26th April 2004, 12:02 PM
No shit. But the whole idea of getting back to your ship before sundown was a staple of gameplay that made everything a hell of alot more interesting. I suppose you can accomplish the same ideal by just blocking the player's progress unless they return with a special item or something and build some kind of level-to-level structure but that would suck. Take out Pikmin and use the PAR code to stop the timer and then go play it. You can get all the ship parts in like 6 trips and it's the most boring game in the world. Imagine what Zelda: MM would be like without the 3 day countdown scenario.
Timers make a game much more fun. And with a timer you dont have to block progress, you can tell the gameplayer 'go where ever you want, do whatever you want to do, just do it within this time' instead of 'go here, complete this task, wait for next level to load, repeat'. That staple works fine in alot of games, but not in a game where exploring is so important to the fabric of the game. Exploring in Zelda is just for fun (asaide from looking for dungeons), find some rupees or a fairy altar, etc.
But in Pikmin, you would explore to find the next ship part and what path to take for the safest route for your pikmin and what work would have to be done to get that safe route; By setting a time limit you're letting the player decide what ship part to go after: You can get this one by fighting a boss, or here's three in a row. The one for the boss requires you to bomb this wall and use specific color pikmin and use many of them to take the boss down. The three in a row require you to move through dangerous territory (eg: use red or yellow pikmin around water hazards or blue or yellow pikmin around fire) and animals that usually require atleast 50 pikmin to take down quickly.
OR just go for one part and make it more simple, the degree of difficulty was up to the player's ability to take chances and the player would decide what chance to take based on that timer! The timer is everything in Pikmin. Pikmin 2 will no doubt be alot of fun, but it wont have that anxiety and that high you get when you *just* made it before night or how awesome it would feel seeing groups of pikmin returning to the camp bringing back 2 or 3 ship parts and all the spoils of the day right when the 10 second countdown starts because you, the gameplayer, made wise decisions and made good use of time.
Timers make a game much more fun. And with a timer you dont have to block progress, you can tell the gameplayer 'go where ever you want, do whatever you want to do, just do it within this time' instead of 'go here, complete this task, wait for next level to load, repeat'. That staple works fine in alot of games, but not in a game where exploring is so important to the fabric of the game. Exploring in Zelda is just for fun (asaide from looking for dungeons), find some rupees or a fairy altar, etc.
But in Pikmin, you would explore to find the next ship part and what path to take for the safest route for your pikmin and what work would have to be done to get that safe route; By setting a time limit you're letting the player decide what ship part to go after: You can get this one by fighting a boss, or here's three in a row. The one for the boss requires you to bomb this wall and use specific color pikmin and use many of them to take the boss down. The three in a row require you to move through dangerous territory (eg: use red or yellow pikmin around water hazards or blue or yellow pikmin around fire) and animals that usually require atleast 50 pikmin to take down quickly.
OR just go for one part and make it more simple, the degree of difficulty was up to the player's ability to take chances and the player would decide what chance to take based on that timer! The timer is everything in Pikmin. Pikmin 2 will no doubt be alot of fun, but it wont have that anxiety and that high you get when you *just* made it before night or how awesome it would feel seeing groups of pikmin returning to the camp bringing back 2 or 3 ship parts and all the spoils of the day right when the 10 second countdown starts because you, the gameplayer, made wise decisions and made good use of time.