Viva Pinata - Ghey or good clean fun?

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Viva Pinata - Ghey or good clean fun?

Postby Silverhaze on Tue Dec 05, 2006 12:12 pm

Some among you may have walked into your local game store or looked this up online and upon looking at its colourful and bright box, instantly discounted it as totally ghey or a kid’s game. I can’t say I particularly blame you!

First impressions (as they say) last. But get past that initial thought, get the game out of its plastic box, load it up, begin to play and all of a sudden it seems less for kids despite how it looks.

Graphically the game impresses. The attention to detail is superb and most objects and models in the game will stand up to a fairly close inspection.
It’s the style of the graphics that give the game its charm and as the name implies, your game area will soon boast a selection of paper animals. Starting off black and white you must tempt them into your garden and make them resident for them to show their true colours but more on that later.

Viva Piñata puts you in control of a garden. Yes, primarily it’s a gardening game. As uninteresting as that sounds it really is a very neat idea but will appeal more to those that enjoy games such as Animal Crossing and The Sims. I myself am a fan of Animal Crossing but cant get on with The Sims but this game sits somewhere in between and its charm carries it a long way.

You begin with a small plot of what looks like wasteland littered with various objects, hard cracked ground and the odd weed. Upon entering this area you are greeted by a character who will act as your guide through the tutorial to come. She presents you with a shovel to get you started but it can’t do much.
Your first task requires you to prepare the land for cultivation and this is a fairly long process but luckily you only need to do this once. Patting the land with your spade with break up the earth and also destroy any objects you want to get rid of. You are then given some grass in a packet which basically paints grass onto prepared earth. You now have a lovely lawn.

Once you meet a few more characters you will be given the opportunity to get your hands on some seeds. They start off as unknown seeds but once you have seen and grown one once it will be recognised from then on in your journal and encyclopaedia. Planting the seeds is as simple as a button press and you can watch the plants grow in real time. The handy watering can allows you to keep an eye on the water levels of the growing plant to make sure it doesn’t dry out. Once fully grown they no longer need watering.

The grass and simple plants will soon attract the game’s main component. The Piñata!! Now things begin to get interesting. They will first appear on the outskirts of your garden, beyond the reach of your cursor and will show an interest in your garden. A cut scene will play when each new species shows an interest and the tutorial character will inform you of what interested them so you can expand on it and get them to take stroll through your garden.
The Piñata each have their own set of variables that dictate when they show an interest in your garden, explore your garden, become resident and more.
The Whirlm for example should be your first visitor because it likes your newly cultivated soil and grass. It should become resident in no time and you can look at the requirements of getting it to mate or ‘romance’ with another Whirlm.
Generally this is placing a Whirlm house in your garden and getting it to eat a specific plant, seed, food item or even another Piñata.
Once this requirement has been met a heart will appear above the Piñata’s head indicating its ready to romance. Instructing one to meet the other initiates the romance minigame. This is a simple affair where you guide your Piñata through a maze of bombs to meet its mate on the other side. Completing this minigame for the first time will show a cut scene where the Piñata do their ‘romance dance’. Sickeningly cute and will only show automatically the first time.
If I have a complaint about this game its that these minigames can begin to feel a bit like a chore.
After a short while an egg will be delivered to your Whirlm house and after some time it will hatch into a baby Whirlm which will soon become an adult ready for ‘romance’.
You will soon notice that having Whirlms in your garden will attract bigger Piñata and the process begins again while you work out how to get this bigger creature to become resident and romance.

Initially the game seems extremely open ended and this can be discouraging but setting yourself a structure really helps. Its best to concentrate on just 2 or 3 species of Piñata at a time and achieve the goals centred around them. Once you have done that, move onto the next ones. Having many species often leads to trouble since some don’t get along with others and will fight which leads to sick Piñata requiring medical treatment from the vet which costs.

Currency in the game comes in the form of chocolate coins which can be spent on a huge variety of items ranging from seeds and Piñata houses to garden items like fences and decorations and even Piñata accessories like hats and glasses. Money can be a problem early on in the game but some little tricks such as buying vegetable seeds and growing them into the adult plant before selling them can award you with enough funds to get going and later on more valuable plants and even Piñata can be sold.

Graphics in the game are impressive down to individual blades of grass and the paper fur on the Piñata. The frame rate remains pretty much 100% unless some loading or saving is occurring and you have absolute control over what you see with the ability to rotate, tilt, zoom and move the camera how you see fit.
Animations are great to watch. The Piñata each have their own unique animations for all their activities as do the plants you grow. You can watch a tiny acorn become a tree right in front of you or grow a pumpkin patch from a handful of seeds all in real time which is roughly 1 second of game time for every minute of real time.
Every item has individual charm and character and its often a pleasure to cultivate something to three times its usual size by using the various fertilisers that can be bought. This obviously increases its value when sold and can attract other rarer Piñata to your garden too.

The sound in the game is nice. The music is a slow orchestral piece that doesn’t stand out and isn’t distracting. It has enough variety in it to not sound constantly looped. Each Piñata has its own set of sounds which I’m sure many girls and children will squeal in delight over. They are uber cute but match the style of the game perfectly and are a useful indication of how a particular Piñata or character in the game is feeling. You can hear sick Piñata moaning and whimpering while others look at them and shake their heads and sigh.

It’s the game play that really captured my imagination in Viva Piñata. Very simple to get started with you control a circular cursor with the left stick and the view with the right stick. Triggers zoom in and out and the face buttons have varied functions depending on where your cursor is at the time. Generally the blue X button will take you to the game menu where you can select your tools or go to the town for some shopping, building, doctors or other activities.
Ponds can be dug in seconds to attract water based Piñata, flowers, vegetables, plants and trees can be grown to attract various other species and every once in a while a Sour Piñata will turn up. These guys are destructive but also have their own set of requirements for taming. Once tamed the sour versions wont turn up again thanks to the Tower of Sour which can be turned on and off should you require a sour to turn up again.

This is just scratching the surface of the game. I’ve already got my garden to increase to the maximum size yet I haven’t seen more than 20 to 25 different species of Piñata and there are 70+ in all each with increasingly tougher attraction and romance requirements. There’s a very much Pokemon feeling of ‘Gotta catch em all’ to the game and catching them is how you progress. Romancing Piñata, attracting new ones and discovering new species of plants gives you experience. Experience levels you up unlocking new tools, garden space and other things.

The online aspect of the game is perhaps its main let down. Local multiplayer allows more than one person to control a single cursor. The benefit of this I cannot see and personally I think would soon lead to arguments among younger gamers. Items, plants, seeds and Piñata can be mailed to anybody on your gamer friends list but a true online multiplayer feature is missing. There is rumour of an update that may allow others to roam each other’s gardens but currently there is no way of doing this which is certainly a shame. Š
In conclusion, this is an absolutely charming game but it certainly will not appeal to all. I wanted something chilled out, relaxed and slow paced as a polar opposite to Gears of War and that’s what I got.
Its often a delight to watch things play out in your garden but the seemingly unstructured nature of the game play can feel off putting at times so setting your own specific goals is recommended.
Those with children could keep them captivated by the cute and cuddly creatures that populate the game area but even those without such as myself can feel the appeal of this relaxed game.
I would recommend hiring the game for a weekend at least and put some good hours in because it certainly takes some time to come to life. Once it has however, its difficult to put down and has quickly become a time muncher extraordinaire in my house.


Graphics - 9/10 (Cute, cuddly, impressively detailed and charmingly animated)
Sound - 7/10 (Certainly does the job but doesn’t exceed expectations)
Gameplay - 9/10 (Easy to get into with a perfectly balanced learning curve)
Lastability - 8/10 (Catching them all will take a long time, future XBL updates could keep things fresh)
Replayability - 7/10 (While multiple gardens can be started on your profile each focused on different things Im not sure how willing I would be to begin again after catching all of the Piñata. Its charm may however keep you coming back as a nice relaxed, no pressure alternative to killing aliens and blowing things up with large guns.)

Overall – 8/10 (Charming, good clean fun that can be enjoyed by kids of all ages)


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Postby Damian on Wed Dec 06, 2006 2:36 am

The 360 needs more games like this. Seems to have a more "hardcore" reputation, with an older demographic (and the younger ones playing games they shouldn't be).

Looking forward to Banjo Threeie and the like.
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Postby Silverhaze on Wed Dec 06, 2006 10:54 am

Yeah Banjo should be great!!

Another thing to look out for is that they still havent bothered to emulate Conker on the 360 yet. That might suggest that they are working on a new game?
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