see deal Pikmin 3 - Nintendo Wii U $59.99 on Gamestop

I've discovered the dirty secret of Pikmin 3

Your mindless legion awaits.

Poor, innocent Bulborbs. Not a care in the world...

Your goal in Pikmin 3? Stealing PNF-404's natural resources.

Multiple explorers opens up strategic possibilities.

The truth is this: Pikmin 3 isn't a game about plucky little heroes adventuring in an unknown world. Far from it. Nintendo's real time strategy series is, in fact, a twisted tale of an invasion, where three alien commanders arrive on a planet, and subsequently enslave hundreds upon hundreds of mindless creatures. If that warped truth wasn't enough, think about what comes next - an assault upon native species who are minding their own business; a theft of natural resources; a use of technology to expand power and slowly convert a foreign world into something more suitable to alien needs.That, my friends, is the true story of Pikmin 3 - or at least how I see the game through the lens of my play style. To me, the crew of Charlie, Alph and Brittany, became aggressive invaders, bent on plundering an unknown world. The planet Koppai needs its resources, and it needs them at the expense of species on planet PNF-404. There's more than a touch of Independence Day here... minus Will Smith, Bill Pullman and a White House, I suppose.So much of the Pikmin 3 experience is immediately accessible and intuitive, but for anyone who hasn't played the past games - or forgot what they were about in the near-decade between releases - Nintendo will walk you through fundamental controls and concepts, as it always does. You'll meet each explorer and each type of Pikmin separately. You'll learn how to move between your lead characters, to multi-task your various unit types, watch your overworld map on the GamePad and even set waypoints for your Koppai crew members and their assigned legion of creatures. Hints and tips are literally scattered throughout the land in the form of Explorer's Notes that can be found and accessed. Within moments you'll feel like you have a full understanding of what you can do, even if it takes time to explore the intricacies of strategy and efficiency.There are newer abilities, of course - highlighting an enemy with the Wii Remote and pressing Z will not only create a locked-on camera perspective for you, it'll allow you to shake your Nunchuk to send your entire Pikmin army rushing at your target, swarming it and beating it to death. Mark my words - you have never seen a Bulborb buckle so quickly. I actually felt slightly guilty about killing something in such an overwhelming way. As I watched my obedient minions carry the creature's lifeless corpse towards my ship, I started to question the morality of this game. I saw under the game's shiny, family-friendly exterior.Pikmin 3 has this crazy, bizarre, amazing narrative about sacrificing something for the greater good. Your Koppai people demand your help. They need fruit juice, which you must extract (read: steal) day by day from PNF-404, while still sustaining your three commanders off that same resource. That's one of the most clever elements of Pikmin 3, in fact. You have the freedom to do what you want, explore where you want and do any of it how you want - provided you stay alive. Every day your team must drink some of the juice you're trying to collect. Run out, and you lose the game. That aside, you can do what you want. You can spend a day just collecting and stockpiling fruit. Or you can ignore that and quest out to find a boss and fight it. Running out of daylight during your battle? Escape from your foe and return the next day - any damage done will remain. That day-to-day consistency also applies to the position of critical items - for example that giant piece of fruit you really, really need. The same goes for any items you're moving around - your progress remains, meaning you can really play how you want. That combined with the strategic implications of having up to three explorers, a wide range of Pikmin types, and a GamePad-based map, results in an incredibly free experience.That flexibility gives me tactical options. How will I command my Koppai and Pikmin teams? As it happens, I play in a very aggressive manner. I ramp up my legion quickly, and attempt to overwhelm anything - be it a stationary wall or a flame-shooting grub. But that approach also lends itself to great risk. A boss battle with an Armored Mandad led me to lose almost 100 Pikmin at once. Not because the Mandad was eating my Pikmin (though that did happen), but because it scattered my army a split-second before the day ended. I may have the ability to approach my days however I want, but nighttime is still deadly.With my Pikmin scattered and explorer dazed by the Mandad's charge, the day ended, my ships escaped, and my tiny, obedient minions died, never to return. A day-ending line graph tracking my total Pikmin count plummeted to nearly zero, adding insult to injury. I was devastated. All my progress in exploiting PNF-404 was lost, and it would potentially take days to recover. Fortunately, Nintendo has anticipated situations like this. While some players will simply dive back in and rebuild, some will view such a striking reversal of fortune as a game-stopping obstacle. In cases like this, players will be able to revisit any past days, provided they're willing to lose any progress to that point. If you're on Day 7, and want to move back to your situation on Day 3, you can, but you'll erase Days 4, 5 and 6. It's certainly a fair sacrifice, and will definitely help those who have their games shattered, as I did.Pikmin is immediately accessible at a basic level, even if you've never played the series to this point. But there's so much more at work here, something that's only really apparent when you really start to play and explore this third entry. How you spend your days, control your troops, manage your resources and generally accomplish tasks is up to you. You can push ahead, conquer and advance the game's larger story, which involves following in the footsteps of a certain missing Captain Olimar. You could meander through various environments and discover secrets in every corner. You could even try to take amazing in-game photos with the GamePad and post them to Miiverse.Having accepted the warped truth behind Pikmin, I'm fully willing to embrace the darker side of this garden adventure, annihilating everything in my path with overwhelming force. PNF-404 will be a wasteland when I'm done. Its resources stripped. Its peaceful species scattered in the winds or consumed to increase my forces. But you don't have to play Pikmin 3 like I do. And that's why it's so brilliant at its fundamental core, which is to say nothing of spectacular multiplayer modes like Bingo Battle or the more task-oriented Mission Mode. It's been nearly a decade since the last entry in this series, and while that wait has continuously set the bar higher for this third installment, I'm really starting to think that wait will be worth it. That's an awesome thing to realize.

Rich is mildly ashamed of his conduct in Pikmin 3. Those poor Bulborbs never stood a chance. And he stole all their fruit... and the bodies of their dead!! There's plenty more Rich wasn't able to discuss in his Pikmin 3 preview. Chat with him about all things Pikmin on Twitter @RichIGN