How Nintendo exploits Epic’s engine for its latest first-party showcase.
The extent of Pikmin 4’s reinvention runs deeper than its visuals of course.
On a technical level, Pikmin 4 benefits hugely from the move to Unreal Engine.
It can be instructive to look back to Pikmin 3 on Wii U for a little perspective.
Despite running at just 30fps, a stable frame-time presentation meant that the game felt good to play too.
Jump forward ten years, then, and Pikmin 4 on Switch is a clear upgrade in several aspects.
We get a lot of benefits with Unreal Engine then, and it doesn’t end there.
And yet, Pikmin 4 doesn’t present a perfect picture - especially with regards to image quality.
In part, this is an effect of the dynamic resolution setup adjusting the pixel structure on the fly.
The bigger upgrade over Pikmin 3 comes in world detail.
Right away, we get new decorative elements like falling petals plus volumetric fog on the horizon.
Each adds a sense of weight and energy to the air that previous games were missing.
There’s even a convincing reflective sheen to scratched metals and treasures.
One extra nice touch is seeing the details beyond the garden.
Even filtered by the bokeh depth of field, we now see the house and scrapped tyres looming over.
Again, all of this helps create this sense of Pikmin 4’s action within a miniature-scale world.
As an aside here, Pikmin 4 also drops at points momentarily where transparent elements fill the screen.
This is an absolutely rock-solid experience at that 30fps line.
All of this amounts to Pikmin 4 ranking among the very best-looking first-party Switch titles.
Based on the results here, Nintendo and Unreal Engine is a pairing I hope we see more often.
