Viva Piñata has already had a huge impact on the gaming market, with the surprising, but at the same time unsurprising, popularity of the first title in the series we’re quickly seeing Viva Piñata becoming a huge and successful franchise, and quite rightfully so. Viva Piñata is one of those strange games where it looks like it should be a kid’s game but actually turns out to be more suitable for the older and generally more ‘hardcore’ type gamer, and it completely fooled me. Viva Piñata Trouble in Paradise, like the original, is developed by Rare, a subsidiary of Microsoft and a strong partner shown with their recent titles. Known for their slightly unusual but interesting game designs this game is definitely not of the orthodox. The original Viva Piñata introduced you to the genre with its ‘Sims’ like ways, and at first it can be a bit weird, although we’ve seen the Sims on the console before it’s still a relatively new game type to the system. And this is probably just me, I had no idea that the game was a Sim anyway. I had in my mind some sort of new action adventure/platformer style game, to my amazement, I was completely confused and had no idea what I was doing. After a little ‘learn the hard way’ like training, I soon discovered what this game was about. The basic idea of the game is to create and sculpture your own garden with the main idea to entice Piñata creatures to your creation, and there are many ways of doing this. As well as being quite curious and making things look pretty, you have to choose carefully on what you need to put down to attract the right Piñatas and keep the ones you already have in your garden. As you progress and gain experience, you’ll level up, and be introduced to other options such as villagers. Villagers allow you to buy and sell items or arrange visits to take care of your animal, and when you advance even further, you’ll be introduced to problems as well, weeds and ‘ruffians’, which generally try to detract your animals or ruin your garden. So the game gets more and more complex, but it isn’t completely forced upon you, and that’s what’ so unique and forgiving about Viva Piñata.

Gameplay:

So now I have explained to all you cynical non players of the previous game what it’s actually about, I can now tell you about some of the upgrades that have been implemented into Trouble in Paradise. And it’s important to know, Trouble in Paradise is more of an ‘upgraded’ sequel rather than a completely new game, but that in no way implies you shouldn’t try it out. There aren’t really any huge advancements in Viva Piñata, gameplay wise anyway, just many minor ones making it an almost fulfilled game. However, there are a couple of important points to mention is that there is now a ‘quick/free play’ mode where you have next to infinite currency and you can build a huge and outrageous garden with next to no setbacks, this is a great new addition that would appeal more to the younger audience you originally thought it was aimed at, although the game isn’t ‘that’ challenging to understand, it can become very fiddly with all the micromanagement nearing the later stages. To give you more of an understanding of how crazy the game gets, micromanagement is at times easier on Medieval Total War, anyone who has played that game will get my gist. So, the quick/free play mode has been added, but it doesn’t stop there. We now also have a cooperative multiplayer mode, strange for the type of game it is, but after playing extensively online it’s very much enjoyable. How does this work? Well, you can either make or join a game, making a game requires you to have your own garden to share, joining a game means you help out in someone else’s garden. There is the big problem of people messing up your garden, but this has been thought about and dealt with by Rare, you can allow permission to certain places on three stages; No access (which is just spectating), part access (which allows them the basic tools), and full access (which allows them to do everything you can do, I would only really do this with a mate). And in multiplayer you can have up to three other people, making managing the garden so much easier. Co-op is alive on this game, for all those people (who I know who are out there) missing playing their console games with their friends or family members. The idea is exactly the same here, just an extra person on the same screen, but making it all that more enjoyable as having that extra hand automatically adds the ‘coop’ element. A feature that is most neglected in my opinion, probably because it is such hassle to setup, is system link, this is also supported along with three other players. So there is no lack of choice in the ways you can play the game here. As I had said earlier, there isn’t that much new to the core of the game, as in Viva Piñata the original, your main goal is still enticing Piñatas and doing challenges, so if you didn’t like the original game for some particular reason you’re almost definitely not going to like this one either. What is new though is that there’s more to what was there in the first place and there have been some fixed design flaws from the original. You will be seeing new animals to entice, new items to buy and play with, and new areas to explore. You still just have the one central garden of which you can customise and play on, but now you can also venture out of your garden and follow signposts to other areas and do tasks, which mainly have you capturing unique animals from that area. The areas themselves really don’t add anything special to the game, lose any thought of customisation in different settings here, as it’s just a place to capture Piñatas and take them to your central garden. What this feature does do is make your home garden that little bit more interesting, as these ‘other’ animals will have different needs to stay in your garden, e.g. an animal captured from the Antarctic inspired area will need the same sort of environment to stay, and so you’ll have to change a part of your garden to cater to this. Some of design flaw fixes are found in the user interface, which is especially important in this type of game. Buying items has been made more streamlined, there were many menus in Viva Piñata to cycle through for specific objects, I found it to be a bit of a hassle going in to the village store cycling through sub menus in this game, but it’s been made a lot easier compared to what it used to be like. That being said, a game isn’t without its gripes, although I’d love this to be a perfect game (which is as close to perfect then most releases thus far) it isn’t quite. As mentioned beforehand , the micromanagement in this game is enjoyable until it gets a bit too much when you reach level 20 and beyond, this is when the whole game has been completely introduced so it starts throwing at you all these problems. Problems such as self growing weeds and evil ‘Piñatery’ animals which attack and detract your good Piñatas, you then have Professor Pester (Who’s the main bad guy of the game, and the biggest pain in the ‘you know what’) who runs round killing and destroying your garden, he’s a tough one to get rid of as well. Although it’s nice to have that co-op element to help you out, for a game which is meant to be enjoyable for younger kids I can see them really struggling at a later stage. Yes, there is the free play option, but, you’ll be losing most of the gameplay here, not a feature to rely on if you’re thinking about buying this. Despite this issue, Trouble in Paradise is a much improved sequel in the gameplay section, and all the problems which have been tended to do help the frustrating micromanagement problems somewhat.

Graphics:

Like the front cover of this game, everything is bright, bold, and exaggerated. All part of the grand scheme by Rare to fool you into thinking this is a game for children, also happens to be the kind of game you hope no one is watching you playing, or me playing. You’ll be seeing the stereo typical black and red colours for evil Piñatas and the colourful almost neon looking cute, happy Pinatas as the friendly ones. It’s all very clichéd and something that should be in Alice in Wonderland, but, I suppose it’s a break from all the depressing killing and miserable environments in the typical shooters the majority of us play. Technically, this game isn’t that impressive, you’re not going to be dazzled by fantastically good looking graphics but the art direction more than makes up for it. Some of the object textures are ‘low res’ (low resolution textures) and probably have a low polygon count, but are the players going to be picking out the tiny graphical inconsistencies or rushing about their garden tending to the next sick animal? It’s hard to pick out any problems without being too picky in the first place. This game is as fine looking as it should be.

Sound:

Trouble in Paradise is a great looking game and a great sounding game also. Very rare (excuse the pun) to have a title which excels in nearly every area, but Trouble in Paradise just about does it. All the music is very upbeat, kind of pop rock in the menus and slow moving tunes in game. It all suites the theme and structure, and it’s all pleasant to listen to. There are a few moments where it gets very quiet in game, but there is background music which plays here and there, and of course, the animals and environmental sound effects will always be present. There are weather changes too, and so you’ll now and again get a bit of variety with the rain effects, a common effect in many games now as the rain hits the screen as well. The other effects at night time, the chirping grasshoppers, and other places such as the arctic winds of the snowy environments The game relies on many voice actors for the tutorials and the villager characters, and although it’s all a bit clichéd and cheesy, they are very convincing for the unique characters they have in the game. Some are even slightly amusing with the funny accents and silly comments, none of its too repetitive and all of it is top quality to listen too.

Longevity:

Because this game is a kind of Sim, in theory, you can never complete this game. Human nature though will force you to get bored with it, but that won’t be without playing it through a few times, then a few times with your mates, and then a few times more with your mates online. The amount of options in game are almost unlimited, and the addicting element comes from the gaining of experience and levelling up, so I can see this being a treat amongst some RPG lovers too. And then outside the game itself, you can experience these limitless options with the option of playing with your friends in ‘couch co-op’, online co-op and system link co-op. This essentially bolts another player, or three, on, but because it’s a sandbox Sim it makes it all that more exciting and feasible. I say feasible, as it’s a tough game without a mate, the only time I’d consider not buying this is if you don’t have Live and have no friends, so... quite unlikely then.

Overall:

Although having briefly played the original, and turning my nose at it on first sight, I can now agree with the phrase ‘never judge a book by its cover’, and although all the intentions of the theme, music and characters are aimed at kids, the game has this optional complexity to it making the game really quite addicting to the broader audience. Viva Piñata was a great game with an interesting and addicting gameplay direction, but Trouble in Paradise is a great reinvention of this title, not quite a complete sequel, but Rare proves to us that there is still a lot of life in this to experience and cater for.