Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise

Sam lacks sleep

It has been a rather long time since I pulled a twelve hour gaming session. The last was probably sometime during my first year in WoW but since then there's been nothing which has held my attention for more than a few hours here and there. So you can say I wasn't expecting to be giving up on Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise at five in the morning, a good half a day after first inserting the disc. Over the last few years I've been less and less inclined to devote huge chunks of my time to driving, shooting and commanding armies or groups of brave adventurers. The appeal... it's just not the same as it once was. Yet it seems that if you give me a virtual spade, some seed packets and a few colorful animals, only physical exhaustion will bring me to quit my game. Now I've got four pages of dense notes I wrote after I went to bed to try and condense into a review that won't have your eyelids drooping as well.

Billed as a sequel, TiP is in reality more of a bundled-in expansion pack. All of the original game is there with a smattering of new additions and improvements. There are a pair of new regions where you can trap desert and arctic animals, which you can then ship off to one of your gardens. There are also numerous new piñatas to discover as well as more accessories to adorn them with and some tweaks to both the pace and gameplay. At the end of it though there's not a lot to distinguish TiP from the original except bigger, better and - most essentially to this gamer - smoother. The load times of the various shops and menu destinations are so much quicker than before. I loved the style and gameplay of the original but cannot stand my time being wasted by excessive loading (stares at PGR3 and others), and so I gave up once I realized around a fifth of my time with the game was waiting for something to load up. Now that's down to a negligible fraction and I cannot pull myself away from TiP. The joy of the gameworld coupled with the incredible depth is now unhindered by technical issues, allowing the game to flourish.

Viva Piñata deceptively dresses itself as a colorful children's gardening and animal collection game when in truth it is much more than that. To gain an appreciation of just how much there is to do in TiP you will have to learn the basics of tending to your garden and enticing the various wild piñatas into calling your gardens home. It's immediately clear that Rare have spent some time streamlining the game as you no longer have to pat the ground with your spade before planting. Potentially hours of wasted time removed in an instant. The next improvement is more technical and it's in those very quick and infrequent load times. By removing these few impediments to the flow of the game, Rare have succeeded in making Viva Piñata all the more absorbing as nothing really stands in your way of progressing. There's no more waiting for an age for the next piñata to show up either. In fact, the first few hours of the game have been tilted a little too far in the other direction and as such its relentlessness has been known to put off the very children who the game seems aimed at. Saying that, there is the much more relaxed Just for Fun mode, where almost everything in the game is immediately available and is unhindered by the presence of Professor Pester and the sour piñatas, who will occupy much of your time in the main game. I didn't venture too far into this mode as I wanted to experience the reward of unlocking things on my own, but I know that once I have completed much of the main game this is where I will go to unwind in peace.

Planting a load of beautiful flowers, laying some paving down and adorning the garden with choice improvements is a satisfying way to while away the hours, so it's a real shame there's such a stingy item limit to the game. Anything you place in the garden, from seeds to piñata accessories, will count towards that limit. Once it has been reached you must sell off some items before you can introduce anything new to the game. It's somewhat bewildering - the game never comes close to stumbling on frame-rate, and this is pretty much the largest criticism I have of the game's technical aspects. There's an issue with the cursor being magnetically drawn to close larger objects over small ones which can make picking up seeds and flowers a bit of a pain but it's an infrequent and manageable issue. The use of tooltips could also be expanded as you have to click Y for information to discern what seed is what. Until you have played so much you know them by sight, that is. The sequence of button presses can also be unintuitive - B to leave the shop, A to confirm you want to leave - and this somewhat trivial issue can be annoying after your brain is beginning to show signs of its own vegetation. A few other niggles like pathfinding and the dubious usefulness of the Helpers you can hire to perform repetitive tasks prove that the game is not perfect. However, that is probably because it is so damn close that the flaws are just that bit more evident. The actual game itself is also somewhat overwhelming once you have progressed past the first 20 or so levels of experience. It is then that you realize the size and scope of the task ahead of you if you wish to tame the rarest and most spectacular piñatas, a task that so initially daunted me I chose to focus on becoming a master romancer and thus spent hours getting whirlms to mate instead.

While its charms and style suggest an attempt by Microsoft to appeal to a wider audience, at its heart TiP is a game for the hardcore of the hardcore, those who thrive on exquisite shows of relentless gameplay, even if in this case it all does look a bit sissy. To master the game you will need to juggle so many factors - from maintaining the correct conditions to achieving the sequence of goals that allow you to tame the rarest of piñatas not to mention formidable joypad skills in the romancing mini games - that while TiP can keep the young ones happy with its bright colors and cuddly critters it will test the abilities of the most seasoned gamers as well. The achievements in TiP are uniformly excellent and must be earned rather than granted. Saying that, it is possible to have some achievements gifted to you by other players who can fulfill the requirements for you by giving you stuff. For example, there's an achievement to dress a piñata in a particular costume which I wound up getting during my pleasant experiences with the online co-op play that TiP introduces. The few hours I spent testing this element of the game were shocking in that every player was both courteous and helpful, not something you often hear about the denizens of Live. Co-op play works wonderfully and can accommodate up to four players, either locally or over Live. Each player can be given full or restricted access to your garden and can drop in and out as they please. A player called Nt ViPeR Uk was most helpful and gifted me so much money that my girlfriend was unhindered in her suggestions as to what to dress my latest piñatas up in. Again, there's a simple joy to be had from naming your piñatas, an act which brings you closer to your virtual pets and which can be built upon by trying to discover the variants and wildcards each species can achieve. These either change the color of your piñata or give it a new physical characteristic such as horns or floppy ears. Packaging these creatures up and sharing them with friends is yet another of the effortless pleasures that TiP offers as a counterbalance to the demands of the main game.

TiP is a confident and well realized evolution that leaves the way open for more sequels. If/when Microsoft release a motion controller this game is already well positioned to become a masterpiece at the flick of a patch. It's a shame that Microsoft's business model of making money on accessories affects this game as if you fall in love with it you will almost feel compelled to purchase a Live Vision camera to scan in the unique piñatas and objects available on Piñata Cards. Saying that, there is very little which can detract from the richness and sheer enjoyment of the TiP experience. This is a sandbox game of the kind which really lets the player do what they want at the speed they want and only forces you along a certain path during its hectic introductory phase. It is charming without being sickly, enjoyable without being simplistic and compelling without being overly demanding. A wonderfully social game, TiP seems the perfect antidote to the guns and wheels that popularly dominate the 360 but secretly it contains a long game that requires dexterity and great organizational skills to master. At 40 USD (stateside) it also offers tremendous value - I'm well past the dollar per hour of entertainment stage already and I've a long, long way to go. I can see myself coming back to this game months from now just to marvel at my creations and to add an extra sprinkle of color here and there. Now I've got to wrap this up and go finish off the new home for Sid Viciousclaw and Nancy Spincern. I think they will like the shade of a few monkeynut trees.

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By Sam Gibson