Pikmin 3 has been awesome so far.

My 10yr old was gloating that he beat it before me, forgetting the fact he has a lot more free time than I do and it took him 78 days to get all fruit and beat the final boss. Whereas I'm on day 32, have 48 of 66 fruit and just unlocked the final area. :) I'll likely have all fruit and boss beat by day 40. Also don't know how many of the data files he has. I'll 100% it for sure. So once I beat it, I'll be able to rub it in his little smirky face.

I haven't played any of the other modes yet. Will likely try that this weekend, but my children love them. Too bad they didn't make these parts online capable. Nintendo fails at adding online where it seems obvious.

To me this is definitely a 9/10 type of game. With the online component added in I would have went to 9.5. I love all the controller options, gameplay, improvements in managing multiple characters, etc. Just a great game and well worth my $.

Ah yeah that landmass was a pain. Did get him on my first try tho.

Need blues (a lot) for feet.

Need reds (a lot) for attacking head.

Need rock ( a little) just to break initial glass.

Need to remain near entrance so you dont' have to worry about being stomped. I only jumped out near end of day to ensure I could get him knocked down one more time to get another run at his head. Literally beat him with 3secs on clock. (had to come back next day for fruit and louie, plus bonus of head and bunch of new pellets of various sizes as well as a couple butterflies)

Tongue is an issue, but if you watch his flap, it always lightly wobbles before the tongue comes out. Just call all pikmin as you run away to a safe distance. However, I still only had 44 out of original 100 when it was all said and done. Exclusively due to that damn tongue.

I found that odd too. My son got to this point before me and was almost dead due to it. Barely was living on one juice with 0 back up for a couple days. When I got there I had 4 or 6 backups after first day. I asked him WTH did he do to miss all that fruit?

Did slightly better with the Plasma Wraith this time, though it still ends up a slaughter at the end when he just starts chucking out multiple elemental attacks and you can't possibly corral the pikmin dispatched to deal with the other attacks. Overlap becomes insane.

Day 32: 66 fruit, 16:45 recorded minutes of play (substantially longer due to all the resets), 716 Pikmin in reserve, 242 total casualties (about 1/6th of which came from the Plasma Wraith alone).

I figured out the easiest way to beat him with minor deaths is to assault him with a bunch of pink pikmin when he's flying. It does a great deal of damage and slams him to the ground where a bunch of his goo is dispatched to be picked up by other pikmin. It actually forces him to not even be able to do any elemental attacks. Basically, his flying is his elemental attack for the pinkies.

Beat the game for the first time this morning. Finished in 36 days with 42 fruit. Picked up rest of fruit by 47th day. Still need to go find last couple data files. I actually got final 7 pieces of fruit from twilight river area in 47th day. Most fruit I was able to get in a single day all game.

Once I get 100%, I'll play through again to see how fast I can beat it with all fruit. I noticed on global rankings someone beat game in 10 days. Damn. Likely very little fruit tho. Probably just focused on story and one fruit a day.