Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise - Review

Added September 29th, 2008 by Matti D'Aramitz

Viva Piñata by Rare was released in November 2006. Despite lower than expected sales with the general public, it was heralded as a critics' darling. Containing a highly original game mechanic, charming and striking visuals, and a magical whimsical atmosphere, it was difficult for anyone not to fall head over heels in love with it. For those of you who are totally unfamiliar with the original game, Viva Piñata is, for lack of a better description, a quirky, somewhat bizarre gardening simulator.

The main aim of Viva Piñata: TIP is to attract rare and expensive Piñata creatures into your gardening space. This in turn increases your own gardener's skill level. You achieve these goals by meeting an ever more challenging list of Piñata requirements which come in four separate stages: appearing, visiting, residing and romancing. While there is no time-table dictating which Piñata you should first attract into your garden, you will need to breed a variety of lower level creatures to entice more valuable Piñatas to enter the land. For example, having a set of low level Arachnids (Spiders) reside in your garden is a measurable achievement. By having two sets in your garden, it will attract more lucrative Piñatas such as Badgesicles (Badgers) and Profitamoles (Moles).

If you find that you prefer a certain species, you can try your hand at becoming a master romancer. That is, breeding a Piñata to its maximum capacity via the means of the affectionately (and family friendly) named Romance Dance. Romance dance mazes make a return in this sequel, yet unlike the first game become absolutely brutal in the very early stages. In return for the increased difficulty, the rewards for completion are far greater. Completing the mazes under an allotted time offers you the possibility of twins hatching or a highly valuable wild-card piñata which you can then sell for crazy amounts of chocolate coin currency.

It's not all just breeding piñata in your garden though, some creatures require certain plants, fruit or vegetables to be grown and eaten. This necessitates careful nurturing with your various fertilisers, garden surfaces, shovels and watering cans. Sour Piñatas also occasionally arrive attempting to undo your hard-work by spewing sour candy and wrecking your landscape. Being a legendary master Piñata gardener is no slacker's job, that's for sure.

As in the first game, you start with nothing else besides a small dilapidated portion of land. It's through this hallowed ground with easy, well mapped out controls that you set about nourishing and attracting your first basic level Piñata. It's also during this process that you are quickly introduced to the game's new features in what amounts to a clear and precise, masterfully narrated tutorial.

The most immediately noticeable feature of this sequel rears its head at you early on, being the two sub-areas to your main garden amusingly named the Dessert Desert and the Pinarctic. Both of these new locations contain themed Piñata suitable to the hostile regions of which they are named. Fearsome Pololly bears roam in the snow and comical Camellos stroll along whimsically in the sand. You are awarded with the option to visit these areas at any time, capturing the respective creatures via trap boxes and transporting them back into your slightly more temperately weathered garden paradise.

Viva Piñata: Trouble In Paradise believes heavily in the adage “If it's not broke, don't fix it.” The changes made since Viva Piñata are subtle yet still just about enough to be significant. During the original game, when purchasing new seeds or items you would have to navigate menu after menu with irritating disc load-up screens. Now, with just a subtle press of the bumper buttons, a hovering menu will pop-up from which you can quick-buy seeds/fruit/fertiliser or auto-focus your camera on a Piñata of your choice with minimum of delay and fuss.

Langston challenges, selectable in the garden menu give you an extra goal to aim towards completing. This cheeky scamp will ask that you send a particular Piñata of species, colour and clothing to a vaguely relevant region on his world map with subsequent rewards for its completion in a speedy manner.  Piñata races and beauty contests are also a bonus addition. If you played the spin-off VP: Party Animals, then you know what to expect here. Using existing Piñatas, you can play one of two mini-games intended to increase your Piñatas' chocolate coin value. While certainly not a masterpiece of game design, it's something extra to do in-between garden nurturing and works effectively as an amusing distraction.

Multiplayer has perhaps received the greatest overhaul this time around. On-line garden sharing for up to four people is now available as well as local couching as was the case in the first game. Considering the sometimes hostile nature of Xbox Live, it intelligently provides a safety net of enabling access levels for your garden via the select button. This keeps your precious Piñatas safe and sound from strangers with destructive urges.

Finally, perhaps the greatest innovation for VP: Trouble In Paradise is what is termed Piñata-Vision. Using your live vision camera you can scan in Pokemon style cards of Piñata and have them instantly appear inside your garden. New and exciting Piñata can be introduced this way with the added ability to create the cards yourself. Via an added upload option in-game, you can snap one of your favourite Piñata, turn them into a vision card and then send it directly to www.vivapinata.com for others to download. The one downside to this feature is that it severely opens the ability to negate any gaming challenge as the most expensive rare Piñata is now nothing but a quick camera scan away. Used with restraint however, it's truly a function that other games would do well to learn from.

Visual effects and audio are of the same high quality standard of the prequel, although many of the creature noises and background music have been lazily recycled. Returning content is a re-occurring theme throughout Viva Piñata: Trouble In Paradise and along with the same core gameplay comes the same problems which its predecessor possessed. Guide paths for the creatures repeatedly do not accept the first time you select them. Piñatas also frequently fail to appear or visit despite meeting their listed requirements for no apparent reason. This causes you to spend hours of idly waiting not knowing if you've done something wrong, or if the game has just simply glitched in some way or another.

With more Piñatas also comes more visit requirements and this time around some of them are just too impossibly vague to guess or far over complicated towards the side of being unenjoyable to complete. You will also find yourself stocking and selling off some of the lower level species several times over which can become incredibly tedious.

Sour Piñatas, while an essential part of the game's challenge, are also far too difficult to tame at the starting gardener levels. As you seem to level up rapidly during proceedings, you will find higher level sour creatures appearing before you acquire the tools/seeds needed to combat the lower level terrors.  If they all decide to visit at the same time then your hard graft is usually left post-invasion as nothing but a bed of ruins to mourn over.

Finally, if you are subject to a weed invasion without the sufficient shovel strength to alleviate the problem, your pristine garden can be totally over-run leaving little hope other than starting over afresh. You are given the option to start new gardens without losing your gardener level, yet it's still a harsh penalty that causes unnecessary inconvenience and is totally detrimental to the games enjoyability.

Overall, I believe Viva Piñata is a misunderstood beast. An adult simulation dressed in children's candy covered wrapping, if you will. The gameplay is challenging enough to master and yet still simple enough for the casual audience to learn.  Letting you work at your own pace, Viva Piñata: TIP doesn't push you into anything that you are not ready to handle.

If you have not played Viva Piñata, then it's most unlikely this release will do anything to change your mind to the contrary. If you expressed an interest but did not make the plunge the first time around, I would highly recommend this as your first foray due to all the excellent additional features included.