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Viva Piñata Review (continued)
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Manufacturer: Microsoft
Find all Microsoft reviews
ESRB Rating: Everyone
Platform(s): Xbox 360
Release Date: November 11, 2006
Average Rating: 5 out of 5 Stars
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Retail Price: $19.99
Online Sale Price: $19.99
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More User Submitted Viva Piñata Reviews
Date: 2007-05-09
Not exact product as pictured
The came came in an awkward child version case. I would have preffered the normal, standard case like in the picture...
Date: 2007-05-07
Harvest moon x10
If you've ever played and enjoyed Harvest Moon on any platform you'll love this. The amount of things you can plant is easily twice that of harvest moon and thats leaving the whole pinata thing out of it! They are all very cute (exept for the Sour ones) and all have there own unique behaviors. Sooooo much fun!
Date: 2007-04-30
Fun, but not for wee ones
Everyone says this game is for kids. Unless your 7-year-old is a MENSA candidate, I beg to differ. From the artwork as well as the television cartoon, you would think a 6-8 year old could play this game. Maybe they could, but I doubt they would get too far on their own. It's quite fun, but it gets exceedingly difficult to manage all of the tasks, including mating more advanced piñatas and coaxing some of the more difficult plants to grow. The game seems more marketed to the inner-kids in the teen to adult set. In fact, there are even some sexual innuendos (you are getting animals to procreate, after all), which are innocent from a child's perspective yet able to be picked up and understood by adults. A kid could certainly play with the help of an adult, stick to the lower levels, or would even enjoy watching an adult play (which is easy to do for hours and hours on end), but even I get frustrated playing it at times. I can just imagine how a younger child would fare. It really is great fun, but be mindful of the purchase because I feel the age group for this game is slightly misrepresented.
Date: 2007-04-18
Similar to The Sims but a lot better!
Viva Piñata is a mix of elements from The Sims, a little bit of Pokemon, and some new elements unique to this game. Like The Sims, you start with a small lot and your objective is to build it into your dream home, or in this case dream garden. You start with a small lot that expands as you progress in the game and you can fill that space with plants, such as flowers or crop, or structures. Depending on which type of items you have in your garden you will attract certain types of piñatas. For example, by planting flowers you can attract butterflies and bumblebees. If you meet certain requirements the piñatas will become residents in your garden. Also by having certain types of piñatas as residents you can attract even more piñatas (i.e. snakes will come if you have mice in your garden, more on this later). Using your chocolate coins, you can work and rework your garden to build it to your specific tastes and to attract the types of piñatas you like. As the game goes on the piñatas get more interesting. You can have lion and elephant piñatas become residents in your garden, but also the requirements to do so get much more difficult.
Like Pokemon you can make your objective to collect all of the different types of piñatas on Viva Piñata, but this would not be easy because many piñatas have requirements that contradict other piñatas. For example one piñata might require you to have more the 60% of your garden covered with water, while another piñata might require you to have 60% of your garden covered with tall grass. Also, some piñatas do not get along and will fight each other if left in the same garden. This requires that you develop your garden to attract only the piñatas you want and, possibly, to exclude the piñatas you don't want. Typically in a single game you will not be trying to get all the piñatas to become residents but building a garden around certain specific piñatas. Since you can have multiple gardens, or just continually redesign a single garden, you can create gardens catered to your different favorite piñatas.
The game has in inbuilt piñata food chain. You will probably be required to feed some of your resident piñatas to the visiting piñatas to get them to become residents. For example, to get the snake piñata to join it must eat a mouse piñata (the mouse only has to eat a turnip to join). You can imagine this only gets much more complicated for piñatas like the lion. This is done very tastefully. The attacking piñata will throw objects at its prey until it breaks the piñata open and then proceeds to eat the candy that spills out. This piñata food chain is one of the innovative features that make this game unique and add to the complexity of the game.
Another feature that makes the game is the ability to breed your piñatas. Once you have a piñata as a resident there is a second set of requirements you must meet before breeding, and of course you'll have to meet them with at least two piñatas. In Viva Piñata the piñatas have no gender so you can breed any two piñatas of the same species. One you've met the requirements you can tell the two piñatas to "romance" and after playing a short maze style mini-game you will get to see a short video of that piñatas "Romance Dance". Neither the game nor the dances are suggestive and would be deemed acceptable by any conservative homeshool mom. The breeding is essentially the way to make money as you can sell your piñatas for a pretty large amount of chocolate coins.
Viva Piñata is a great looking game, but the big seller is the game play. If you like The Sims then you will love Viva Piñata. This game however isn't limited to a specific demographic. You might feel like a little kid putting this brightly colored game into your Xbox 360, but you will have nothing but fun building your garden and breeding your piñatas. This game is truly a can not miss title for anyone with a 360.
As an added note you can trade items with other players over Xbox Live. That is the only online feature of this game, but you can trade even if you only have an Xbox Live silver membership. Parents with younger kids will be happy to know that this game is appropriate online as well as offline and the game comes with instructions on how to set up your child's Xbox Live account. For those parents who are also interested in the romance dance you can watch a video on it by going to this website:
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Date: 2007-04-06
Repetitive But Easy
At first the game is exciting, you find yourself having fun building pinata house and watching them change colors. Then planting seeds and waiting to watch what they grow into is very interesting. But you find yourself doing the same things over and over. Plant a seed, wait for it to grow, romance a pinata wait for it to hatch and change colors. Then as you progresses and you become a higher gardener then Sour pinata (the bad guys) will come to your garden and start knocking down trees, house and they will kill your pinatas; you spent so much time romancing, then you find yourself having to do everything all over again and again and again trying to put everything back the way is was before the sour pinata destroyed it. I see why some find this game a bit boring having to do things over and over, but it is also a bit Addictive you find yourself wanting to try and get the garden just prefect and beat those sour pinatas.
If you like an easy game were you have to out wit a pinata you'll enjoy this game, but if your into fast running, shooting games you'll find this game very boring. I enjoy it like a good puzzle on a rainy day; trying to put everything in the right place, when your stuck inside with nothing else to do.
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