Review: Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise - 8

If your one of the many who didn't play the original Viva Pinata or find that it's just a child's game, you really don't know what your missing. Though now's your chance to see what this whole thing is about with Rare's sequel to the first: Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise.

Viva Pinata is all about taking care of a garden full of Pinata pets with focus on collecting them and making them romance. Like a real garden, you'll also be able to grow many different types of plants and decorate it with various materials and objects. Though the main point is to have specific items in your garden to attract foreign pinatas and get them to move in. In VP2 you are doing manly the same thing. Which, if your just coming from playing the first one; you might find yourself bored now. The biggest problem with this sequel is that it feels more like an expansion pack that a true stand alone game.

Like it's predecessor, your main goal is to gain levels by growing new plants and trees and making new pinatas come and join your garden. With each new level you will find that you can buy more things, get new equipment and sometimes get more garden space. The game works well in dishing out the experience points, rewarding you each time you see a new pinata, each time one visits and lots for making new pinatas residents and then romancing them. The main point of this whole thing is to keep expanding your garden and get newer and more valuable pinatas. The next main thing it wants you to focus on is romancing pinatas, which involves them having a baby. To do this you must meet each pinatas romance requirements before they can get busy. Romance requirements can be anything from eating a seed to eating a pinata.

What was a major flaw in the first game was all the loads screens it had for even tiny things like buying one seed. You have to open the menu, go to the next menu, wait for it to load, go through some dialogue then go through the stores menu, then buy the seed. VP2 fixes this issue a bit buy letting you have a seed buying tool in your first menu, so there's no load screens if your just buying some seeds. What makes it that much better is if your over a plant and go into this tool; it opens up a selection of fertilizers instead of seeds. This tool makes things much faster and your not always being forced to waste time at a million loads screens.

The thing with this game is that your always multitasking four or five things are once. You may have just planted a tree, so you need to keep an eye on it so it doesn't dry out, but at the same time you might be trying to romance two pinatas, but at the same time one of your pinatas is getting eaten. So the game can get quite hectic, quite fast. This thing alone is probably the biggest note to set it back for being thought of as a game for kids. It require some serious thought to how things work and lots of focus on many things at once. The thing that probably makes this game the hardest is the idea of sour pinatas, which try to ruin your garden. Every now and then you'll have to kill one by breaking it open with your shovel, just to find it laid two weeds. If you don't get rid of those weeds fast, your gonna have an infestation on your hands.

One thing for people who don't want any of this hassle is a new mode called Play For Fun; where you just get to do whatever you want with unlimited money and no worry for any sour pinatas coming in. This also makes getting new pinatas easier so it essentially just makes the game loads more easy and stress free. Though you won't be able to get any of the achievements when playing this mode and it takes a lot of the rewards out of it. Playing the main mode can be more fun because your constantly being rewarded for all your efforts, which is a nice thing to have.

Probably the biggest difference from the first game is the ability to leave your garden to go to different regions. Some pinatas will only be in the two outside regions: Pinarctic and Dessert Desert and you must go there to get these pinatas. When you in the region you must bait traps to capture the pinatas, like other pinatas you will need to check to see what kind of bait work for which pinata. After catching a pinata you can bring it to your garden and begin working on meeting its resident requirements. This works as an good idea but you'll find yourself ignoring those areas a lot of the time because there's plenty of pinatas to get in the main area. It also doesn't get new pinatas as much as the main region does. This is probably the biggest reason this game feels more like an expansion.

Another big difference this game has over it's prequel is the inclusion of Pinata Vision. This uses the xbox live vision camera to scan cards in order to get special things in your garden. Any card you find can be held up to the camera and whatever the card if for, will plunk down into your garden. Now this works fine in theory but it's much to easy to just find a bunch of high level pinata cards online and use them in order to boost your level. Which is fine if you want to just breeze your way to the top level, but it takes away most of the gameplay.

This game also supports online play with up to four people. So now you can have co-op gardeners going around helping you out. This is a great addition for sometimes the stress of a huge garden can become over bearing and it's nice to have a friend to cut some of the work off you. It also has the option of limiting your guests controls so that they don't just got around killing all your pinatas. This idea is good overall and can be fun if you have people who you know won't be jerks.

Apart from this game being looked down upon from the 'core gamer' Viva Pinata 2 is a great game and will get you addicted if your new to it. It shouldn't be looked at as a kids game because a lot of small kids probably wouldn't be able to take all the stress that can build up if you get lazy. So it's ok to like this game and still be into Gears of War. Though if your into the more fast paced games out there and don't really like games like Harvest Moon, you probably won;t gravitate towards this game. Don't take me wrong, this game doesn't match Harvest Moon, but it's probably the kind of game that would be closest to this, specifically the farming part.

Overall Viva Pinata is a fun and good experience for all. You'll most likely find that you won't have this game and the people who are into it, very much like it. Though it does feel more like it should have been an addition to the first, or maybe some parts should have been DLC, you can't really get to angry at that fact since this game sells for budget price at $40. If the beautiful graphics don't pull you in, hopefully the cute and fun pinatas will.

8/10

First take on VP Trouble in Paradise

• 3 Pinata Vision cards with it
• I need the camera
• Says it requires the camera, it lied
  
• Bilingual on the box makes it cluttered
• More cut scenes
• Tutorial mode
• WHIRIM IS NOT STARTER PINATA?!!
• Not sure if I prefer this box art over the first
• 48 hour live card, useless
• New pinatas are cute so far
• Don't like the surrounding area of the garden as much as first one
• I should go beat Castle Crashers
  

Paradise has some troubles

With Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise now out (I'll be getting it tomorrow due to Canada getting games a day after they launch) I thought I would share my thoughts on the whole vision camera and card stuff that Microsoft is doing with it's game.

The Xbox Live vision camera didn't get huge praise probably because it just seemed like another way Microsoft was getting some money out of you. Which can be a valid argument since it goes for $50 new here and there's only a few games that actually utilize it. Besides being able to video chat with a friend and seeing the actual person instead of a gamerpic in some games, it hasn't really done anything ground breaking. Though thinking that it's only a camera, there isn't much it can do besides Eyetoy like games such as Totemball.

One of the more note worthy tasks the camera was put up to recently was back with Burnout Paradise. Each time you got a take down on someone (destroying their car) the camera would take a quick photo of them. This was a good idea because you got to see your friend's expression at the moment his car got mangled. Other than that, I haven't run into anything exceptional from this.

What VP2 is doing seems like a really interesting idea that if done properly, could really be a cool thing to be able to play around with. What Microsoft wants you to do is print out Cards or put them on a image viewing device (like a PSP or iPod). Once done getting your card(s) you can hold them up to the camera and it will scan them and plunk whatever the card is for down into your garden. This way you can share cards with your friends and unlock content that wouldn't normally be in the game for you without owning the camera.

Strangely enough VP2 was now the selling point I needed to get a vision camera. So if your on my friends list, look forward to crazy stupid pictures of me.

This fact seems like it could open up new forms of uses for the vision camera. Being able to scan certain things could really get people into buying more out of game content. For example, you could be using this instead of having to type in a code to get MS points or even game content like Rock Band songs. For people owning the camera, they wouldn't need to type in those 25 character codes anymore, but people without the camera are stuck doing that.

Hopefully Microsoft has some good ideas for the camera to get more people into buying them. With that, only more vision camera services can come.