fed to the classic Pikmin "onions" that will generate Pikmin of the corresponding pellet colour. This sense of exploration very reminiscent of Super Mario World feels very satisfying so far in the impression of non-linearity that it induces.

In each stage, Olimar starts out empty handed, with no Pikmin at his disposition but, soon enough, he will find a few hiding in some clover bushes or behind some twigs and the like... and recruit them by doing the classic whistling sound, now accompanied by a "Hey" voice sample (see what Nintendo did there with the title?). Pikmin will be required to throw them at enemies so they fight for Olimar who himself can't punch or anything of the sort this time, but also in order to solve some mild puzzles in order to gain access to blocked areas, such as pushing very large obstacles to create footholds, and so on. The main activity Pikmin will be assigned, though, will be to bring back the aforementioned Sparklium and objects when those are out of Olimar's reach. It is worth noting, for all Pikmin fans out there, that the little creatures will not be required to bring those objects back to his ship this time, but simply to Olimar himself who will open up a portal and send them back to the Dolphin automatically. Sadly, it is not made clear, for the sake of the series' lore, where Olimar obtained such tech and why he never had it before... but it's clear that this was made to make the game easier to tackle and levels much quicker to be cleared and sampled in much shorter bursts while on the go. In this sense, Hey! Pikmin does succeed, as this new approach to a Pikmin game lends itself very well indeed to a quick play while on the bus or something.

Each stage invites players to explore every nook and cranny, as there are indeed a lot of hidden things to find, and to perfectly complete each of them not only must the three objects be found, but also all the hidden Pikmin must be found and kept alive until the exit is found. In another new move for the series, Olimar won't be able to plant and pluck Pikmin, so he can run out of Pikmin mid-stage and be unable to progress further. Therefore, if that happens, a few extra Pikmin will re-spawn at previous spots where they were found before, so there is no need to worry if things get too tough - at least as witnessed in the early parts tackled during this preview. It seems to be very easy to approach, so running out of Pikmin should not happen all that often, if ever.

Outside of the aforementioned stages, the Pikmin that Olimar manages to bring back in one piece all gather in the Pikmin Park, a place where the Pikmin can be seen in a classic bird's eye view going about the basic tasks that Olimar assigns to them of exploring the park for extra objects worth some more Sparklium. These parts are seen solely on the upper screen while the lower screen displays the overall map through which the player can send Pikmin of different colours to different areas where they will be most efficient, such as fire-resistant red Pikmin being sent to fiery areas, and so on. These parts are fully 3D rendered but this brings up an important point: there is no stereoscopic 3D effect whatsoever in Hey! Pikmin. The fact that it releases alongside the New 2DS XL on 28th July, 2017 is significant indeed, as players who may want to pick both will not be missing on any feature of this latest game by playing it on the latest variation in the 3DS family.

It's understandable that in the 2.5D stages where the action takes place mostly on the touch screen anyway, having the player shift attention between a screen that has stereoscopic 3D enabled and one that does not support it could get very tiring for the eyes within minutes, so it's best left out there, but outside of those stages, in the Pikmin Park for instance or when examining the objects brought back from the stages in all their 3D rendered glory, it would have been great to have some 3D in there, but that is not to be, sadly. This is not a huge omission per se, but just a small extra that would have been most welcome.

On the subject of visuals and graphics, despite the low resolution of the 3DS making some subtle details of the tiny Pikmin somewhat hard to make out, everything is rather pleasing to the eye indeed, with distant background objects being made blurrier on purpose to highlight the focus being put on the foreground action. The accompanying music is fitting and relaxing, and the noises the Pikmin make are just reused from previous entries but still work fine. Some cute cut-scenes involving Pikmin shenanigans occur that will undoubtedly put a smile on every face. This is all marred by only one, rather major setback and the only real problem with Hey! Pikmin from the early hands-on with it: performance. For preview purposes, this was tested on an original model of 3DS, and it is regrettable to say that it does not perform well on the ageing hardware, dropping a lot of frames when the amount of Pikmin on-screen reaches the higher numbers - around 20 can be reached in certain stages. This is not the first time this has happened as Hyrule Warriors Legends already performed poorly on older systems and was more optimised for the New 3DS, but it is sad that this would be the case for what is essentially a much simpler looking 2.5D game.

With that out of the way, however, Cubed3's time with Hey! Pikmin so far has still proven to be very enjoyable indeed, but this issue on older hardware had to be addressed nonetheless. The final verdict will be delivered later, along with more in-depth details in the upcoming review, though, so stay tuned for more information closer to the day of release.