Viva Pinata : Trouble in Paradise
Originally published on XBOX.COM as Xbox Dad in Trouble … in Paradise
Published November 17, 2008
Hello … my name is Jason Buffington and my day job is in the Windows Storage Solutions team. On nights and weekends, I play as DarkJediHunter. This year, the other Xbox Dad (Festive Turkey) has been sharing this column with me, so that I can share my favorite family games with you. My sons are ten and seven, my daughter is four and along with my wife, we all game.
It’s hard to be an Xbox Dad and not love the entire Viva Piñata franchise. I am proud to say that I own all five titles of the VP line, including:
Welcome to the candy-filled world of Viva Piñata.
- Two of the original Viva Piñata® games (My kids loved it so much we ended up getting a second Xbox 360® so more than one of us could play at a time. I wrote about this first game in a previous Xbox Dad column.)
- Viva Piñata: Party Animals (This allows four people to race and mini-game as the piñatas themselves. I wrote about this game in a previous article as well.)
- Viva Piñata for Windows (The original game runs on my Windows Vista laptop. What can I say? It’s an easy game to pick up and put down when I travel, and the opportunity for an extra 1000 achievement points isn’t bad.)
- Viva Piñata: Pocket Paradise (This is for my handheld gaming system, and happily played by my wife.)
- And now, Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise (This is the newest installment in the VP candy-filled universe.)
If you’ve played any of the other VP games, you ought to immediately enjoy this latest release. The basic premise of VP:TIP is similar to the original. You’re a gardener, and various monochromatic paper piñata wander around the countryside and visit your garden if you have something of interest for them. Bunnies are attracted to carrots, bugs like flowers, deer like berries, and so on.
If you have the right items, the piñatas will reside in your garden and burst into brilliant colors. Then, you can build houses for each species, romance them for more of that type, and more. The purpose of the game is to craft multiple gardens appealing to different ecosystems of piñata, ideally collecting every variation in the sugar-infused paper universe. Think of it as a child-friendly real-time simulation (RTS), with enough depth and variety to keep adults addicted in to the early morning hours (just ask my wife).
Tend your garden wisely.
Game Features
Throughout the game, as your piñata-luring/garden-growing skills develop, new tools and game options unlock. The kids will be excited about the new piñatas, and adults will find themselves scouring the Internet to learn which berries or flowers might turn their favorite piñata to a certain color or variant.
This installment builds on these gaming mechanics with some very cool features to please both veterans and newbies.
- New places to visit: Now you can venture from your garden to capture non-indigenous piñata, such as the Dessert Desert for sand-based piñata and the Piñarctic for frozen friends. Plant traps and place bait to capture piñata that wouldn’t normally journey into your native garden.
- Photo Mode: As the name suggests, you can take pictures of your piñata, and share them with friends or put them on the Viva Piñata website. By using the Xbox LIVE® Vision Camera, you can scan in what are essentially playing cards with barcodes that import rare piñata, special items, or perform other cool actions. You can leverage both of these abilities to turn your photo into a custom photo card, which your friend can then show to their own camera to import into their game.
- New stuff: Of course, there are also new piñatas, accessories, plants, and vegetables, all of which are obviously must-have collectibles by the avid VP fan.
Try to get all the piñata variants.
Improvements
In addition, Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise has greatly improved some of the core elements of the first game.
- Challenges: These are less random and more integrated into the story of the game. Visit Langston at Piñata Central as often as you like, and browse challenges to find certain piñatas with specific attributes. By accepting a challenge and then successfully locating that piñata, you finish the challenge.
- Romance mini-games: These are more interesting with different Loathers (obstacles).
- Gaming UI: There are a bunch of changes, including the ultra-awesome Piñata Finder. Using the bumper buttons, a scrolling menu allows you to select a specific piñata and the feature finds and places the cursor on the piñata. This is really convenient in larger gardens when you are seeking to get piñatas to connect with each other from opposite sides of the garden. It also works on plant types and other related objects.
Family Features
As a father of a four-year-old, one of the most appreciated enhancements is the co-op multiplayer option. It is now much easier to join a game in progress, get your own cursor to help with particular scenarios, and then gracefully exit.Â
The game also allows for four‑player co-op over Xbox LIVE. Visit other players’ gardens to view, collaborate, and compare piñatas. This might finally be the excuse I have been looking for to let my sons get their Gold memberships.
There is also a Just for Fun mode where my youngest gamer can tinker around in a garden without me worrying about her selling off one of my prized pets or missing some key event while I wasn’t watching.
Of course, as I’ve preached before, I think every kids’ game ought to come with a TV show, so that your gaming child can have their imagination fueled, and view the world of the game from a different perspective. Viva Piñata is no exception with a Saturday morning cartoon series on 4KIDS.TV.
As far as my family and I are concerned, I’m not really in “trouble” in this Viva Piñata game, I’m in Paradise!
Article by DarkJediHunter (Jason Buffington)
November 17, 2008
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Tags: Viva Pinata · Posted in: Game Reviews, Games for Kids, Xbox Dad archive from Xbox.com
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