Viva Pinata
Posted January 5, 2008
Ported from the Xbox 360, Viva Piñata is a colorful romp into garden building and social development of various imaginary species. While it found a solid, but perhaps disappointing, audience on Microsoft’s console, a version of the PC was inevitable due to its suitability for younger gamers. Another plus for the PC audience is the similarity the game with the Sims series as far as character building and land development is concerned.
The game launches the player into a basic plot of land and allows the imagination to immediately take over. The player’s garden is essentially bare until the debris is cleaned, soil is prepared and the grass seed is planted. Players have the ability to plant all kinds of flowers and trees to attract local wildlife into their garden. Animals will visit the garden and can become residents provided certain requirements are met. Predators are also roaming the boundary of the garden, always looking to pick off a few creatures from the herd. It can be surprisingly difficult game that requires a high level of multi-tasking skills, especially when attempting to balance plant growth, animal procreation and unwanted visitors.
Gameplay
Essentially, the player acts as the chief gardener. Besides landscaping duties, you have a variety of structures to build such as animal housing. Stores sell new houses as well as a multitude of items to decorate and spur growth inside the garden. For instance, specific plants require certain types of fertilizer to grow which can be purchased at the main store. There’s also an option to capture wild animals and force them inside the garden. While expensive, it really comes in handy when you have all the elements to attract a specific creature and accomplished that feat, but lost the creature somehow. Any creature that visited your garden can be caught by the hunter in the store and delivered within a few minutes of game time.
Pinatas have various requirements to attract and keep them inside your garden. Some animals require certain types of vegetation while others need specific animals or objects to populate the garden. For instance, the moth piñata requires a flame before entering the garden and it’s typically a nocturnal creature. Once a piñata has eaten a certain amount of vegetation, they will become a resident. Add a house to your garden and you have opened the door to mating the piñatas.
The mating ritual works as a mini-game of sorts. After satisfying the particular creature’s demands, two of the creatures can mate to create a new resident of the garden. As the two creatures enter their little abode, a mini-game pops up that requires the player to navigate to the opposite end of a maze where their loved one is waiting. The mini-games are really quite simple, even on the tough levels of difficulty. It’s also pointless to gather up the coins as more money can be made by breeding certain animals. Upon success, the player is awarded with a little cut scene and an offspring is on its way. Offspring hatch out of nearby eggs and can be named once they emerge from their shells.
Unfortunately, Piñatas often die when ignored or when sour piñatas enter the garden. Sour piñatas leave behind candy that makes a regular piñata sick. These animals have to be tended to by the doctor or they will die. The sour piñatas can be tamed, but typically need more requirements to be filled before turning. The player also has to watch out for ruffians and Professor Pester, both of which like to harm the precious balance in your environment.
The keyboard controls are mapped out fairly well, but you can really tell that it wasn’t rebuilt for PC users. The layout is still very much molded around the Xbox 360 controller and plugging in a usb model to the PC is not a bad idea. The game is still color coded to the Xbox 360 controller interface and works identical to the 360 version. The game also contains achievements if you connect to the Xbox Live service through the PC. Unfortunately, I found the Live service to be horrifically unreliable and more trouble than it’s worth for PC users. Also, PC users have to pay for gold service to take advantage of the extra features like achievements. If you can manage to connect, try it out. But remember that you can always play through the complete game without connecting at all.
Graphics & Audio
The delightful color scheme will be the first graphical element that you notice when booting up Viva. The assortment of colors on the various piñatas is absolutely fantastic as well as the light fur textures swaying back and forth as the creature moves. The game also uses shadows very well to highlight the day / night cycle. The water effects are very lifelike and the crystal clear water makes the collection of seeds and candy parts simple. The game does have a few issues when resolution changes. For some reason, the text stays nearly the same exact size at any resolution. It’s annoying to have to scroll through long text boxes when playing on a large widescreen monitor. That’s an aspect of the porting process unfortunately. The light bouncy music and the variety of sound effects are identical to its Xbox 360 counterpart. It’s not the type of game that requires directional effects, but you will hear a variety of nature noises surrounding your ears as you play through the game with a 5.1 surround sound system.
Conclusion
There is a definite charm to Viva Piñata that’s tough to convey. Although I played the 360 version heavily for a couple weeks, I found myself sucked back into the life of a gardener and desperately trying to remember how to get that elusive dragon egg to appear. Viva Piñata has a steep learning curve for the younger players, but kids with a couple years of reading under their belt shouldn’t have a problem due to the multitude of text screens. While the Windows for Live process has been poorly implemented across the board for these new Microsoft PC titles, the addictive nature of Viva Piñata will delight people of all ages and keep you pecking away at the keyboard to mate your newly acquired species of Piñata.
The game launches the player into a basic plot of land and allows the imagination to immediately take over. The player’s garden is essentially bare until the debris is cleaned, soil is prepared and the grass seed is planted. Players have the ability to plant all kinds of flowers and trees to attract local wildlife into their garden. Animals will visit the garden and can become residents provided certain requirements are met. Predators are also roaming the boundary of the garden, always looking to pick off a few creatures from the herd. It can be surprisingly difficult game that requires a high level of multi-tasking skills, especially when attempting to balance plant growth, animal procreation and unwanted visitors.
Gameplay
Essentially, the player acts as the chief gardener. Besides landscaping duties, you have a variety of structures to build such as animal housing. Stores sell new houses as well as a multitude of items to decorate and spur growth inside the garden. For instance, specific plants require certain types of fertilizer to grow which can be purchased at the main store. There’s also an option to capture wild animals and force them inside the garden. While expensive, it really comes in handy when you have all the elements to attract a specific creature and accomplished that feat, but lost the creature somehow. Any creature that visited your garden can be caught by the hunter in the store and delivered within a few minutes of game time.
Pinatas have various requirements to attract and keep them inside your garden. Some animals require certain types of vegetation while others need specific animals or objects to populate the garden. For instance, the moth piñata requires a flame before entering the garden and it’s typically a nocturnal creature. Once a piñata has eaten a certain amount of vegetation, they will become a resident. Add a house to your garden and you have opened the door to mating the piñatas.
The mating ritual works as a mini-game of sorts. After satisfying the particular creature’s demands, two of the creatures can mate to create a new resident of the garden. As the two creatures enter their little abode, a mini-game pops up that requires the player to navigate to the opposite end of a maze where their loved one is waiting. The mini-games are really quite simple, even on the tough levels of difficulty. It’s also pointless to gather up the coins as more money can be made by breeding certain animals. Upon success, the player is awarded with a little cut scene and an offspring is on its way. Offspring hatch out of nearby eggs and can be named once they emerge from their shells.
Unfortunately, Piñatas often die when ignored or when sour piñatas enter the garden. Sour piñatas leave behind candy that makes a regular piñata sick. These animals have to be tended to by the doctor or they will die. The sour piñatas can be tamed, but typically need more requirements to be filled before turning. The player also has to watch out for ruffians and Professor Pester, both of which like to harm the precious balance in your environment.
The keyboard controls are mapped out fairly well, but you can really tell that it wasn’t rebuilt for PC users. The layout is still very much molded around the Xbox 360 controller and plugging in a usb model to the PC is not a bad idea. The game is still color coded to the Xbox 360 controller interface and works identical to the 360 version. The game also contains achievements if you connect to the Xbox Live service through the PC. Unfortunately, I found the Live service to be horrifically unreliable and more trouble than it’s worth for PC users. Also, PC users have to pay for gold service to take advantage of the extra features like achievements. If you can manage to connect, try it out. But remember that you can always play through the complete game without connecting at all.
Graphics & Audio
The delightful color scheme will be the first graphical element that you notice when booting up Viva. The assortment of colors on the various piñatas is absolutely fantastic as well as the light fur textures swaying back and forth as the creature moves. The game also uses shadows very well to highlight the day / night cycle. The water effects are very lifelike and the crystal clear water makes the collection of seeds and candy parts simple. The game does have a few issues when resolution changes. For some reason, the text stays nearly the same exact size at any resolution. It’s annoying to have to scroll through long text boxes when playing on a large widescreen monitor. That’s an aspect of the porting process unfortunately. The light bouncy music and the variety of sound effects are identical to its Xbox 360 counterpart. It’s not the type of game that requires directional effects, but you will hear a variety of nature noises surrounding your ears as you play through the game with a 5.1 surround sound system.
Conclusion
There is a definite charm to Viva Piñata that’s tough to convey. Although I played the 360 version heavily for a couple weeks, I found myself sucked back into the life of a gardener and desperately trying to remember how to get that elusive dragon egg to appear. Viva Piñata has a steep learning curve for the younger players, but kids with a couple years of reading under their belt shouldn’t have a problem due to the multitude of text screens. While the Windows for Live process has been poorly implemented across the board for these new Microsoft PC titles, the addictive nature of Viva Piñata will delight people of all ages and keep you pecking away at the keyboard to mate your newly acquired species of Piñata.