Pikmin 3 Complete - Again

Well, it's done.  Again.  On Friday March 14 (well, technically, very early in the morning of Saturday March 15) we finished playing through Pikmin 3 for the second time.

If you've been following this blog for a while (or if you've lived in our house for more than a day) you know that Sherry and I always seem to be in the process of playing some video game.  We gravitate towards games which require me to control the game, but which also give Sherry the opportunity to participate in strategy, tactics and puzzle solving.

All of the Pikmin games provide plenty of opportunity for Sherry to help, and give me a chance to hone my fine video-motor skills.  (If you're curious about what's involved in Pikmin 3, just read my first "Complete" blog on the game.) 

On our first play-through, we just went from game day to the next game day.  We did not replay any game days trying to do better.  We figured we were probably good enough to win the game without replays, and we wanted to see what playing "hard core" would be like.  It was fun, but one of the factors which makes this game so high in replay value is the chance to set goals for improvement the next time. 

So, for our second playing, we knew some of what was going to happen in the story.  This allowed us to prepare for the second phase of the game.  As it turns out, that preparation made for some truly spectacular game days. 

This next bit might not really mean anything to you, dear reader, but I want it recorded for posterity.  (And because my memory might drop this bit of information, and I want to be able to remind myself.)  In the game, the three player characters are trying to retrieve sixty-six pieces of fruit, which they juice -- both for their own sustenance and to bring home to their home planet.  Well, of those sixty-six fruit, we had one game day in which we retrieved ten of them.  Ten!  And the final three were collected with only a couple of seconds remaining in the game day.  It was super fun -- and we didn't even do that on a day we repeated.  It was done on the first try, because we had prepared so well.

Anyway, I am tempted to play this again soon.  It's a fun game, folks.  If you have a Wii-U, and you like video games with minimal violence, I can't recommend this highly enough.