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Review: Viva Piñata: Trouble In Paradise
By Sean Booker
September 26, 2008 - 12:00
If your one of the many who didn't play the original
Viva Piñata 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 Piñata: Trouble in Paradise.
Viva
Piñata is all about taking care of a garden full of piñata 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 piñatas and get them
to move in. In
Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise you are doing mainly the same thing, which mean that if you're
just coming from playing the first one, you might find yourself bored this time around. The biggest problem with this sequel is that it feels more like an
expansion pack than 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 and rare piñatas visit and then take up residence in 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 piñata, each
time one visits and lots for making new piñatas residents and then
romancing them. The main point of this whole experience is to keep expanding
your garden and get newer and more valuable piñatas. The next thing the game will have you focus on is romancing piñatas, thus getting them to produce a baby piñata. To do this you must meet each piñatas romance
requirements before they can get busy. Romance requirements can be
anything from eating a seed to eating another piñata.
|
Time for some romancing. |
A major
flaw in the first game was all the loading screens it had, even for 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.
Trouble in Paradise fixes this issue a bit buy letting
you have a seed buying tool in your first menu, so there's no loading
screen if you're 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 forced to waste time on a million loading screens.
The challenge with
Trouble in Paradise is that you're 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 piñatas, but at the same time one of your piñatas
is getting eaten. So the game can get quite hectic, rather quickly. This challenge alone is probably the biggest note to set back the
thought that this is a game designed 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 piñatas, 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 (ravenous dandelions). If
you don't get rid of those weeds fast, you're going to have an infestation
on your hands.
|
A piñata house. |
Players who don't want any of this
hassle can try 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 into your garden. This also makes getting new piñatas easier, so it
essentially just makes the game easier and more stress free. One caveat 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. Playing the main mode can
be more fun because your constantly being rewarded for all your
efforts, which is a nice thing to have.
One of the biggest
differences from the first game is the ability to leave your garden and
go to different regions of Piñata Island. Some piñatas will only be available in the two outside
regions – Pinarctic and Dessert Desert – and you must go to those regions to get
these piñatas. When in your Pinarctic or Dessert Desert gardens you must bait traps to capture
the piñatas and, like other piñatas, you will need to check to see what kind
of bait works for each piñata. After catching a piñata 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 are plenty of piñatas to get in your
main garden. Also, new piñatas don't appear as often in the other regions as they do in the main garden. This is what makes
Trouble in Paradise feel more like an
expansion than a stand-alone game.
|
Setting a trap. |
Another big difference this game has over it's predecessor is the inclusion of Piñata Vision. With Piñata Vision, you can use the Xbox Live Vision Camera to scan cards and get special items in your
garden. Any card you find can be held up to the camera. Whatever the
card is for will plunk down into your garden. Now this works fine in
theory but it's much too easy to just find a bunch of high level pinata
cards online and use them to boost your level. That is fine
if you want to just breeze your way to the top level, but it takes away
most of the fun of gameplay.
Trouble in Paradise also supports online play with
up to four people. So now you can have co-op gardeners
helping you out around your garden. This is a great addition, as the stress of a
huge garden can become overbearing and it's nice to have a friend take some of the workload off your hands. It also has the option of limiting your
guests controls so that they don't just got around killing all your
piñatas. This idea is good overall and can be fun if you're playing with people
who you know won't be jerks.
|
You can also have your piñatas compete. |
Apart from this game being looked
down upon from the 'core gamer' perspectice
Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise 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. Also, it's okay 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 Piñata: Trouble in Paradise is a fun and good experience for all. You'll find that this game has a strong love/hate relationship, so your either going to love it or you'll hate it, mostly depending on what you thought of the original
Viva Piñata. The biggest flaw is that it does feel more like it should have been an
addition to the first game, or maybe some parts should have been downloadable content, you
can't really get to angry at that fact since this game sells for budget
price at $39.99 USD/CAD. If the beautiful graphics don't pull you in, hopefully
the cute and fun piñatas will.
Verdict: Buy It
Rating: 8 /10
Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12