Viva Piñata review

by Paul on Jul 11th, 2011

I love Viva Piñata, and I don’t mind admitting it, but it wasn’t always this way. Back in the day, during the months leading up to Viva Piñata’s release, if you had told me that I’d one day be encouraging all manner of paper animals to get jiggy with it to make some babies that I could then sell off to the local store, all the while doing my best to juggle all of my piñata’s various requirements and staying up late into the night in order to earn some player awards and enjoying myself immensely in the process I’d have probably laughed in your face. You see, when I first found out about the concept of Viva Piñata my heart sank. My playing habits as a gamer do not normally lead me down the path towards life management sims. I had enjoyed Animal Crossing immensely on the GameCube but otherwise it’s a murky pool of a genre that I’ve not really dipped my toe into, simply because it held no interest for me.

Looking at those first few VP screenshots did nothing to light the gaming fire, although they did look gorgeous. Those shots of a horstachio making his way round the garden were lovely, sunshine breaking through the trees and bathing the piñata in a soft summer glow … *gasp* and just look at those ruffled paper textures on the piñata! I was very impressed. But this made the knowledge that it was a game I didn’t have any interest in playing all the harder to stomach. Even when the review scores started coming out – eight out of tens across the board – I still shrugged my shoulders, resigned to the fact that no matter what the press may have said I still knew it just wasn’t for me. I should have known better. I’m not sure what the deciding factor was but one day I saw it going for cheap in my local games store and decided “why not?” so I bought it and gave it a go that afternoon not expecting that much. Fast forward to late that evening and I was still playing with whirlms all around me, trying to get my two sparrowmints Polo and Trebor to breed (Trebor refused to come out of the house and for a long time I didn’t realise you could tap the house with your shovel to make her come out!) and doing my best to save up enough chocolate coins to get myself a pretztail house for Paulie and Petey so that they could get busy; I was hooked!

Not that it was all plain sailing to begin with though; it can be all a little overwhelming at first. Do I try and focus on breeding my mousemallows or go and work on my mothdrops? But hang on, I need some other bits to do before I can work on either of those; do I go and do that or go and do some planting in order to attract some other piñata and deal with these later? Urgh … more than a few times I had to pause for a minute to collect my thoughts, such is the onslaught of information thrown at you in the beginning. Piñata appear at the edges of your garden, others come running through to taunt you with the knowledge that you’re so close to getting them to become a new resident but you haven’t done that one last thing that will convince them to stay, while others come in (I’m looking at you sours) to wreck havoc and make your hard-earned piñatas ill. It is very easy to lose your way in those early hours. Leafos (the character who provides all of your training) is on hand to show you the ropes but this period of tutorial feels like it drags on for far longer than it needs to. Mercifully she’s eventually off on her merry way to let you get on with it (only re-appearing briefly when you hit new gardener levels) and you can start to do things under your own steam which makes things a lot more manageable when you’re not being instructed to do this, that and the other.

You are represented onscreen by a round cursor that you can move around the garden using the left thumbstick with the camera being controlled by the right thumbstick. Move your cursor over piñata, plants and items and use the four face button to carry out whatever task it is you wish to accomplish. The face buttons are context sensitive so the buttons will do different things depending on what you’ve highlighted. It makes it all very streamlined and you rarely find yourself getting confused. The main menu and your inventory are accessed by pressing X, where a flower will appear with each option being on a separate petal. You then use the left stick to select your chosen option. It is very simple to use but I cannot help but feel that occasionally the layers you have to go through can go a little deep and it can be quite hard to find certain things. Rare thankfully included the ability to jump straight back to your garden at any time by hitting select; a god send when you’re way down deep in the shop menus struggling to get out! There is also limited Xbox Live functionality, whereby you can send your piñatas to other people, but to be honest I found this feature pretty redundant, although I can see it has its uses for when you create a particularly cool variant you want to share with a friend.

Once you have settled into a rhythm more to your liking the game opens up beautifully, creating long stretches of open-ended play time. Rare have designed a game so fluid and organic with no real sense of end goals, other than the overall betterment of your garden and attracting more piñata to live under your care. This is so refreshing in its approach and it gives you a real sense of freedom; you are free to do what you like and when you want to do it. Very often you’ll find yourself doing nothing anyway just to watch the piñata going about their business – some running around playfully, others sleeping the day away, while one or two slowly make their way to your pond to have a drink – as the sun moves ever-onward overhead, casting long shadows across the lawn as sunset approaches. There is a never a feeling that you’re being told what to do or being funnelled down a particular route; it’s your garden and you can do what you want with it. As you are led down this path of ‘the world is yours to play with’ ethos VP’s true depths begin to reveal themselves and some of the chains you have to form to get some piñatas to live in your garden and able to romance are incredibly involving and can take up a great deal of your time as you make your way up to the upper tiers of piñata. I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve started playing just to fill a quick half hour but five hours later I’m still playing. Rare are to be commended for crafting a game that is so engrossing and engaging, with piñata that are full of life and character. It’s clear to see that a great deal of passion and effort has gone into creating this world and its inhabitants; they really do look gorgeous.

There’s a saying “you get out what you put in” and I can’t think of a more apt game than Viva Piñata to personify that musing. The more you invest yourself in terms of time, energy and emotion, the more rewarding Viva Piñata becomes. You begin to care about all your piñata; you’ll be fuming when a sour piñata comes along and leaves his nasty sweets everywhere, leaving some of your residents sick; you rejoice when you finally get those profitamoles to romance. The garden evolves from a patch of hard soil into a living, breathing place all thanks to your efforts and the sense of pride you get when all this comes together is a great feeling. As you approach the top levels of gardening prowess, watching your garden bustling with dozens of piñata, all running or flying around, is a joy to behold.

Remember my words about my initial reaction to the game when I first heard what it was about? Lots of people will have been exactly the same as me; not sure what to make of it, not fully understanding the objective of the game and letting the visual style fool them into thinking it’s nothing more than a kid’s game. Please don’t let pre-conceived notions get in the way. It’s easy to glance at the television, see those cute and colourful piñata running around and dismiss it, but there’s so much going on here for people of all ages. Even if you do decide to take the plunge it’s not like you’re losing out on a wodge of cash because you can pick it up for next to nothing on eBay now and it’s so different to everything else that’s currently available, so you’ve really got no excuse. Hopefully this review serves as the little prod in the back you need to go and find a copy and give it a try; you will not be disappointed. I can only hope that Rare decide to re-visit the series at some point in the future as I feel there is a lot more that can be done with the Viva Piñata franchise and I for one can’t wait to see what that next iteration brings.

4/5

Categories: Reviews