The BugEyed Review Blog

I couldn’t believe it!
Not only was Viva Piñata so damned addicting, but also, addicting is a word! (haha, no really!)

But let’s not discuss what Oxford would and wouldn’t put into their English Dictionary…

Viva Piñata (how do you type that squiggle on the n anyway? I had to copy and paste…) is a seriously, *seriously* big time sink. Remember when the first SimCity was released and you received on a freshly copied 360k floppy disk back in the 90’s? And then proceeded to play it, for hours on end, only to end up with a city that’s running itself into the ground, and then you start again, but *this* time it will be better? Remember that? Viva Piñata is 10 times worse, which makes it 50 times better.

On the surface, the game would never attract me, or most adult gamers, unless they’ve read something about the game, and know what they’re getting themselves into. The game is colorful, and, dare I say it, cutesy-cutesy. The game features over 60 animal species, all (almost all) with a possibility to be changed in color throughout the game through experimentation. Some species can be fed certain things to actually evolve into other species. Helpers help out, bad guys spoil the fun, and you get to breed (and, in one specific case, cross-breed) species of piñata. Fun fun fun.

So what’s the aim of the game? Create a thriving, living garden, and manage the fauna and flora in it. Sounds simple? It’s not. Far from it. Different species fight with eachother, ruffians and sour piñata come and spoil your day. There’s a storyline in there somewhere, that gets unlocked as time goes by, but I haven’t read it. I don’t think many people do. Oh, and there are many, many achievements to be unlocked, and lots of blocks that need ticks next to them. Do you have a Squirrel visiting outside your garden? Tick. Have you enticed the squirrel to come visit in your garden? Tick. Did you entice said squirrel sufficiently to actually stay in your garden? Tick. Have you romanced two squirrels? Tick. Are you a master romancer for the squirrels? Tick. Tick. Have you managed to find what to feed a squirrel to changed it into the three possible color variants? Tick. Tick. Tick. Now do that for every species that happens to come along to the garden, all the while making sure they don’t get eaten by other piñatas, or become unhappy and run away, or get beaten into little bits of sweets (Hey, they *are* Piñatas after all…) by one of the bad guys…

Scratching under the colorful surface of the game, you’ll find an enthralling, interesting and massive management sim. Each Piñata needs micromanagement to be able to get them to do anything. This is not a bad thing. It helps the game along quite nicely. You need to plant seeds, water them, and fertilize them if you want them to become really huge and bare more seeds, or flowers, or fruit in the case of fruit trees. Soon you’ll find yourself playing the game for hours on end just to breed that last Quackberry (duck for you uninitiated), or trying to entice that Doenut (a member of Bambi’s family) into your garden with sufficient amounts of long grass, wondering why it’s taking so long for the day to end, then realising that it’s been night and now it’s morning again, and you’ve played right through the night. As I said. Addicting.

And big. The game is big. There will always be something to do, something to try, and something to grow. “I wonder what happens when the duck eats a water-lilly flower. OH MY GOD! IT TURNS PINK!!!” is something that will happen every now and again. What’s the use of a pink duck? Nothing really other than to entertain whoever is playing the game. And in our house’s case, it’d be the woman of the house that’s claimed the Xbox 360 and the TV forever more. Or, at least, until she becomes a master romancer for every single one of the species in the game. Argh, I’ve lost the TV!

Seriously though, Viva Piñata is an extremely enjoyable game, and the subject matter of breeding, or romancing, is totally safe for kids. Xbox.com has an article by XboxDad on the suitability of Viva Piñata for kids. Good read. The game itself also has a short video on it. There is even a Viva Piñata TV series, which has several episodes for download, free of charge, via the XBox Live Marketplace portal.

Fun for the whole family, to play and watch, Viva Piñata is a must addition to any Xbox 360 game collection. And by looking at the online screenshots of the game, definitely appreciated better on an HDTV, which sadly, I don’t have.

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Tags: addicting, Viva Piñata, Xbox 360