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Viva Piņata: Trouble in Paradise
September 8, 2008 | 7:53 PM PST
Kombo's Review Policy: Our reviews are written for you. Our goal is to write honest, to-the-point reviews that don't waste your time. This is why we've split our reviews into four sections: What the Game's About, What's Hot, What's Not and Final Word, so that you can easily find the information you want from our reviews.
What the Game's About
The opening theme for the original Viva Piņata was a huge lie. Viva Piņata was filled with fun but it sure as hell wasn't for everyone, not with equilibrium-based gameplay that demanded insane amounts of multitasking in order to collect, satiate and breed piņatas without letting their garden playground turn in a warzone. The challenge and depth of the gameplay turned off the young audience that colorful graphics, zany voices and mind-numbing unskippable tutorials were designed to appease, while the presentation turned off many of the older, strategy-loving gamers that might have otherwise enjoyed the game. And so the game was left with a relatively small but devoted audience. Rare has made a few smart additions and improvements to the sequel to help it appeal to a wider audience, but for the most part Viva Piņata 2: Trouble in Paradise feels like a great big "thank you" to the dedicated fans of the original.
What's Hot
The core gameplay from the original Viva Piņata has returned, and it's still as satisfying and addictive as ever. The simple satisfaction of designing and decorating your own space mingles brilliantly with the strategic thinking necessary to attract and appease the varying breeds of Piņatas. Keeping the garden in order grows increasingly complex as the game throws more and more new breeds of piņata at you and conflicts inevitably arise between different breeds and their preferred living environments. Somewhere between the Pretztails devouring the entire Bunnycomb population and the Great War between the Squazzils and Mousemallows you'll realize that sacrifices must be made and start having to choose which Piņatas to keep around and which ones need to bite the dust, if only until you need them again to fill a precondition for another breed. Right around the point you get a handle on balancing the ecosystem, Rare will start throwing monkey wrenches like "sours" and "ruffians" into the works, and then the game will really start testing your multitasking talents. The game does an amazing job of making you feel for these polygonal critters, especially when you consider the damn things don't talk and never directly interact with the player, and you'd have to have a heart of stone not to feel a pinch of guilt when you slam the shovel down the final time on that last Bunnycomb.
Thankfully your garden will be a lot easier to manage as the **** starts hitting the fan this time around, as Rare has done a great job of refining the interface. The shovel, watering can, and seed packets are all immediately accessible using the D-pad, which means a lot less starting and stopping to enter the menu. The new seed bag is a godsend for people like me that wanted to take the shovel to the faces of the storekeepers within minutes of meeting them, since it basically cuts the time you'll spend in the most important store in half. Additionally, if you ever need to find a piņata for breeding or to put together a party order, you can scroll through all the inhabitants of your garden using the bumper buttons, which is obviously infinitely preferable to searching high and low through your garden and manually selecting the damn thing yourself. Viva Piņata 2 also does a better job of signposting the next goal for players so they're never left fiddling with their gardens, unsure of what they have to do next to level up or attract the next piņata. The carrot-on-a-stick mentality is still there in full force, the carrot is just a lot easier to keep track of this time. None of these changes are particularly huge, but cumulatively they do a lot to make the gardening experience a lot smoother and more fun.
Even with all those refinements, Viva Piņata 2 is probably still too challenging for younger gamers. Rare has wisely included a new "Just for Fun" mode that gives players infinite chocolate coins and removes all of the preconditions and goals found in the campaign. It's a straight-up sandbox for players to build the garden of their dreams in and this is the mode that younger players are probably going to have the most fun with. Even big time Piņata gardeners will probably find some enjoyment from the more laid back experience this mode provides. Those looking to drag their children or significant others into the meat of the Viva Piņata experience will also love the co-operative play, which lets up to four players (two per console, four online) mess around in the host's garden. If you're protective, don't worry; there are all kinds of permissions settings to keep your guests from screwing things up too badly. The online play is also bolstered by some interesting community features that make use of a bungie.net style hub and the vision camera. An in-game camera lets you take pictures of your garden and piņatas in action and share them with friends. You can also turn those pictures into scannable cards via the website and trade piņata back and forth with each other. It's a cute feature but it will probably only be worthwhile if the community really embraces it.
What's Not
Aside from the new gameplay modes and community features, most of the new content in Viva Piņata 2 feels as though it could have and maybe should have been offered as a 800 point download pack. The new desert and arctic-themed garden pieces add some aesthetic and strategic variety to garden layouts and the new piņatas are all well designed, but none of that stuff really adds anything particularly new or significant to the actual gameplay experience. The gameplay is still a matter of meeting preconditions to attract, appease and breed the little buggers, but instead of water they need snow, instead of one plant type they need another, instead of eating this piņata they need to eat that piņata, and you get the point. The only new store sells "toys," interactive items like cars and trains that are utterly pointless as far as I can tell. I've yet to find a single piņata that required the presence of one as a precondition for anything, so they basically just take up room in your garden without any practical benefit. Woo hoo! Basically, any time you're not playing co-op, playing in the Just for Fun sandbox mode, or using the game's community features, the game feels identical to the original.
Final Word
Viva Piņata 2 doesn't bring anything revolutionary to the table as a sequel, but it does fix most of the first game's problems and add some features that many felt should have been in the first game to begin with. The new content feels a little light as far as new piņatas to collect, but the refinements to the interface and the new gameplay modes are all much appreciated upgrades. If you hated the first game there's nothing here to win you over, but if you loved the first game then Rare's definitely got you covered.
What the Game's About
The opening theme for the original Viva Piņata was a huge lie. Viva Piņata was filled with fun but it sure as hell wasn't for everyone, not with equilibrium-based gameplay that demanded insane amounts of multitasking in order to collect, satiate and breed piņatas without letting their garden playground turn in a warzone. The challenge and depth of the gameplay turned off the young audience that colorful graphics, zany voices and mind-numbing unskippable tutorials were designed to appease, while the presentation turned off many of the older, strategy-loving gamers that might have otherwise enjoyed the game. And so the game was left with a relatively small but devoted audience. Rare has made a few smart additions and improvements to the sequel to help it appeal to a wider audience, but for the most part Viva Piņata 2: Trouble in Paradise feels like a great big "thank you" to the dedicated fans of the original.
What's Hot
The core gameplay from the original Viva Piņata has returned, and it's still as satisfying and addictive as ever. The simple satisfaction of designing and decorating your own space mingles brilliantly with the strategic thinking necessary to attract and appease the varying breeds of Piņatas. Keeping the garden in order grows increasingly complex as the game throws more and more new breeds of piņata at you and conflicts inevitably arise between different breeds and their preferred living environments. Somewhere between the Pretztails devouring the entire Bunnycomb population and the Great War between the Squazzils and Mousemallows you'll realize that sacrifices must be made and start having to choose which Piņatas to keep around and which ones need to bite the dust, if only until you need them again to fill a precondition for another breed. Right around the point you get a handle on balancing the ecosystem, Rare will start throwing monkey wrenches like "sours" and "ruffians" into the works, and then the game will really start testing your multitasking talents. The game does an amazing job of making you feel for these polygonal critters, especially when you consider the damn things don't talk and never directly interact with the player, and you'd have to have a heart of stone not to feel a pinch of guilt when you slam the shovel down the final time on that last Bunnycomb.
Thankfully your garden will be a lot easier to manage as the **** starts hitting the fan this time around, as Rare has done a great job of refining the interface. The shovel, watering can, and seed packets are all immediately accessible using the D-pad, which means a lot less starting and stopping to enter the menu. The new seed bag is a godsend for people like me that wanted to take the shovel to the faces of the storekeepers within minutes of meeting them, since it basically cuts the time you'll spend in the most important store in half. Additionally, if you ever need to find a piņata for breeding or to put together a party order, you can scroll through all the inhabitants of your garden using the bumper buttons, which is obviously infinitely preferable to searching high and low through your garden and manually selecting the damn thing yourself. Viva Piņata 2 also does a better job of signposting the next goal for players so they're never left fiddling with their gardens, unsure of what they have to do next to level up or attract the next piņata. The carrot-on-a-stick mentality is still there in full force, the carrot is just a lot easier to keep track of this time. None of these changes are particularly huge, but cumulatively they do a lot to make the gardening experience a lot smoother and more fun.
Even with all those refinements, Viva Piņata 2 is probably still too challenging for younger gamers. Rare has wisely included a new "Just for Fun" mode that gives players infinite chocolate coins and removes all of the preconditions and goals found in the campaign. It's a straight-up sandbox for players to build the garden of their dreams in and this is the mode that younger players are probably going to have the most fun with. Even big time Piņata gardeners will probably find some enjoyment from the more laid back experience this mode provides. Those looking to drag their children or significant others into the meat of the Viva Piņata experience will also love the co-operative play, which lets up to four players (two per console, four online) mess around in the host's garden. If you're protective, don't worry; there are all kinds of permissions settings to keep your guests from screwing things up too badly. The online play is also bolstered by some interesting community features that make use of a bungie.net style hub and the vision camera. An in-game camera lets you take pictures of your garden and piņatas in action and share them with friends. You can also turn those pictures into scannable cards via the website and trade piņata back and forth with each other. It's a cute feature but it will probably only be worthwhile if the community really embraces it.
What's Not
Aside from the new gameplay modes and community features, most of the new content in Viva Piņata 2 feels as though it could have and maybe should have been offered as a 800 point download pack. The new desert and arctic-themed garden pieces add some aesthetic and strategic variety to garden layouts and the new piņatas are all well designed, but none of that stuff really adds anything particularly new or significant to the actual gameplay experience. The gameplay is still a matter of meeting preconditions to attract, appease and breed the little buggers, but instead of water they need snow, instead of one plant type they need another, instead of eating this piņata they need to eat that piņata, and you get the point. The only new store sells "toys," interactive items like cars and trains that are utterly pointless as far as I can tell. I've yet to find a single piņata that required the presence of one as a precondition for anything, so they basically just take up room in your garden without any practical benefit. Woo hoo! Basically, any time you're not playing co-op, playing in the Just for Fun sandbox mode, or using the game's community features, the game feels identical to the original.
Final Word
Viva Piņata 2 doesn't bring anything revolutionary to the table as a sequel, but it does fix most of the first game's problems and add some features that many felt should have been in the first game to begin with. The new content feels a little light as far as new piņatas to collect, but the refinements to the interface and the new gameplay modes are all much appreciated upgrades. If you hated the first game there's nothing here to win you over, but if you loved the first game then Rare's definitely got you covered.
February 8, 2010
