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I randomly rented Pikmin from a store when I was a kid. I loved the game so much I bought a copy of it before my rental was even up. It's just such a charming game full of so many neat creatures and settings. I loved it so much. These games are a big part of what got me involved in biology. One of my favorite things about Pikmin 2 was getting to read Olimar's field science reports about all the bizzare life on that planet. They had people sit down and look at each enemy, then think about what place they would have in the weird bizzare ecosystem that had taken hold of earth. People actually thought about the lives of floating ballon bugs that spit bombs and giant frogs with a burning desire to squash everything. And then you beat the game and get to read Louie's hosed up ideas about cooking bugs 
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Jul 13, 2013 06:26
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Ernie Muppari posted:Don't many of the log entries you can get while you're still paying off the loan suggest that Louie's actually a competent cook? He was a competent cook, but he had a problem where he was always trying to cook everything. If you dragged it onto the ship, he would try and cook it. Dude looks at a hideous, bloated predator and thinks "drat, I bet you could cut up that tongue and mash it on some crackers and it would be delicious". Half the stuff he talks about sounds delicious, the other half makes you wonder how he hasn't killed himself via food poisoning.
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Jul 13, 2013 15:46
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dijon du jour posted:Don't forget the agony that was grinding for purples. Doomsday Apparatus is the bane of my existance. This wasn't so bad once I realized that subterranean complex (or whatever the cave with Man-At-Legs is called) has 3 respawning purple flowers, so unless you hosed up terribly with your purples you probably only need two or three quick trips there to 100. That treasure is still a pain though. Other than the obvious Water Wraith, what bosses did you guys hate the most? Man At Legs terrified me as a kid because I was awful at fighting him. First time I saw him I didn't know what to expect and was shocked when the spindly bastard mowed down half my army effortlessly. The game has a lot of bizzare enemies but I still wasn't expecting one to bring a gun to a pikmin fight. VVV Water Wraith is a complete pushover, but getting to the point where you can actually fight him is nervewracking. Submerged Castle holds a really peculiar place in my heart as being both terribly and amazingly designed at the same time. Internet Kraken fucked around with this message at 17:31 on Jul 13, 2013 |
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Jul 13, 2013 17:19
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The Wicked Wall posted:Ranging Bloyster. The method you beat it without using stone sprays made it take ages to deal with, constantly switching captains to throw a few onto it before they're shaken off. Also, if you screwed up the multiple tongues would make you pay for it. Ugh. Oh man, I forgot about that rear end in a top hat. First time I fought him I didn't get his gimmick at all, and I was so confused I just fed him all my white pikmen so he would die from poison. It took so many too 
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Jul 13, 2013 18:08
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Regy Rusty posted:I think the Water Wraith dungeon is absolutely brilliantly designed. The floors are designed in such a way that you should be able to clear, or get very close to clearing, the earlier levels before the Wraith arrives. But the later ones get more and more complex until you'll still probably be carrying treasures fairly long distances at the time it arrives. Then it becomes a terrifying game of trying to bait him out to follow one captain away from the carriers while the other cowers in a relatively safe spot and oh god oh god why have you lost interest in me no drop that ham you fools drop it and run On one hand I agree with you, a lot about is brilliant. On the other hand having done it multiple times I know that it is absolutely not fun in the slightest. Even once you figure out the dungeon's gimmick, the reality is that you can't get every treasure before the wraith shows up to squash you. So to get all the treasure, you have to visit the dungeon multiple times. That means getting your blue pikmin, hiking all the way across the Perplexing Poool, gathering as much treasure as you can on each floor, and then doing the whole thing over again since you're gonna miss something. It's the part I always did last because I never enjoyed doing it. I'll never forget it's weird as hell music though. Rhinoceraptor posted:I will never forgive Pikmin 2 for taking away my beloved ship I worked so hard to rebuild and replacing it with that greedy mechanical rear end in a top hat. You just can't appreciate his genius 
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Jul 13, 2013 22:48
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dijon du jour posted:You can still get treasures after the Water Wraith shows up on a floor, it's just difficult and very, very harrowing. I've done it, though. You have to learn where the Wraith will and will not go so you know where to hide until it loses interest in you and rolls elsewhere in the level so you can run out and move the treasure as much as you can before he comes back. Also: get the treasure furthest away from the ship first. Regy Rusty posted:That's not true at all. The experience I just described (the leading the Wraith away from your carriers part) and the fun of the Submerged Castle in my opinion is getting the remaining treasures even with the Wraith bearing down on you. In all the times I've played Pikmin 2 I've never left a dungeon without getting all the treasures in it. Bwuh wha...the strategy guide lied to me  Or maybe it didn't and I was just to terrified of that place to change the way I did it after the first time. I always thought the water wraith homed in on all your pikmin and there was no way to actually carry anything to the ship without it rolling up and squashing everything. I wonder how much other stuff I don't know about these games. VVVV I never found Titan Dweevil to be hard because all of his attacks are element based. So aside from the electric field you can save your Pikmin from everything he throws at you. He clearly broadcasts what he is going to do next, so avoiding his only instant kill attack is easy. If you couldn't save your pikmin from the rest of his moves he would be WAY harder. He's still cool as hell and fun to fight though. Internet Kraken fucked around with this message at 00:22 on Jul 14, 2013 |
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Jul 13, 2013 23:42
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dijon du jour posted:I think the "playroom" themed floors are my favorite, even though they confuse me greatly. My house had a totally awesome playroom in the basement so it didn't seem weird to me! Well, not any weirder than anything else in the game. Like the tower occupied by a fish artillery gun hybrid that somehow manages to revive itself.
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Jul 14, 2013 23:03
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dijon du jour posted:^^^^^^^^^^ Yeah I was never bothered by the product placement in Pikmin 2 and in fact thought it was pretty funny. It didn't feel like they were there to get you to buy stuff, just that the world you are exploring is earth so finding tons of old discarded junk makes sense. Reading Olimar's thoughts about what they are and why they were made was neat, especially when you contrast them with the ship's* absurd sales pitches. The fake Nintendo products were pretty amusing too. *I can't remember if the AI had a name, I always just called him the ship.
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Jul 15, 2013 01:10
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Pixeltendo posted:Nothing quite like seeing the head of ROB which was previously in the belly of a slime spider....whole...somehow... I didn't even notice that until I carried it to the ship because I was still shocked and dismayed by how easy that fight was. Raging Long Legs is so pathetically easy which is a massive disappointment since fighting your way through the Hole of Heroes is epic and challenging and then you face this really  boss. Blah. No idea what they were thinking there.
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Jul 15, 2013 05:28
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dijon du jour posted:Raging Long Legs is more "threatening" than "hard". I'm assuming he was nerfed at some point during development because, sure, he has those massive stompy feet but you'd have to be comatose to lose too many Pikmin to him. You'd have to really suck at pattern recognition to make it to the end of that cave and still be wandering into the middle of ominous empty arenas with your entire army in tow. Anatharon posted:I was terrified of the Raging Long Legs because of it's sudden appearance in a multiplayer game, before never ever appearing again. Now when you are fighting against another human him suddenly appearing and stomping around is actually an issue! I played the multiplayer with my brother a lot actually. The best map by far was the one set in the rusted arena, because it was covered in bomb rocks you could pick up and chuck into the other players army.
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Jul 15, 2013 05:49
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Bullfrog posted:Something about the Pikmin series really supercharged my 10-year old imagination. I made whole series of comic books, detailed fan-fictions of the world, even an alternate reality-universe where pikmin and bulborbs fought warfare with modern weaponry. I made rudimentary videogames based on these universes in The Games Factory. My parents and I sewed pikmin plush toys, and we bought figurines on Ebay. I did similar things when I played the first Pikmin. I had a notebook that I called my Science Journal, and I wrote stuff down in it based on my experiences with the game. I gave names to all the creatures and imagined what kind of lives they add, and wrote up little stories about their ecology. Then I started doing "real" science experiments in Pikmin too determine all kinds of stupid stuff, such as; -If different types of Pikmin built bridges faster -The detection radius of Bulborbs -If Sheergrubs really did destroy bridges (they totally do, jerks) -If Blue Pikmin burn faster than Yellow Pikmin Kind of wish I still had it too laugh at my past self. Gosh, I never realized how ridiculously nerdy I was (and still am I guess) about these games.
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Jul 20, 2013 20:53
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Gatling Groinx are incredibly annoying and look scary, but I don't think they are actually that dangerous alone. I'm pretty sure that despite the devastating appearance of the mortar they launch, it only kills a Pikmin if it hits them dead on. The rest of the Pikmin get knocked back by the explosion but not actually hurt by it. Bulbears are by far the most obnoxious enemy in the game. I pretty much always use ultra bitter spray on them. EDIT: Actually I take that back, the snitch bugs and kettle beetles are the most annoying just because they can waste so much of your time.
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Jul 21, 2013 06:40
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LAY-ZX posted:Bulbears aren't that bad. Go fight the Ranging Bloyster and consider other applications for the technique. Bulbears home in on the captains? I never knew that. I just assumed they would always go straight for your pikmin so I never bothered switching. I kind of want to play Pikmin 2 without using purple pikmin as much. I always felt 2 was significantly easier than 1 for a lot of reasons. Hit detection seems more forgiving and pikmin are more responsive to your calls. But the main reason is that purples break the game horribly. Not using them would probably make it more interesting. Maybe I'll use a bunch of whites instead for super fast weak mode shmee posted:Not seen them as yet, but then there are no cave areas in this game (well, nothing like in Pikmin 2) so that could explain it. Well there was that Gatling Groinx that spawned above ground in Wistful Wilds. Careening Dirgiebugs were only underground though. I hope they are in though, they were one of my favorite enemies design wise. EDIT: Hell I think I'll just replay both games.
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Jul 21, 2013 19:36
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...of SCIENCE! posted:Wasn't this pretty much the bad ending of the first game? The Pikmin rise up and seize the means of production It was more like the pikmin hauling another corpse off to the onion because that's what they do, why should this one be any different vvvv BUT I HAVE TO GET EVERYTHING!!!!  Seriously, I'm going to have a really hard time forcing myself not to collect those even though I know I won't want to use them.
Internet Kraken fucked around with this message at 06:44 on Jul 22, 2013 |
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Jul 22, 2013 06:34
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Regy Rusty posted:I've never understood this complaint. I always thought that the product placement added to the game's charm in a significant way. It really emphasized that we were exploring our earth of the future and finding very familiar items that Olimar had no clue what they were. Finding a Vlasic pickle lid feels more real than finding Capn Briney's Crunchy Pickles would have. Yeah, I never really understood the complaint either. I mean I'd get if the product placment was rubbed in your face like Olimar's notes reading "Boy I sure am thirsty! Good thing I found this strange can of COCA COLA! It really hit the spot! If only this incredible beverage was readily available for purchase!", but with most of the items Olimar and the Ship completely misinterpret what they are supposed to be.Replaying Pikmin 2, I forgot how creepy Ranging Bloyster is. He's not really dangerous once you get him but the sounds he makes and his jerky movement freak me out. It's really unnerving to switch captains when he's staring right at your pikmin too. I mean, what if he doesn't turn around for some reason? 
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Jul 24, 2013 02:21
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So I just got in this game and I'm feeling a bit disappointed, which is shocking since I'd been looking forward to this for years. I can't get over the controls, which feel aggressively terrible. Aiming feels really weird due to movement and cursor control beind tied to the same stick. I don't like this lock on feature and want to just move freely, but it feels like you have to use it. Furthermore, the lack of a C stick is killing me. Pikmin feel terribly slow and sluggish. I fought the first boss and lost like half my army because despite knowing exactly how to beat it, I had no way to get my Pikmin to move away from it's charge and they would just get caught on his mouth and die. Am I missing something? I'm using the gamepad, maybe the Wii controller handles better, Also, as far as I can tell there is only one save file, so my brother can't play the story mode until I clear it. That's just ridiculous. VVVVV I'll try out the wii mote control scheme then. I'm not sure what dodge thing you're talking about since the game never mentioned it though. The manual made it sound like I needed to find an item or something before I could use it. Internet Kraken fucked around with this message at 19:57 on Aug 8, 2013 |
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Aug 8, 2013 19:39
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dijon du jour posted:Why are you not using the Wiimote and nunchuck control scheme? It was implemented precisely for people who didn't like movement and cursor movement being tied to the same stick, which is how it controlled in the Gamecube Pikmin titles, fyi. Okay I did everything you said and am now having fun with this game. Lots of fun. I'm surprised by how hard the game is though. I'm on day 20 and lost over 150 pikmin, which is way more than I lost total in my no purples Pikmin 2 run. Some of the bosses are really hard. Don't get why they didn't give you the dodge whistle before the first boss though, but now that I have it the lack of a C stick doesn't bother me as much. I miss white pikmin but the cuteness of flying pikmin is making up for that 
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Aug 9, 2013 22:32
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Honestly lack of directional march/C stick control is my only problem with this game. I'm not sure why they decided to change the control scheme from the first two games when it worked so well.
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Aug 9, 2013 23:40
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Just got to the 5th boss (I think) and turned around after fighting it for 2 minutes. That thing is terrifying, I'll stick to gathering fruit for now. That is one of the most disgusting monsters I've ever seen in a video game. I also did some bingo battle with my brother. It's pretty fun but stupidly unfair at times. The rock power up is devastating. If you don't react to the first one and doge right away you get stunned and your pikmin will be crushed. If you happen to be in an area where you can't dodge, like one of those lilypads, you just get to enjoy watching 40 little ghosts float away. Of course, I wasn't really expecting a perfectly fair and balanced game mode so it's fine. Internet Kraken fucked around with this message at 22:44 on Aug 10, 2013 |
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Aug 10, 2013 22:39
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I was wondering how people were racking up 300+ pikmin kill counts. That seemed really, really high. Then I got to the final boss. And here I was thinking I was good at these games Feels like the design behind that guy was combining Water Wraith and Goolix into one nightmarish blob of doom.
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Aug 11, 2013 19:15
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Jet Set Jettison posted:
Yeah you can, I just did it and had a lot of time to spare. If you do a second playthrough you are going to accomplish stuff way quicker than your first time since you will know where to go and how to solve the puzzles. The biggest adjustment I had to make was realizing that unlike the other Pikmin games, fences break down incredibly quickly. In the past ones you were expected to spend a good chunk of time knocking them down but in this one you just blow past them. Means you have to be really good about diving up work so everyone stays efficient. Of course the only penalty to taking long is your wounded pride 
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Aug 13, 2013 00:01
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Yeah I played some more Bingo Battle and this might be one of the most rage inducing game modes I've ever played. There's a good amount of skill involved when it comes to managing your pikmin, reproducing at a fast rate, and planning the most efficient salvage route. Which is good, but that makes it all the more frustrating when you get hosed over by the randomness. Cherry power ups range from annoying as hell to game breaking. The game actively encourages you to screen hop so you can screw over the other player at the most opportune moment. Shock them while they fight a bulborb, teleport them away after they throw half their army at an enemy, plant mines on the fruit they need. Just be tremendous assholes and murder all the adorable little Pikmin. Despite that it's still really fun and using cherries is so cathartic when it ruins the other players day that we won't stop collecting them. We did agree to yell "ROCKS! " a few seconds before using that power up though because it is the most unfair thing I've ever seen in a game.
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Aug 13, 2013 04:14
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mancalamania posted:Am I supposed to be able to (endgame spoilers) get Olimar back to the ship in Formidable Oak in one day?? I thought I was getting really good and efficient at this game, but this whole chase sequence is really kicking my butt and I'm having trouble getting further than the start the darkened cave area. I don't think you can. The darkened cave is the last part of the chase sequence, but as you might expect not the end of the game. You still have one more thing to do in Formidable Oak which you won't have time for, so it will at least take two days. That said once you complete the chase you are done with it so if you can get it done in one day, great! It took me 3 days to do that part. Granted that was mostly because I never reset the game and just rolled with my mistakes instead of trying to do everything with ultra efficiency.
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Aug 13, 2013 10:49
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Sire Oblivion posted:My god, so the Plasma Wraith can't kill the Rock Pikmin outside of the elemental attacks? That's amazing. Seriously? At one point in the fight the plasma wraith spent at least a minute trying to stab a rock pikmin caught in a corner while I pummeled him. I thought it was a glitch and that the rock pikmin was just out of reach, but if they really can't be killed by anything but the elements that fight seems a lot easier now.
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Aug 13, 2013 20:24
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Sire Oblivion posted:In the video he deposits everything but 5 Blue Pikmin, 10 Yellows (seldomly used for elemental stuff) and the rest are Rocks. None of them died and the poking attacks didn't effect the Rock ones at all. The Rock Pikmin are also useful for the fire elemental attack because the core is exposed and can be destroyed before the goo ignites. Not only that he glitched the whole final area by doing it in reverse. What the hell. Huh. Not surprised he only managed to get through that all in one day via a glitch, even when you know exactly what to do it seems like you simply can't move fast enough to clear it unless there was a speed upgrade I missed somewhere. Knowing that the final boss literally can't kill rock pikmin is incredibly lame. I put all my rock pikmin back in the onion since I hated using them and didn't even bother trying to crack the crystal elements. The whole problem with Titan Dweevil was that he could only attack with elements so putting Prism Wraith under the same limitation would make the fight way too easy. As for controls, people seem to use the gamepad just fine but I found it to be so horrible to control that I almost gave up on the game. I played the first two Pikmin games without any controller problems so I'm not sure why the gamepad felt so bad to me. It's like the sensitivity on the cursor was jacked up ridiculously high so I couldn't move without my cursor moving to the max distance.
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Aug 13, 2013 23:12
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