Reviewing Monsters - Pikmin 3, Part 2

My second coverage of the monsters in Pikmin 3! Again, not a whole ton to say. These reviews are a bit slower for me to write because I have no context about a lot of these monsters in the game and how they relate to our heroes and his tiny plant-gremlin sidekicks. This time around, we'll be talking about the rest of the non-boss monsters, as well as the minibosses, and we'll talk about the bosses in a final Pikmin 3 episode.

I'm still undecided if I'll be doing Hey, Pikmin because I still have a lot of other games that I do want to review still (I do want to wrap up the other older Zelda games, and at least do a Metroid game), but whenever Pikmin 4 comes out, I'll definitely be reviewing that!

I guess I'll talk a bit about the two new Pikmin species introduced in Pikmin 3, though I honestly don't have much to say about them without going too deep into mechanics. There is the 'Rock Pikmin', who's made up of rock (or are made up of plant material as hard as rock) and can be thrown towards enemies; as well as the tiny 'Winged Pikmin', who look like little bubblegum fairies. 

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Medusal Slurker (Stauromedusae manifoldii)

We'll start off with one hell of a weirdo! Called the 'Medusal Slurker', it's the first of a bunch of enemies that are based on sea life. We've had a couple of jellyfishes in the previous game, the Jellyfloat family, but the Medusal Slurker is a bit weirder! It's got a weird, blobby jellyfish body and a little 'horn' that resembles a white dandelion flower, which it uses to fly around like the Pokemon Jumpluff. It's got two beady eyes outside its dome head. From the almost-transparent outer body, you could see a bunch of internal organs, and a 'tongue' that droops down into a cavity that looks like a mouth. Based on the name, I think it's meant to evoke the Medusozoa clade of jellyfishes? It's identified as part of the 'Umbloda Family', and float around and trap Pikmin with their tongue or uvula-like organ. Weird!

The in-game notes says that the Medusal Slurker floats around on the wind using the 'puffstalk' on its head, and captures the Pikmin below with its adhesive 'manubrium' (handle in latin). While Olimar and Alph's note that there are no saliva, gastric fluid, or even nematocysts, on these organs, the Pikmin captured by these Slurkers will still be considered lost/dead if you don't rescue them fast enough. 

Skeeterskate (Gerridus clavomacula)

Another weirdo, and a creature more explicitly based on the pond-skater than the one that's also a pond-skater and a leaf-insect. Skeeterskate looks like something out of a Dr. Who book or something, though. What a weird, whimsical-looking motherfucker! It's got three legs arranged in the iconic pond-skater look, but its main body has a cartoony vacuum-shaped proboscis attached to a head that's mostly an eyeball and a funnel upwards towards a glass bulb. Which I guess is this thing's abdomen? This glass bulb contains water, and the Skeeterskate uses this as a source of water for them to launch jets of water at the Pikmin. 

As with real pond skaters, the Skeeterskate use the tiny hairs on the tips of its feet to skate on water, and just like real pond skaters, these hairs are coated in a hydrophobic substance. Olimar notes that the Skeeterskate sucks in water with that siphon to have a storage of ammunition to attack its enemies, but also feeds from the plankton in the drained water. It's nice to see that they put some thought into how this weirdly-shaped creature eats!

While the Skeeterskate is a water-surface dwelling creature, I guess we've got underwater zones here, considering the next batch of enemies:

Sputtlefish (Pseudocephalopoda florascens)

Oh! OHHHH! What an adorable creature! It's like someone took a squid (or well, cuttlefish) and one of those large-eyed goldfish and smooshed the two together to create an adorable little buds! The Sputtlefish (what a name!) has a cutely-shaped flowery tail that brings to mind a flattened version of the cuttlefish's shorter legs, as well as the rippling fins they have. The two larger tentacles, meanwhile, wrap around the eyeballs to give the impression of a 'mustache' (like stylized catfishes or arowana) and the cartoon cuttlefish siphon acts as the creature's mouth. Which, of course, naturally spews out ink as it's trying to escape. It's such a weird creature, and the central body is this weird giant orb surrounded by translucent tissue. It really is one of the most interesting things to come out of the Pikmin franchise in general. 

Olimar notes that the Sputtlefish manages to achieve that translucent look without iridophores, which are specific reflective cells in real-life cephalopods. It's really interesting since Olimar also compares the Medusal Slurker above to real jellyfishes, really highlighting that these are supposed to be mutated descendants of the creatures we know in our Earth right now. The Sputtlefish can also regenerate from minor wounds due to 'photosynthesis, through its symbiosis with zooxanthella'. Real-life cephalopods actually can regenerate their lost tentacles, but this instantaneous, same-day quality of regeneration gets a much more fancy sci-fi explanation. I appreciate that!

Puckering Blinnow (Narrolingus piscatum)

The general shape of the Puckering Blinnow actually reminds me of a cuttlefish as well, with that fin and the size of those eyes, but it's not related to the Sputtlefish and is, in fact, a real fish. It's a rather interesting-looking fish enemy, and I do find that it looks pretty interesting even if the lack of dorsal and pectoral fins do kind of make this creature look highly mutated. All the Blinnow has is a long, fused ventral fin that tapers off into a tail. Olimar actually notes that despite the disproportionally large eyes, this is the mature form of the Blinnow. Olimar's notes also talk about how its dorsal and ventral fins are atrophied, though he doesn't give a reason why and for what purpose they atrophied. 

The Blinnow are observed to be pack hunters, and they can even jump out of the water -- either to chomp down on your flying Pikmin units, or to escape the attack of your underwater Pikmins. It's a pretty cool, and it's a tactic done by certain fish -- most infamously the arowana, who can be observed in the natural habitat to leap up to catch insects perching on branches of trees. There's also a nice final detail about how the round blue scales will turn pink in breeding season, which isn't a detail that's relevant for gameplay but a nice little thing to toss in that makes this creature a bit more believable as a living species. 

Waddlepus (Opisteuthidae iaciobulla)

ANOTHER CUTIE. The Waddlepus is a big fat octopus with a gigantic siphon-mouth, and several stumpy legs that might as well be the extremities of a starfish or something. In fact, Olimar actually identifies this creature as a starfish, noting that it resembles the anatomy of a starfish more than an octopus. A starfish octopus! Adorable! It's got the octopus's delightfully weirdly-slitted eyes, which I definitely appreciate! The purple colouration with white borders are really nice, and the design is completed with a bunch of yellow pores on its back. 

When threatened, the Waddlepus will waddle threateningly towards your Pikmin, and then shoot out bubbles from its yellow pores, which trap your Pikmin. The act of doing this inflates its cranium, giving it a more traditionally octopus-shaped bulbous head. That's a cool way of still preserving the original animal inspiration's body shape despite otherwise diverging really wildly from it. Unlike the Sputtlefish, the Waddlepus only shoots out bubbles to trap Pikmin as self-defense, and isn't actually interested in eating the Pikmin. 

It's also notable that the Waddlepus is nocturnal and sleeps during the day, meaning that most of the time you encounter this guy sleeping and it leads more credence into the fact that this guy is just panicking and trying to protect its territory. Olimar also notes that he's done closer research on these Waddlepus, and the bubbles it makes are normally used to protect eggs during spawning season. 

Peckish Aristocrab (Brachyurices esurio)

What a weird looking motherfucker! Its Japanese name calls it an 'onion crab', and I'm hard-pressed to disagree. It's got a gigantic, glistening purple-and-silver giant fiddler crab claw, and a bunch of regular crab legs, but the rest of its body looks so weird! A creepy, yawning mouth and what originally looks like two gigantic beady eyes on its 'cheeks', turns out that the Aristrocrab's true eyes are two tiny eyestalks popping up from the top of the head! So those two giant organs are, what, fake eyes for intimidation? 

It grabs Pikmin with its massive claw and gobbles them up with that disturbing-looking maw... and inside there's an even more disturbing blue tongue! What the hell! As if it's not enough, the Aristrocrab can also blow bubbles, though real-life crabs do blow bubbles as a way to deter predators. The Aristrocrab, of course, only moves sideways, and interestingly enough, its gigantic crystal-encrusted claw makes it vulnerable to Rock Pikmin specifically. 

As Olimar points out, the large claw isn't just used for catching prey and self-defense, but also as a mating call. This is true for real-life fiddler crabs. The Aristrocrab also has great regenerative capabilities, able to regenerate its claw in a single night. Real crabs also have remarkable limb regenerative capabilities, but it usually takes a year, and they get those limbs during moulting. 

Nectarous Dandelfly (Anisopterid ambrosius)

This one is an interesting one! Called the Nectarous Dandelfly (dandelion fly, get it?), its Japanese name is interestingly the much cooler 'antlion nectar-holder', meaning that this creature might be meant to represent an adult antlion? Admittedly, though, the shape of that spiral proboscis and its nectar-eating behaviour does mark it as a member of the lepidopteran family, but then again this is also an Earth where little mandrakes run around and throw each other at mutant bugs. Olimar identifies this creature as having a larval stage underwater, which means that the 'dandelfly' English moniker would fit better with this being an analogue of a damselfly or dragonfly. Those animals don't actually change diets to feed on nectar, though, because anisopterans are all carnivorous as adults. 

The design is pretty cute. A little puffball body with a butterfly head attached to it, and what I see are at least three pairs of wings? I'm only looking at static images but I imagine this thing's wings vibrate around like a damn hummingbird. The big-puffball-body also makes me think this is related to the Spectralids. But obviously the most important detail here are the chains of giant nectar droplets that trail behind him like the segments of a cartoon caterpillar or something. Hitting one of this segments will cause every single segment trailing behind it to fall off to the ground, allowing you to loot them, which means that the most valuable target is the head. Olimar also notes that these Dandelflies require 5 segments before they are properly ready for procreation, and that the proboscis curls upwards to prevent 'nectar reflux'!

The Nectarous Dandelfly is even more harmless than the other 'hazard' enemies, and is apparently our replacement for the Honeywisp. On one hand, while I can appreciate the more biology-inspired design of the Dandelfly, it's also always a sad thing whenever a good design essentially gets 'retired'. 

Arachnode (Clavo fictusphera)

Okay, this one is a weirdo! The Arachnode is our straight-up 'spider' compared to the Beady Long Legs being a psychedelic, bizarre giant spider-walker-monster thing. The Arachnode seen here is its 'full' stage. When it's dormant, the Arachnode's spider legs curl up around it like some kind of seed, which isn't too far off from several types of spiders that actually camouflage themselves nearby their webs to avoid predators while waiting for prey to land on their web.

The actual design of the spread-out member of the (hee hee) Awrapnid (hoo hoo!) family is a delightful design, too, with the eight legs spreading out radially from the spherical main body that has a bunch of golden markings on it. The design is a pretty charming one for a spider monster, I feel. Intersetingly, Olimar notes that the Arachnode is a hermaphrodite, although like most hermaphrodites (like earthworms!) the Arachnodes don't reproduce on their own. There's an interesting theory that Olimar poses that this is actually two creatures fused together, like one of those anglerfishes.

The game mechanics of the Arachnode revolves around its large web, which, of course, traps your Pikmins who quickly become lunch for the monstrous spider. But on the other hand, Brittany notes that you could send other Pikmin to twang a side of the web to lure the Arachnode away, which I thought is a very cool mechanic to do on a spiderweb! I also like that Alph specifies the relative tensile strength of a spiderweb, which are extremely strong for its size. Alph even considers making a suit of armour out of it, which is actually a real-world military application for spiderwebs!

Scornet (Spourgitis advenus)

We get to see a bigger 'Scornet Maestro' later on, although you can encounter a massive swarm of these guys in other areas. These are basically angry hornets, filling in that 'swarm of bees or wasps protecting a nest/queen' trope. Pretty fun designs, too, a simple shuttlecock-looking shape that just brings to mind little guided missiles or something. They've got a very simple face design that's just delightful, with buggy eyes and a little stinger-mouth. 

The main body of the Scornet also looks rather interesting, with what seems like bird feathers (which probably what led me to think of its resemblance to a shuttlecock!). They will pick your Pikmins up and fly away with them. Olimar's notes are relatively similar to real life members of hymenopterans, where these Scornets are adult worker females, each with a unique role in the colony. Like most ants, bees and wasps, the adult worker females that go around foraging for food or protecting the colony are actually sterile females that spend their lives working for the good of the colony. Real-world 'queen' insects don't actually issue commands to the rest of her colony (though they will protect her, since she's a very valuable and often irreplaceable asset to the colony) but the Scornets here are portrayde as being literally subservient to the 'commands made by their queen.

Calcified Crushblat (Durotesta longuscrus)

And our last non-boss enemy is the hilariously named 'Calcified Crushblat', which... what is this thing? This looks like something out of a whimsical children's book, and I love it. It's just a giant head with an adorable mouth (it's not actually a mouth), and two stick-like slender feet that look like they're wearing funny socks. These legs can extend in and out of their bodies like accordions, which means that in its full 'retracted' stage, the Crushblat just looks like a snot-covered rock.

Their eyes are also gloriously pickled-looking, with massive eyelashes. It also normally has a layer of... of mucus? No, of silica, as the descriptions point out. The function is rather obvious as a video-game enemy -- it's an extra shield that you need specific Rock Pikmin to break. 

We've heard of the Crushblat mentioned before in the description of the Skutterchuck, who use the crystals shed by this thing as they grow as weapons. And... no, other than the fact that this bizarre Crushblat creature does create silica crystal rocks organically, I'm not really sure what this thing is. It's goofy-looking! Olimar actually tells us that these creatures used to be water-based mollusks, before some severe adaptation allowed them to grow bizarre bird-legs and... and that weird mouth. Apparently, their hard shell allows them to live on land, safe from predators, but it feeds by absorbing nutrients from its skin... something that's extremely inefficient for anything larger than a bug. I love that this is something that they point out, and as a result the Crushblat is actually mostly sedentary until, of course, your marauding Pikmin explorers encounter it.