Pikmin is, essentially, Nintendo’s take on the real-time strategy format, only you direct little carrot creatures to fetch and carry and multiply and stuff, rather than build tanks and so on. There are different colours of Pikmin which have different strengths and skills, and there are baddies to fight who all want to eat them. Pikmin 4 doesn’t deviate too much from this, but it is just so much more relaxing than the other games in the series. In the …
And go back for the remaining fruit I did. None of it was that hard to reach, but I did seem to be missing one fruit in the Distant Tundra area. Nothing was showing on the map, but I figured out it was a bunch of grapes I’d somehow not picked up (even though I recall doing so), so headed for where they were. Only to find a single grape was there. Just one. How I missed one, I don’t …
15 hours, apparently. Which equated to 39 in-game days. That’s how long it took me to find the Cosmic Drive key, best the final boss, and escape from Certainly Not Earth and head home with all the fruit juice and seeds I could carry. Well, most of the fruit juice and seeds. 43 of the 66 fruits available, in fact. And rather a lot of carrotmen died for the cause. Er, about 700, all in. Which sounds horrific, but you …
Went back to Perplexing Pool today, and drained a large area of the level. This also provided access to another dungeon, which I went on to complete. There was a boss at the end (as usual) who was tricky to kill (again) until the method of doing so was found. That he was easy. After that, I wandered around Perplexing Pool for a bit, and then got attacked by loads of huge baddies (including the giant spider thing from another …
Finished the dungeon I was in, racking up to 64% debt repaid in the process. Collected loads of Bulborb Pikmin thingies whilst I was down there too, although when I finished the dungeon, they didn’t follow me out. Shame, since they’re everything-proof, it seems. Had a bit of a hard time with the boss of the cave; some huge great slug Bulborb Queen thing, that kept spewing mini-Bulborbs out of her arse, and rolling around flattening everything (mostly my Pikmin). …
More fun today in the Valley of Repose. Realised I had some more treasures to find above ground, so set off to kill the two big baddies I hadn’t yet seen off. One was another rock-firing thingie that killed 10 Pikmin, and the other was a flaming thingie that I couldn’t kill with blue Pikmin (‘cos it was flaming), and couldn’t kill with red fire-proof Pikmin (as I had to cross water to get there). Coaxed the flaming munchy thing …
Finished what I started last night, and made my way into the Subterranean Complex cave in the Valley of Repose. First few floors were pretty easy, but then I had to kill some floaty things which dropped bombs, and some electric beetle things, and some spidery things, AND get rid of some poison clouds, all in the same three square millimetres. Lost a few Pikmin, but made it through. Then had some big metallic thing that kept firing things at …
I decided to go back to the Valley of Repose (the first level) today, now I’m armed with every type of Pikmin. Although I opened up a fairly large area (and killed another bodyless bird, and some other things), about 40 of my Pikmin got squished by a rock fired from a big baddie. Bah.
Well, what a lovely surprise this turned out to be! It had been on the periphery of my want list for a while, but I was sceptical that it was just going to be a Pikmin clone like the reviews suggested it was, and Pikmin is fantastic so that’s a hard wall to break through and every likelihood it’d be a bit pants. And, while there’s definitely a Pikminny taste to Tinykin, it’s certainly its own thing. You’re a little …
Another random game from my previously inaccessible PC game library, liberated thanks to the Steam Deck! And I’m glad I took a punt on this one, because even though I had no idea what it was like (I was sold purely on the aesthetic) it turns out it’s wonderful. Imagine a cross between Cannon Fodder and Pikmin, where all your little people are various animals that want to Smash The System. The more you enlist, the more powerful the group …
Having been on sale a number of times, and being pretty cheap already, I’d eyed up the lovely looking Pan-Pan on several previous occasions. Reviews saying it is slightly disappointing tempered my enthusiasm and so I always put my virtual cash away. Until today. And sadly, the reviews were right. Pan-Pan looks really nice, with its flat shaded, low-poly graphics and almost Pikmin-like world to explore, but it falls very short of excellent for a number of reasons. Firstly, its …
Once more the time has come to update my seemingly rather popular guide to upgrading your Nintendo 3DS SD card (previously here). This time, I’m going to cover several scenarios – upgrading your SD (or SDHC) card to another SD (or SDHC) card, upgrading your SD/SDHC card to a 64GB or larger SDXC card, and upgrading your 3DS to a New 3DS, transferring everything to a MicroSD/SDXC. EDITED 11/02/15 to clarify some points in Section 3 Firstly, some information: Nintendo’s …
10 years ago today, on the 1st January 2005, I posted my very first Gaming Diary post. Back then, I was using Blogger and it uploaded posts via FTP to my own server when I published. After a few years, Google decided to discontinue this ability, leaving me with three options: give my domain name to Google and continue with Blogger, change to a Blogger or Blogspot URL and continue with Blogger, or cut the cord and import the lot …
“Make it so!” So I did. Well, I sat there and pretended to, at least. That’s me in the Pikmin 3 themed house that showed up over Spotpass this week in the Happy Home Academy Showcase. I ordered some nice things from it too. Aside from that diversion, I sold all my turnips and made about 4 million bells. I gave over a million away, because I’m nice like that. Invested in another 6000 turnips for this week, even though …
