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Rare’s latest effort is quite the party. Viva Piñata is undoubtedly an effort by Microsoft to try to capture the young audience that has so far eluded it. The game is quite colorful yet surprisingly challenging and well put-together. The end result is a kid’s game that doesn’t necessarily play like a kid’s game and ends up being fun for the whole family.
In Viva Piñata, the titular piñatas are actually captured or cultivated not just designed. The game lets you play as a “gardener” to cultivate these piñatas, which are now in great demand. However, don’t expect to be the premier gardener as soon as you step foot on Piñata Island. You actually started off in a neglected piece of land that was previously used by the renowned gardener Jardiniero. It seems that a girl related to him, Leafos, wants to turn the land back into the leading land it used to be and turns to you for help. What follows is an interactive tutorial which lets you get a good feel for the game. Your goal in the game is to cultivate this garden well enough to attract piñatas to live there.
The game has around 70 different species of piñatas, each with their own requests for living in your garden. Achieving a certain task will allow you to see one of these piñatas. Once you’ve seen it, the game lets you know what you need to do before they even considering visiting or moving into your garden. Once they moved in, you’re once again given criteria for them to have offspring in your garden. The first few piñatas in the game aren’t very demanding, but as you get more of them, the ones that follow will have more involved and demanding requests before they come aboard. As a warning, though, don’t get too fancy with your garden. Later piñatas may have totally different requests than earlier ones and you may have to undo a lot of the work you’ve done. Some species, for instance, require lots of water so you’ll have to make space for it. Ones that follow do not, so you have to fill up the bodies of water that you have created.
In addition to cultivating your garden to meet the demands of the various piñatas, you can fertilize plants. While this isn’t absolutely necessary, it does let you get the most out of your garden since you can have stronger trees, for instance, that give you more fruit than the ordinary trees you already have. The game places a limit on the number of items you can have at any one time, which includes piñatas and helpers (which assist you in the more basic but time consuming processes). You’ll also end up meeting a lot of people—usually store owners—that you will interact with often. The currency system in the game (chocolate coins) is very liquid so you won’t have much of a hassle trying to get cash if you need to.
The gameplay mechanics in the game help it attract the casual audience. For instance, Viva Piñata’s control scheme is intuitive. Your four main functions, which are context-sensitive, are mapped to the face buttons. The buttons and what they are used for are displayed on the screen at all times. The game will detect your profile and place the game in a basic or advanced control scheme. The advanced control scheme is more involved since some tasks involve using both analog sticks or a trigger-button combination. Additionally, the game has a gentle learning curve that lets you progress without ever overwhelming you.
Viva Piñata has a very limited multiplayer component in which you can connect multiple controllers to control the same cursor. This was probably added to help parents play with younger kids and seems to work fine. The game’s online component lets you send gifts to other Xbox Live players, although they can return to sender or forward the gift to another player if they want to. In a pretty cool twist, piñata that are born in your garden wear a customized label unique to you that stays with them even if you send them to a friend.
The game’s graphics are great. Rare has crafted a game with a strong sense of style, although I’m sure that not everyone will appreciate it. Despite the ambiguity of the stylistic merits, the game shines technically. All of the piñatas, flowers, trees and gardens in the game look great. The game realistically renders the piñatas—and they actually look like a real piñata should. The animation system is well done and gives the game a lot of its charm since the piñatas have different personalities that are expressed by their movement.
The game’s audio is equally impressive. The soundtrack is subtle but effective and sounds great. The sound effects are largely comprised of animal sounds and voices, which are okay, though they repeat too often to be truly charming and enjoyable. They never get annoying, though.
Viva Piñata is solid, enjoyable fun for the whole family. While odds are that your little sibling will enjoy some of the game’s charm more than you, the underlying gameplay is satisfying and challenging enough to engage older players as well. -- Jose Liz, PGNx Media
---- Dec 10, 2006
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