Topic: My Dreams Were Crushed Today - A Pikmin 3 Rant

I agree with @Captain_Balko, there are also certain points in the game where you can only play as one player.
Anyway, as people already have said; there are multiplayer modes. You have Mission Mode, where you and/or a partner can gather fruit as fast as possible, defeat all enemies as fast as possible, and defeat the bosses as fast as possible. You should try to get Platinum Medals on all of them! Then you have Bingo Battle, where you gather enemies and fruit in order to make four in a row, in order to win. There's plenty for you two to do, and I also heavily recommend the Story Mode too, I loved it.

The mini games on nintendo land were poor interpretations of what their actual game counterparts were like. LoZ had multiplayer and was on rails, Mario chase was just a game of tag and F-Zero was just aweful, while the actual games are alot more fun then that. The point being that I wouldn't use nintendo land as a way to determine what the actual games play like.

Ya, this game has always been single player focused. I agree with @Captain_Balko on this one. It would be like if Zelda or Metroid had co-op. It just doesn't happen.
I'm letting my brother play the game right now on his own NNID.

Hey, Legend of Zelda Four Swords was fantastic if you found people to play with!

Captain_Balko is right. This is a point I've brought up before. Valve was in a similar situation with Portal. They couldn't make a good co-op campaign that could also be played well by one player. Valve solved the problem in their game by making a totally separate strictly 2-player campaign. Nintendo would have to do something similar in Pikmin, creating one single player campaign and another co-op campaign. That would significantly increase their workload and subsequently the time, resources, and money to complete the project. Nintendo likely simply couldn't justify those costs for this title. Perhaps, if Pikmin 3 is successful enough, Nintendo will be more willing to expand their resources for a sequel or maybe, if we are very lucky, create some sort of downloadable extra content for Pikmin 3 much sooner than a sequel.

I stopped reading after Dear Nintendo. I hope the OP realizes that this is not Nintendo's site. He would probably get more results by contacting Nintendo directly.

and I quote:

© 2013 Nintendo Life, part of Nlife Ltd. This site is not affiliated with Nintendo. Hosted by dx.net.

This is the real crushed dreams of this thread, as far as I'm concerned.

For sure. I had 4 friends with GBAs, and we would always play that. Sometimes we would fight or couldn't cooperate, so Tingle would take our force shards.
My point was that it's kinda pointless to expect multiplayer from a single player focused game.

If Nintendo makes a multiplayer Metroid, Zelda, etc, great, but I'm not gonna be all bummed out if they're not. I like video games, but it surprises me how disappointed people get on the internet about stuff we already knew wasn't going to be included as far back as last years E3.

Like I said, my bro is playing his own file. I don't mind. The game is designed for a single player to play, with multiplayer on the side.

I can sympathize w/ the OPs disapointment, its the reason we aren't getting Lego City Undercover, no co-op, after years of playing licensed Lego titles. (My sons playing together and with my wife and I, and my wife and I.)
That said, Pikmin and Pikmin 2 were single player so I don't see some minigame as a reason to expect Pikmin 3 to be multiplayer.

Yeah I miss NSider...I mean, there's NSider 2, but it's not the same since its not by Nintendo. :c

Should've played Pikmin 2 bro.
Should've read some reviews bro.

...... um what?

@Mucher Many reviewers have stated they would purchase the game based almost on Bingo Battle alone which provides some 2 player fun that you and the gf might just love to pieces! Bingo is awesome! You might want to check it out before you pass on the Wii Us first great Nintendo made game

Thanks everyone for all the feedback. Many of you raise some interesting points. I would like to address a few of them.

I do realize (now) that this is not an official Nintendo site. I explained in an earlier post on the first page how I ended up here. At the same time, since they have no official forums, I would find it hard to believe that there is not a single person at Nintendo that peruses through various popular fansites and message boards. This site seemed pretty professional and well moderated and after reading through a few threads looked to have a good community. I still feel this holds true.

On a different note, I'm not convinced that everyone has played the Pikmin mini game, so I wanted to explain it slightly for clarity. The mini game on Nintendo Land plays just like any other single player Pikmin game. The multiplayer aspect does not come from playing as two of the main characters at the same time. The multiplayer is merely the ability for other players to take control of a single one of the main player's Pikmin at a time. They do not get their own hoard of Pikmin to play with. Nor do the Pikmin have any special abilities for being controlled manually. There are no balance issues, extra textures, or any other additional game mechanics to take into consideration. Again, I implore anyone who has not tried it to do so. It's great fun and allows people in the room to be included in the madness without changing the way the game plays whatsoever.

I would also like to reiterate that I am not attempting to put the game down for what it is. I'm certain that this game is an excellent single player game, and the multiplayer that exists offers fun for those who enjoy competitive play. I only want the ability for other players to be able to control a Pikmin. It was so intuitively done that it truly shocks me to not have that feature in Pikmin 3.

Thanks again for the feedback!

Not at all. I own all three Pikmin games. The Pikmin in Nintendo Land is basically Pikmin for nongamers. It's great for playing with kids, but it's almost completely void of strategy. You shouldn't be asking why isn't Pikmin 3 more like Nintendo Land's Pikmin, but why isn't Nintendo Land's Pikmin more like Pikmin 3.

As for not being able to control a pikmin directly...sorry? I guess stick with Nintendo Land because that's not what real Pikmin is about.

I have to ask, have you played previous Pikmin titles? I'm not talking about the Nintendo Land minigame (which I did enjoy), I mean the first two in the series. If so, you have to admit the Nintendo Land minigame was not a good representation of the series. The difficulty is toned down and when another player controls a Pikmin, it's a stronger Pikmin than the other. The game isn't played the same, is no longer about collecting and managing fruits, it's more like an action game than a strategy one. My point being that Nintendo Land was a spinoff minigame, if they changed the series that drastically there would be more disappointed fans. Pikmin has an established fanbase. Yes, I enjoy the co-op in NL but I see why they didn't include it in Pikmin 3's campaign, there would've been a lot more to work out to do so and this game has been in development long enough. The co-op missions are fun though and hopefully they'll add more of those.

Not all games need deep multiplayer.
Pikmin Adventure is a repetitive button masher. Don't get me wrong, it's fun but gets boring fast, especially on single player.
Did you even play Pikmin 3's story mode?

Yeah the only thing the Pikmin minigame and the main series have in common is that you toss Pikmin onto monsters' backs, nothing more. Aside from that they're completely different.

I see what the OP is saying, and really he leaves it open-ended in perhaps hoping for something like this as DLC in the future. No need to get "all up ons" him about it.

No matter what, someone somewhere will complain about something no matter how perfect it is. So I don't care. This game is perfection in my eyes.