Having played Pikmin 3 demos at back-to-back E3s, I'd say the game has come a long way in the past year. Nintendo wised up this year and gave me a Wii Remote Plus and Nunchuk right away, noting that their teams vastly prefer this setup (though joystick/button play is also supported on both GamePad and Pro controllers). It's worth noting that you have fairly little camera control in the pointer scheme; a tap of the Nunchuk's Z button will simply re-center behind your lead character. One new feature lets you target an enemy or item by pointing the cursor at it and holding Z; then, you can shake the Nunchuk to send every Pikmin at the target in one huge, all-out strike.

The ten-minute single player demo offers a choice between two levels -- one that's similar to what we played in 2012, and one new, more difficult one. I chose the latter and was given the standard goal of collecting as many items as possible. Each piece of fruit, enemy carcass, or pellet generates new Pikmin sproutlings, and some of the real-world items are gold-colored with a coin value displayed. The quantity and value of items gathered is shown at completion of each level, and a demo rep told me that these may be posted to an online leaderboard for comparison with your friends' scores. Take that with a grain of salt, for now. (The game still appears to have no online multiplayer, which is really frustrating.)

Right away, I found a group of the new pink Pikmin just hanging out near the Onion base. These little guys hover mid-air when you throw them, which affects how they attack and also lets them lift gates that are otherwise indesctructible. The pink ones also take different paths when collecting items and returning to your astronaut character -- which means they can be faster, but it's also harder to keep up with your supply routes because they are quickly separated from other, less mobile Pikmin. A very funny new animation shows that non-flying Pikmin will grab onto an item as it is lifted up, struggle to hang on for a few seconds, and eventually fall off in despair.

The other new mechanic on display is multi-tasking with the three astronauts. You directly control just one at a time, and rather than merely flipping among them (as in Pikmin 2), the excess heroes can follow around your main one along with the mass of Pikmin. You can tap C on the Nunchuk to cycle through the different Pikmin colors, and then to the astronauts, who can be thrown at a low angle (like the big purple Pikmin). This allows them to get up to ledges that you can't climb otherwise. Once up there, the thrown astronaut will start pulling up nearby embedded Pikmin. You can also press the minus button to zap control over to that guy. By throwing both extra astronauts up higher, then switching to one and throwing the third up to yet another ledge, you can reach heights that were never accessible in previous games. This feature seems destined to be exploited in many of the game's more difficult puzzles. In battle, the additonal characters are seemingly useless (they won't attack enemies) -- but perhaps other new mechanics will change that.

I should also mention that the above level is playable in the two-player cooperative mode; presumably, this should apply to the entire main campaign. There is a new, separate competitive mode called Bingo Battle. It's being shown for two players but may support more; as usual, details are hard to pin down. For this mode, each player has a vertical split-screen and a 4x4 bingo card showing various items that can be collected for the onion base. Some are of limited quantity in the level and will be X'd out when no longer available -- that means you need to complete a row or column some other way. There are many paths to victory, but some items are much more challenging than others. My very first match-up came down to the wire, as both of us were fighting over the same giant apple, and neither had enough strength to carry it due to excessive Pikmin-on-Pikmin violence. Just then, I happened to see a yellow butterfly pass overhead and land on a nearby ledge, and that was another tile that would complete my bingo. I went directly after the butterfly, dispatched it from below, and carried it back to my base very quickly due to the relative size compared to that apple. Victory was mine before the opponent even realized what was happening. This mode was definitely a fun twist on the classic Pikmin structure, as we were focused on specific kinds of items. Conflict was sporadic but intense whenever we both set eyes on the same resource. Things got chaotic and, frankly, very confusing whenever our armies clashed (they were only distinguished by leaf/bud/flower colors), and it seems the Pikmin usually prefer to fight each other than work on carrying off the prize.