Pikmin 3

Pikmin 3 arrived after a long wait as the first new entry in the series in roughly a decade. You control a trio of tiny astronauts stranded on a planet overgrown with vegetation and insects, and their only hope lies with the Pikmin: small plant-like creatures you gather in swarms to carry objects, break down obstacles, and fight. Each Pikmin type has its own ability. Red ones resist fire, blue ones can breathe underwater, yellow ones conduct electricity, and this entry adds rock Pikmin, who shatter shells and glass, and flying Pikmin, who can carry cargo over water and off the beaten path.

Each day has a fixed length, and after dark the planet's surface turns into a deadly place, so all your Pikmin need to be brought back to the ship in time. Out of this grows a distinctive tension between planning and haste: you split your groups across parallel tasks, switch between astronauts who can work on opposite ends of the map, and keep an eye on fruit reserves, which serve as food and, by extension, as the whole expedition's time limit. Battles against giant bugs play out like small puzzles, where you need to spot the weak point and throw the right kind of Pikmin at it in the right order. Get it wrong, and you can lose dozens of helpers at once.

The visuals rank among the most beautiful the Wii U ever offered. The detailed macro-world, with water droplets, backlit leaves, and pronounced depth of field, plays like a nature documentary, and the game cleverly alternates calm and chaos. The music is understated, more atmospheric than catchy, and creates genuine tension during the nightly rush back to the ship. Critics received the game excellently, praising in particular the GamePad pointer controls and the finely tuned balance. Sales, however, were once again limited by the console's narrow install base. The later Pikmin 3 Deluxe release brought the game to a wider audience, and today it stands among the best-aged strategy games Nintendo has ever put out.