Games / Game Reviews

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