Video Game Review: Viva Pinata (XBox & PC) for a few days of addictive, adorable, uplifting fun

[juushika]

I know I promised a review of Final Fantasy XII, but I'm still putting off beating it. Instead, I've been playing a different game, and I come bearing a recommendation of it. (Quite ironically, I'm watching Boondock Saints as I write a review about adorable piñata.)

I highly recommend Viva Piñata (XBox 360 and PC, 2006) as an addictive and adorable game that offers a few days of obsessive and uplifting fun. Having made it 55 levels and breed most of the piñata, I'm about "done" with the game despite the fact that it has no ending point. I'll be sad to see it go when we return it tomorrow, but my joy in it is winding down. I did, however, have a great time playing it, and I want to introduce it to those that haven't heard of it.

The premise of the game is that you are a newbie gardener, given a plot of dried, cracked land with which to start your own garden. As you begin to prepare the land, your first visitor appears: a tiny Whirlm (worm) piñata who frolics in the rich soil. As you prepare the ground, plant and tend increasingly varied flora, sell produce and pinata, dig ponds, build breeding houses, and hire helpers, you attract more and more piñata, make them residents, breed them via special diets and minigames, evolve them, discover variants, protect your garden from Sour (evil) piñata intruders, and level up to new abilities, better piñata, and a more valuable garden.

Viva Piñata has, like all games, its strengths and its weaknesses, but here the strengths far outweigh. The game is adorable and addictive, with a clever combination of new content via leveling and a repetitive play style that makes the game easy to begin and to continue playing—for hours. That is to say: The sixty-some piñata species, ranging from Bunnycombs (bunnies) to Fizzlybears (bears) to Chewicorns (unicorns) are all variety of colorful and adorable, as are the homes and romance dances. The gardens, as you improve them, are beautiful and unique. And the variety of piñata, the number of species, the variant colorings, the awards for breeding, the new visitors as you gain levels, encourage a "gotta catch 'em all" mentality. So while there is no plot (despite the leveling system), the user can set their own gardening and breeding goals and direct the flow of the game. There is a high level of player ownership and with so many possibilities, the game very, very hard to put down.

It seems simple, but this game is adorable. Attracting mice with turnips, breeding a herd of mice, feeding the mice flowers to change their color, feeding the mice to snakes to attract them, breeding the snakes, evolving them into two-headed snakes, evolving those into four-headed snakes ... and then packing up or selling off everyone and starting anew, perhaps with a pond this time, and with insects and newts and ducks. There's the challenge of attracting difficult species, such as the huge Elephanilla (elephant) with its voracious appetite, or the demanding and carnivorous Roario (lion), and the special secrets of the game, like the crossbreed species and the special talents of the Tafflies (flys) and Macaraccoon (raccoons). It's adorable, it's fun, it's uplifting, it makes me smile.

For all of this, the game does have its downfalls, but now that the game is so cheap ($20, I believe) and there's a complete wiki at PinataIsland.info, most of them are acceptable. For one, the game's repeditive style (attracting, building, feeding, breeding, recoloring, attracting, building...) is indeed repetitive, and so while going through all sixty species would take an incredible amount of time, it's unlikely the player will want to. But since the game is now only twenty bucks, the fact that the player will eventually get bored of it is fine. (For the same reason, this is also a great game to rent.) For another, your in-game guide is unreliable, and what attracts species into your garden isn't always logical. When they step foot into your garden, you can at least check their info to find what will make them stay (likewise with breeding), but getting them into your garden in the first place, as well as finding coloring, evolutions, and secret abilities, is a matter of guesswork, trial and error, and finally of using the wiki—or else it gets frustrating. On a certain level, this is fine, game guides are useful tools, but on another, I feel cheated that I had to use guides to achieve much in the game, and spoiled by discovering some of the game's secrets early via the guides. (One other complaint is the number of glitches in the game: both your human helpers and the piñatas are bulky and stupid, and can get stuck, glitch through objects, appear in random places, or otherwise be irritating or mind-boggling. Directing flying piñata can also be a pain, as they are hard to find and target when they are in the air or roosting on trees. These inconveniences and glitches aren't major and don't make the game unplayable, but they can be annoying.)

On the whole, I greatly enjoyed Viva Piñata, and I highly recommend it for a few days of compulsive, immersive, unapologetic fun. It's adorable, it's addicting, and it's hard to indulge in the dances, candies, colors, and animals without feeling good. The game's challenges require just enough work to be satisfying but not too frustrating, and the amount of variety and change that you can achieve makes it an ever-evolving, personal environment. What more is there to say? It's a great game, and you should check it out.