Viva Piñata Aussie Review (ign.com)

- ign.com -

Australia, November 23, 2006 - Using the term 'kids game' against Viva Piñata in a derogatory manner is ignorant. To blindside the fantastic presentation and addictive gameplay, relegating the title to infantile age-groups, would be a painful misstep for buyers and gamers this Christmas. Stripped to the core, Viva Piñata takes elements from The Sims, Animal Crossing, Harvest Moon and Black and White, rolls the mix in powdered sugar, and serves it on a platter of television spin-offs and much-touted micro-transactions over Xbox Live.

Sure, there is no denying that the graphics teeter precariously close to the edge of a chasm filled with 'adorable', but the mechanics are such that we'd be hard pressed to think of a 6 year-old who'd be able to master this game without at least some parental intervention.

If you've played any of the aforementioned life-simulator titles, you'll have a good idea of the pace of the game. This is a thinking-gamer's game, likely more at home on a PC than a console. This is an achievement unto itself - the Xbox 360 has seen a handful of strategy titles, most notably Battle for Middle Earth II, but none have so far been able to nail the controls and interface without serious drawbacks to the accuracy of issuing commands on the fly. Really, it's hard to compete with the tactile nature of the mouse/keyboard combo.

Rare have done a very good job at turning complex command-issuing into a smooth and painless process. After kicking off a new Piñata garden (in essence, a little hobby farm), you're issued a little piece of land to clear - under the watchful eye of Leafos, the daughter of an acclaimed Piñata breeder and sometimes-narrator of Viva Piñata's interwoven plot thread.

Lovely deisgns and some lush animations breathe life into the world.

Interacting with the land is done via a circular indicator that slides across the surface of the land with a push of the left thumb-stick. As the indicator shifts around, it will automatically be drawn towards key objects throughout the landscape - trees, seeds, piñatas, buildings, fruit - pretty much any active or manipulable item. Highlighting the object brings up a menu of options that are assigned to the X, B, A and Y face buttons on the controller.

These options are your key to interacting with the environment, and also serve to highlight one of Viva Piñata's biggest successes - enjoyment and gain through experimentation and risk. After clearing the land, you'll be asked to plant some grass seeds to kick off the DIY garden design course. After assigning the never-ending seed packet to a face button through a delightful radial 'leaf menu', you're ready to start propagating.

All the while, likely unbeknownst to gamers, the way in which you till the earth, the amount of soil you clear, grass you plant and watering holes you dig, all affect the way in which curious piñatas view your garden. You'll start by attracting inchworm-like Whirlm to your patch of earth. This draws out aptly-named Sparrowmints, who are attracted to the movements of the Whirlm. Thus, Viva Piñata establishes its simulated food chain and the rules for Rare's 'donut of life'.

It is about here, in the players mind, that the overarching complexity of the game begins to take hold. All notions of childish gameplay filler are dispelled (though, not permanently) and the depth of the gameplay begins to appear. With the goal of the game to attract Piñata to your garden, thus improving your running score applied to the quality of your land, you must use the concepts of selective breeding, sacrifice and creativity to better your standing.

This sounds complicated, and to some degree it is. However, the game goes a long way towards easing the younger demographic into rich concepts such as these by providing step-by-step help, voice-overs for any key information (catering to non-readers) and an extensive encyclopaedia of the various flora, fauna and key characters of the island.

Once you've attracted a couple of the same species of piñata to your range, you can go about breeding them. In order to make with the jungle boogie, you need to first satisfy any criteria they require in order to get in the mood. This usually means buying them a little love shack (lovingly personalised for each species), feeding them a seed or nut, or perhaps even providing them lower-level Piñata as prey.

In the case of the Sparrowmint, for instance, we needed to buy them a little birdhouse and feed a Whirlm to them. This required that we breed at least two sets of Whirlm, lest we kill off the species in our garden. Of course, should you manage to wipe out an entire species, don't fret. You can visit a shopkeeper in town and hire her to hunt down any species that has taken up residency in your garden - for a fee, of course.

Once you've gone about gathering all the necessary bits and bobs to fuel the pair's animal urges, you can highlight each animal you'd like to breed with your cursor. They'll have a lovey-dovey heart over their heads by now, indicating they're ready for a bit of love. Upon doing so, they will run towards each other, triggering a strange and tacked-on mini-game.

All manner of papered-animals inhabit the island - some are nocturnal, however, and must be attracted through creative means.

Remember how we said that notions of childish gameplay filler were dispelled - though not permanently? Well, this is where they re-emerge. Between initiating the 'romance dance' and creating a piñata egg, you must carefully proceed across a top-down race course, collecting chocolate coins and avoiding explosive, evil, red piñatas around the perimeter of the track. Clearly, since the backbone of Piñata Island's economy comes in the form of chocolate coins (spent in the town on all manner of items, service and buildings too numerous to list), obviously someone at Rare thought they'd make it a little easier to collect a few coins at the expense of a bit of tedium.

Indeed, there is a bit of tedium, and it pulls you out of the garden and out of whatever task you were in the middle of - which by later in the game, could be any number of tasks, since breeding and matchmaking becomes second nature and really doesn't require more effort than point and click (providing you have fulfilled the criteria to do so). It breaks the flow of the game, doesn't look particularly fetching in its overhead viewpoint, and feels like a cheap gameplay-extender whacked into the code late in the game to satisfy the needs of players yearning for some sort of racing/platforming/action kick. We don't want this. We want to stick with the god-sim bits, thanks. That's where Rare's heart clearly lies, so why cheapen the experience?

After a while, upon meeting Seedos the seed dealer and a host of mask-wearing Piñata Island locals, you'll be able to deck out your patch of land however you'd like. You can add fences and pavers, light posts and lakes, fruit trees and accessories and, provided you occasionally sell some of your fruit, trees and piñata offspring, you'll never be without funds.

There is a cool morality scale in the game, too. Since gamers have freedom to approach each situation with compassion, neutrality or malice, the game gives you the option to whack piñatas, breaking out their candy goodness for other piñatas to feast on. Of course, you're best off sticking with beating up the evil red-and-black piñatas, called sours. Steering away from punishing evil piñatas and instead battering the innocent ones simply draws more evil into your garden. If you so desire, you can go on a battering-spree and raise a garden of wicked paper animals, decking out the land with toxic waste barrels and such.

Player awards and experience 'petals', animal mood indicators, hidden plants and piñatas - Viva Piñata is a fully-featured release. No review could really touch upon all the features of the game and the flexibility of the gameplay they provide without spending dozens of pages breaking it down. It's not worth destroying the fun of discovering these features, either.

The graphics and presentation are some of the finest on the system. The animation is lively, the colours are rich and the textures are lush and cartoony, with that distinct Rare flavour to the piñata designs. These are iconic creatures. Just looking at the screens barely does the game justice - Rare are masters at crafting compelling worlds, and this sits at the top of their list of cohesive and beautiful creations. There is a minor stutter during the automatic save function - but the stutter itself has been blown out of proportion. This is an assuredly gorgeous and polished game.

Beat them up or let them flourish; the sour critters are definitely twisted.

The music, too, has been lovingly composed - from the orchestral overture that plays during the main game, to the pop opening theme. It's easy to be cynical about that track, though, as it was clearly designed to be painfully catchy. And it is.

It has a few niggling issues, aside from the mini-games. The day/night cycle, while showing off the beautiful dynamic colour-shifting and depth of field effects, passes a little too quickly. One moment you're basking in the sun-drenched hills and valleys of the island, when suddenly you're plunged in blue-tinged shadow and eventually darkness. The circular indicator casts a spotlight over wherever it lies, but the sheer number of creatures and objects in the world makes it a little tricky to distinguish one creature from another.

Placing buildings in the world can be a bit fiddly - you have to leave a large square (or rectangle) of cleared land in order to place the construction site down. Of course, this means you can't have little piñatas pinned down underneath the site, which is a pain to allow for, since these guys go where they please and directing them isn't an option when you're in build mode.

The process of selling items can be a bit fiddly, too - a lot of button presses are required to confirm that you actually wish to pawn your goods. This is clearly to give unwitting kids the chance to turn back before selling off a precious piece of collected kit. The result, though, is a slightly frustrating process for players who are a little surer of themselves.

For those with a connection to Xbox Live, there has been a big emphasis placed on providing incremental updates and downloads for Viva Piñata. For a small fee that translates to a couple of Australian dollars, you can buy unique accessories, toys and items to populate your world. Though, it is a little suspect to target the youth market with such innocent presentation and then slap them with a burning need to upgrade - at the expense of their parents' credit card, no doubt.

Interestingly, Viva Piñata has attracted a bargain price at release, indicative of Microsoft's fears that the masses just won't understand or connect with the concepts. And who could blame the consumers? Outside of the States, Microsoft has done precious little to raise the profile of this title in the marketplace.

No amount of retailer shows or trade events will help ease dollars out of the wallets of gamers not already versed in the ways of the game. What is needed here, in Australia, is a timely release of the television show, as well as an advertising campaign that doesn't play off the childish appearances of the piñatas. Right now, it's just a little too quiet for a game that was once touted as frontrunner, ahead of even Gears of War, on the 360.

If you decide to bust open a piñata, they unleash an explosion of confetti and candy for your creatures to devour.

Closing Comments
We suppose our biggest fear, then, is that this is a game that deserves to be played, but may never reach the arms of more than a handful of parents attracted by the price or those select gamers in-the-know. And Viva Piñata is far too good to be ignored. It's for kids, yes, but it's for adults. It's for girls and boys and teens and grandparents. It's for you, I guess, is our point. So forget your mature pretences for a little while and have some fun, Rare-style.