Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise Review

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(More customer reviews)(From PlayingWithMyWeiner.com:)

f you're my friend or my poor husband, you've heard me running around for months singing the following (to the tune of "La Cucheracha"):

Viva Piñata, Viva Piñata
It is a nice piñata game!
Viva Piñata, Viva Piñata
No two piñatas are the same!
Olè!

Before this week, though, it was a lie. All of my brightly colored papery pals were the same. Same colors, same Candyosity, same names. Never more.

Viva Piñata:Trouble in Paradise from Rare and Microsoft Game Studios builds on the original Viva Piñata formula of building a garden, attracting and breeding piñatas, and sending them off to children who enjoy their sweet sweet candy. Players who "dug" the original will like this one, because it has everything the first game has and more. New gardeners won't feel left behind: the game has an excellent and reasonably interesting tutorial system that will set you up with gardening basics. Besides, it's not that difficult a game.

That is not to say that VP:TIP is not without depth. As in the original, your job is to build and nurse a budding ecosystem literally from the ground up. Start with clearing enough grass or soil and you'll attract adorable little Whirlms in your garden. They'll soon attract Sparrowmints, who will eat the Whirlms and may themselves be eaten by a Buzzenge as a part of their Romance requirement. It's all a part of the great circle of life. Or something.

VP:TIP improves on the original in several ways. First, it simplifies the menu system, particularly the buying and selling aspects. Gardeners can now just highlight objects for sale and they are automatically marked, rather than having to trudge all the way to the village. On the retail side, objects are placed immediately in the garden right before the money (chocolate coins) changes hands. This saves you "travel time" and really helps in letting you see how you want to plan your garden. Other improvements include the introduction of an actual storyline. Professor Pester, leader of the sour piñatas, has a plan to destroy this paper paradise forever. He's a man (a "straw" man?) with a plan, which both unfurls and unravels as you level up your garden. The Prof's intrusions can range from just sending Sour Shellybeans to eat up all your seeds to building stone walls that keep essential piñatas out of your garden until you can pay to knock the walls down.

I mentioned "no two piñatas are the same", and this time its true. Not only can you still name each and every piñata, and design a custom tag for it, but they also all have varying states of happiness. These states are known as the piñatas' "Candiosity", and are an indicator of how happy your paper pal is in your garden. The higher Candiosity level, the more your piñata is worth, and the more likely that she or he will stay in your garden and make lots of little piñatas.

The Prof's machinations, along with a more structured mission system (usually "raise a piñata with maximum candiosity and ship it somewhere around the world") really add to the adventure without taking away from the sandbox feel.

Rounding out the new features are opportunities to leave the garden, both in game and out of game. In game, you can use signposts to nip off to such exotic locations as the Dessert Desert and the Pinarctic region. You don't play in these gardens - you go there, capture new and exciting piñatas, and bring them to your home garden. Out of game, you can search other folks' gardens if they are on XBox Live, or use the Xbox Live vision camera to scan piñata cards (ala Sony's Eye of Judgement) and import new piñatas into your garden.Full garden multiplayer, both at home and via XBox Live, completes the set.

If this all sounds like a lot, it is because it is, which is one of the chief issues with the game. The problem is not that it is too deep, but rather that there is too much thrown at the player too fast with not nearly enough space to use it all. For example, in order to get a pair of piñatas to do their Romance Dance (mate) they need a home. Each species of piñata has its own type of home, and even the smallest of these, the modest Whirlm home, consumes a considerable amount of real estate. By the time you've built the Sweetle home you need to complete the final tutorial mission, you're out of room for more piñata homes unless you significantly tear up your little slice of heaven. Your garden size does increase, but the first bump isn't until level 12, by which time you'll really need the extra space.

The more things change, however, the more they stay the same. The developers obviously spent a lot of time lovingly crafting piñatas and items. Why, then, could they not manage to record all new bits for the speaking characters? As far as I know no one had a deep-seated attachment to the exact phrases spoken by shopkeeper Lottie Costalot as she swindled you out of your coins. In fact, most of her phrases (and the other villagers') were pretty annoying. There are some new spoken bits, but most of it is reruns.

All in all, though, Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise is a worthy sequel to Viva Piñata. The visuals have been upgraded, and the piñatas actually look like paper. The game controls better, and the new Romance Dance cutscenes are hysterical and adorable. If you haven't seen a VP Romance Dance, check one out on YouTube.

The bottom line is that if you don't like sandbox games or god games, you're not going to start liking them with Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise. If you do enjoy them, and particularly if you enjoyed the original Viva Piñata, you've got a lot of love coming in this title.Share it with your friends!Just beware of papercuts.
I'm giving Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise 4 Weiñatas out of 5.

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Product Description:
The original Rare Ltd. team behind Viva Piñata has reunited to bring gamers Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise, the newest and most fun piñata adventure to date. Available exclusively on Xbox 360, Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise reinvigorates a colorful and engaging gaming experience on the Xbox 360 platform. Now with full cooperative and online gameplay modes, the Viva Piñata franchise opens its doors even wider with a new game that provides hours of fun for gamers of all ages, fans of the animated series and animal lovers alike.

Return to Piñata Island
Play is easy with the Piñata finder.
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Team up for co-op play in the garden.
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Piñatas are fully customizable.
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Teach piñatas tricks with the 'trick stick tool'.
Viewlarger. There's New Trouble on Piñata Island
Unfortunately, not all is well on the island, as Professor Pester and his gang of Ruffians have wiped out Piñata Central's computer records, posing a threat to parties everywhere. Rebuild the computer database and thwart Professor Pester's evil plot by sending piñatas at full candiosity to parties all around the world. Build and maintain your piñata gardens using your creativity and imagination to attract, trap, protect, train, and manage more than 100 different piñata species.

More Ways to Play
While Trouble in Paradise maintains the gameplay mechanics players of the original game will remember, it also adds a few new twists, giving players more choices on how to make their garden grow. These include:

Player Guide System - Replacing the traditional tutorial, the optional Player Guide System directs players through a series of loose goals to help them master the fundamental aspects of the game.

Standard Mode - Presenting a challenge for experienced piñata gardeners and dedicated gamers, the Standard gameplay mode provides a more tricky option, where players must keep a watchful eye on their garden. Sour piñatas, feuding species, weeds, illness and limited money call for you to exercise problem solving and creativity to build and maintain an environment where piñatas can flourish and grow.

Just for Fun Mode - Designed for beginner players, kids and those just looking to explore Piñata Island, this mode allows players to jump into the garden and interact with the unique piñata world. In this mode the difficulty has been turned down and the fun has been turned up. Sour piñatas stay away, resident piñatas remain healthy, weeds don't plague your garden and you have an infinite chocolate coin bank account, allowing you to turn your garden into a veritable utopia of colorful creatures.

Improved Co-Op Play - While the original Viva Piñata had a simple system where two players could mutually control the single game cursor via different controllers, Trouble in Paradise adds drop-in/drop-out offline gameplay for two players and online co-operative gameplay for up to four players. This allows additional players to join the game at any time to assist the primary player with gardening tasks.

Key Features:

Customize Your Garden and Piñatas - Plant flowers, dig ponds, even place sand and snow in your garden to make exotic species of piñata feel at home. Buy objects to change the weather, or get new toys for your piñata. And nurture the thirty-two new species of piñata, including sour piñatas that infiltrate and wreak havoc in the garden. Choose to tame the sours, or feed them candy to keep them sweet.
Play With a Friend - Family members and friends can now share in the joy of creating a garden by plugging in an extra controller. The second player has access to all tools, actions, activities, and can help by collecting magic. It's an entirely new way to play.
Play Multiple Game Modes - Use the Player Guide System to master the fundamental aspects of the game. Then, try the Standard Mode where sour piñatas, feuding species, and limited money call for you to exercise problem solving and creativity to build and maintain your garden. Or enjoy Just for Fun Mode, which allows you to build a garden full of colorful creatures without worries.
Experience Piñata Vision - Plug in an Xbox LIVE Vision camera and interact with the game through the use of printed cards featuring a unique barcode. Flash a piñata card up to the Vision camera, and the content will drop directly into the game.
Show off to friends - Use the new photo mode to snap, print, and upload pictures of your unique garden or customized piñatas to show to friends. Photograph your piñata and turn it into a piñata card, then share it with your friends so they can scan it and put it into their own garden.
Teach Your Piñata Tricks - Piñatas can perform dazzling tricks, if you teach them with the new trick stick tool. Watch as piñatas play together, perch on each other, and interact in new ways to make them even more appealing.

Add Game Content with Piñata Vision
Trouble in Paradise also utilizes the optional Xbox LIVE Vision camera accessory through a feature entitled Piñata Vision. With this players can import, activate, create and share game content via optical card scanning technology. These cards do not necessarily have to be purchased, and instead are primarily downloaded from the game's website. Game developer, Rare, and Microsoft Game Studios are also considering making certain special cards available as part of promotions with magazines or gaming websites, ensuring that fans of the Viva Piñata franchise can expect fresh, exciting for years to come.

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