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Viva Piņata
When Microsoft bought gaming developer Rare
those so many years ago, the development house have created some
interesting titles with their new employers, however nothing quite
reached that same level of the Japanese quirkiness... until now... Viva
Pinata is that game and transforms players into virtual gardeners where
you must create a magical garden to encourage denizens such as
worms, birds, dogs and bunnies to come live in your utopia.
In order for this happen, the player must recruit wild piņatas but first
they must ensure that these loveable little creatures have enough grass
to call home. However, piņatas also have another side to them then just
producing baby piņatas, they also eat other piņatas and to make matters
worse, in order for you to purchase additional items for your garden,
piņatas can also be sold at the markets for human children to
beat the living daylights out of them at parties. So light a candle for
all those brave piņatas who have fallen in battle in order for the gamer
to create their gardening Utopia.
If this sounds all too complex, bare in mind that Viva Piņatas is aimed
at the younger generation of gamers, however older gamers will also
thoroughly enjoy this sickeningly cute game. The first level of the game
is a tutorial where you will meet your garden guide whose garden has
been destroyed by junk. By assisting this character, she will tell you
the secrets behind the game and how to basically get your foot in the
door.
The game also has a more difficult side to it as well which may deter
some of the younger gamers for complexity because there is a world of
micro-economics located throughout the entire game and you will spend many
levels trying new and different things in order to successfully complete
the title.
The piņatas are the star attraction of the game and as with humans,
there are different races of piņatas that also interact with each other
such as fighting, breeding or eating each other. To compound the
situation further, another race of piņatas called the "sours" are like
your natural disasters in games such as Sim City that cause a plethora
of problems in your ecosystem that you must either fix or try to prevent
them from happening game.
The title also supports a multiplayer option that contains a
leader board
to show friends how well your gardening is performing and you can even
send these friends boxes of piņatas, whether good or bad which is kinda
of cute. This is basically where the fun of multiplayer ends as you
cannot interact with other gamers gardens and it feels like this was
tacked on as a afterthought by the developers or management.
Graphically, Viva Piņatas is almost like a
Saturday cartoon series that was created in the 1960's with extremely
colorful graphics, cute sound and definitely a world where a gamer of
all ages can easily get lost in.
In conclusion Viva Piņatas is probably the cutest Sim City, Animal type
game that you will ever see on the XBox 360 that features a rather
addictive and immersing single player experience that can also be
frustratingly difficult. With some of the most colourful graphics that I
have seen in ages and great replay value, this game is definitely a
title that should be seen by those gamers wanting more than their
standard first person shooter. |
