Viva Pinata for Xbox 360 Reviews by Gamers

In the grand scheme of things, you probably didn't buy your Xbox 360 to while away the hours doing a spot of gardening. But then, to be fair, Rare's latest Xbox 360 entry, Viva Piñata, veers so violently away from anything approaching the ordinary, being asked to get your fingers mucky is likely to be the very least of your worries.

For the benefit of you stragglers back there, Viva Piñata is effectively a hybrid of Animal Crossing, The Sims and Pokemon - with a touch of Alan Titchmarsh thrown in for good measure. In a nutshell, you're charged with creating a flourishing garden, vibrant and diverse enough to attract a whole range of those titular piñata - with new inhabitants arriving once you fulfil their particular wants and needs. That then, is pretty much that.

Of course, as is the way with these things, it's never quite that simple and - for a game that both Microsoft and Rare have been desperate to push as their first 'family' title - Viva Piñata shows a surprising degree of depth and complexity. So much so, in fact, that we can't possibly hope to cram all of its features and nuances into this review - not if we plan to go home any time before Christmas, at least.

Thankfully, Viva Piñata eases players into proceedings with a well-paced, genuinely helpful tutorial. Admittedly though, things ramp up quite quickly and your first few hours with the game are likely to be ones of perplexed bemusement before you can juggle its avalanche of demands with any degree of proficiency. Seizing control of an abandoned patch of land (there's some vague semblance of a plot behind all this, but it's so flimsy you're unlikely to pay it much heed), your first task is to clear the site of debris and loosen the soil, making it hospitable for Whirlms - the island's least fussy breed of piñata. Essentially, all this serves to introduce the spade - the most versatile tool at your disposal. Ultimately, as you progress and earn upgrades, your spade acts as pond-digger, seed-planter, piñata-waker and weapon of mass destruction. You'll also receive a watering can and bottomless pack of grass seeds - though these are less indispensable, mainly because you can't beat things to death with them.

Thrilled by your initial labours, Whirlms become the bedrock of your burgeoning ecosystem. From here on in, you'll start to attract new and more fanciful species of piñata, drawn to your garden by its flora or fauna. However, it'll take some coaxing - usually by fulfilling a number of oblique conditions - before they step within your borders, an eye to becoming a permanent resident. Of course, as with any ecosystem, there's a food chain governing the relationship between your inhabitants, so it's essential you've enough of each piñata to keep that circle of life spinning. Cue the Romance Dance.

Birthing offspring is a straightforward affair: once you've satisfied certain piñata-centric criteria - say, by forcing them to eat a specific item and providing a roof over their heads - your critters become primed for some lovin'. Provided you've got two or more of the same species in your garden, you can pair them off - initiating an incredibly basic (and increasingly obtrusive) mini-game, requiring you to guide your love-struck piñata through a bomb-lined maze toward its mate. Achieve your goal and the game coughs up some alarming FMV showing the little buggers getting it on - sure, the harsh realities of reproduction are euphemistically masked behind this whole 'dance' nonsense but, frankly, watching a Taffly sucking its mate in and out of its snout before spewing it skyward in one final eruption doesn't really leave too much to the imagination. Disco or no disco.

Shagging is one thing though, making your garden a happy and welcoming environment its something else entirely. To this end, you'll start to meet the island's local entrepreneurs - all keen to make a profit out of your budding horticultural talents. There's a shopkeeper (with a troubling line in innuendo) who's happy to sell you everything from seeds to garden ornaments - each dictating the kinds of increasingly elaborate piñata your garden attracts. On top of that, there's a builder who's only too happy to construct homes for your wildlife and a hunter who can catch feral piñata for you - provided at least one of a species has already taking up residence in your garden previously. Of course, all this requires a healthy wad of dough - most of which is earned by breeding your critters vigorously then flogging them for cold hard cash. As always, you never seem to have as much money as you'd like, so there's always a delicate trade-off between purchasing new items to attract bigger creatures with a higher selling price and making do with the ones you've got until they've bonked and bred themselves into a coma.

With no real goal to speak of, Viva Piñata's hook is all about discovery - and if you're the sort of person who collapses inwardly without something tangible to work toward, you'll probably loathe Rare's latest. Likewise, the only real action erupts when an evil piñata (or Sour, as they're known) enters your garden (necessitating swift dispatch via a crack to the skull with a spade), so adrenaline junkies should probably look elsewhere too. However, those with an itch for experimentation should find plenty to keep them amused for a good long while - particularly in the later stages of the game.

You see, once you've got the basics down to pat (and realised that deft placement of fencing is essential if your burgeoning populace isn't going to cannibalise itself in ten seconds flat, thus ruining all your hard work), you'll slowly start to discover the real meat of the game. Awarding trial-and-error like few other titles in recent memory, there's a lot of fun to be had playing around with the various tools at your disposal. For example, you'll soon twig to the fact that certain species can evolve into entirely new creatures by forcing them to eat specific flowers and fruit - some piñata even branch off into even weirder creations by coaxing them through flames and water. At its heart, this is where Viva Piñata truly shines, with Rare's flair for imagination creating increasingly impressive inhabitants as an addictive reward for your toil and experimentation.

Of course, it helps that Rare's presentation is typically impeccable, with the detailed (if undeniably cute) visuals combining effortlessly with the lilting orchestral soundtrack to create the sort of calming ambience that makes tinkering with your garden a joyfully therapeutic experience. Even the piñata themselves are superbly well-realised, each featuring a wealth of unique, charming and wholly believable animations to bring them alive - for once, Rare's penchant for bulbous dewy eyes and saccharine character design works in its favour, with each piñata sporting enough personality and 'aww' appeal to induce that vital element of personal attachment to the creatures in your care.

On the flip side however, Viva Piñata does have its fair share of - admittedly minor - flaws. For example, the deliberately basic interface can make performing some of your regular tasks more laborious than necessary - visiting the shop, for instance, requires hopping through two separate menus and a loading screen, while you're also forced to endure more loading time as you switch back and forth between the garden to deposit your purchases and the store to place your next order. It's hardly a game breaker, but a more stream-lined approach would take some of the tedium out of those day-to-day jobs. More of an issue is the way that, occasionally, your cursor inexplicably refuses to select certain items in your garden. Although rare, it's still incredibly frustrating when, say, you can't summon the vilage doctor to heal your sick piñata, leaving you with a dead body and an expensive trip into town for a replacement.

Plus, as much as we like the way the game demands experimentation, a few more hints and pointers wouldn't go amiss - as it is, once the tutorial has covered the basics, you're pretty much left on your own, with plenty of questions still unanswered. A little more guidance at regular intervals would certainly make proceedings less daunting. Finally, there's no denying the limited scope of the game - it doesn't take long to reach a point where you're doing the same things day in and out, hoping that something might rustle up a new breed of piñata. It's a shame becase your garden's surrounded by all manner of intriguing (background) locations - from eerie swamp lands to snowy mountain tops. With all this tantilising variety on constant display, we can't help but feel that offering different garden environments, with their own unique sub-set of piñata and challenges, might have increased the game's overall longetivity.

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