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Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise |
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Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise
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| Developer(s) | Rare Ltd. |
| Publisher(s) | Microsoft Game Studios |
| Composer(s) | Grant Kirkhope |
| Platform(s) | Xbox 360 |
| Release date(s) | NA September 2, 20081 EU September 5, 20081 AUS September 11, 20082 |
| Genre(s) | Life simulation game |
| Mode(s) | Single-player, Co-op (2-4 players)3 |
| Rating(s) | ESRB: E PEGI: 3+ |
| Media | DVD-DL |
Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise is the sequel to the Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows critically-acclaimed life simulation game entitled Viva Piñata.4 The title was officially announced on May 13, 2008 with a September 2, 2008 release date in North America and a September 5, 2008 date in Europe.5
Contents |
According to the game plot, Piñata Island is once again under siege by Professor Pester and his gang of dim-witted Ruffians.6 While attempting to steal valuable information about the piñatas, the professor has instead managed to delete all of the data stored in the Piñata Central computer. As a result, all knowledge about piñata species and which piñatas are needed for which parties has been lost, leading to chaos. The player is tasked with restoring order by rebuilding the database, achieved by enticing specific piñatas to inhabit the garden, filling them with candy, and sending them off to parties around the world.
Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise keeps the core mechanics of the original Viva Piñata in place, while supplementing them with several additions. As before, the game is primarily a sandbox title, with players maintaining a garden plot which they can decorate and customize as they see fit. The primary residents of these gardens are living piñata animals who wander the area, eating, sleeping, and even mating with each other. By fulfilling conditions favorable to specific piñata species, players attract members of those species to the garden. In general, the larger and more exotic an animal, the more difficult it is to attract.
In order to give players more choices about how to play the game, the sequel now includes multiple modes:7
In addition to the roughly 60 unique piñatas from the previous title, Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise adds 32 new animals to the mix (28 tame, 4 sour), raising the total number (of which some are not fully distinct) to over 100.8 New species include Camellos, Custations, Pengums, Tigermisus, Moojoos, Pieenas, Sarsgorillas and others.
A number of the new species are specifically designed to inhabit the title's two new areas: the icy Piñarctic and the arid Dessert Desert. These areas are not part of the main garden, but rather can be visited for the purpose of capturing piñatas. This is done by baiting purchased traps with items which each species is attracted to, and then shipping any successfully captured piñata back to the player's garden.9
Rare indicated that, with the sequel, they have "perfected the food chain", increasing the variety of items which piñatas will eat and the results which will occur when they do.10 This is intended to reduce the repetitive "instruct each piñata to eat every possible item" activity which was sometimes required in the earlier title. Depending on the piñata, consuming a given item may increase or decrease its "candiosity", or can even lead to the piñata performing a trick. When this occurs, players can quickly use the new "trick stick", which causes the piñata to learn the trick permanently so that it can be performed later on request. Other enhancements which improve the core game experience include the ability to cycle through garden residents using the bumpers, as well as quick access to seeds and fertilizer without requiring a separate trip through the menu and Costolot's store.11
While the size of the in-game garden is not any larger than in the previous title, the numbers of items which can be placed in the garden simultaneously has been substantially increased.12 Players can move the cursor slightly farther outside the confines of the garden in order to view things occurring around the edges, particularly to view visiting animals who have not yet become residents.9
Numerous new items and interactive objects are available as well, including toys for the piñatas to play with. Players eventually gain access to ice and sand terrain types, allowing them to provide "homes away from home" for any piñatas captured from remote environments. The water and weather effects have also been improved, where as in the original game the rain would just hit the screen and fade away, now it will be able to run down the screen. This feature is also to appear in Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts.
While the original Viva Piñata had a primitive system where two players could mutually control the single game cursor using different controllers, the sequel adds full drop-in/drop-out offline gameplay for two players and online co-operative gameplay for up to four players. This allows additional gardeners (with their own cursor) to join the game at any time to assist the primary player with gardening tasks. To encourage players to assist each other, the other players have immediate access to fully upgraded tools, as well as all actions and activities.3
Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise makes unique use of the optional Xbox Live Vision camera accessory through a feature entitled Piñata Vision.6 In a manner similar to what is done in titles such as The Eye of Judgement, the camera is able to optically scan an image from a card and use the embedded matrix barcode to allow in-game content to be imported or activated.
The images themselves do not have to be purchased, and instead are primarily downloaded from the game's website. Players can also make use of an in-game virtual photo mode that allows piñatas in the garden to be photographed and their data uploaded. Other players can then download these piñatas in Piñata Vision form for use in their own garden. The computerized images can either be printed out as cards or directly displayed on a handheld device which is then held up to the Xbox Live Vision camera for processing.13 Rare is also considering making certain special cards available as part of a promotion with magazines or gaming websites.14
When asked about the origins of the Viva Piñata sequel, lead designer Justin Cook responded, "The team wanted to make a sequel and Microsoft could see there was an opportunity to build on something unique to their platform".15 In a separate interview, Rare's Gregg Mayles described Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise as the "definitive version" of the first game. Explaining his feelings about the chance to add things left out of the original, he remarked "We thought, "It's going to be a real shame not to make another version," which is what we [would] consider to be the complete experience".16
When discussing the improvements in the new title, Cook stressed that in addition to just adding "new stuff", a key goal included making the game more accessible to new players with the "Just For Fun" mode. Cook went on to explain his own take on the new features, "For me the biggest 'feature' is the improved player experience. This time you can do what you want much more easily (as long as the piñata will let you) and I'm afraid that means you're going to find it even harder to tear yourself away from the screen".15
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Viva Piñata Trouble in Paradise received high marks from most media outlets, including several "Editor's Choice" awards from reviewers. In general, the improvements to the user interface and addition of co-operative play were highlighted, while the most commonly cited negative was limited innovation in the core gameplay.
GameSpot scored the title 8.5/10, praising the greater variety of gameplay, but criticizing the voice acting.11 The review highlighted the party/celebration challenge system which encourages players to acquire different piñatas, providing goal-oriented motivation lacking in the previous title. IGN also rated the game an 8.5/10 (the same score awarded to the original and to Pocket Paradise), indicating that is worth buying if one enjoyed the original and wanted to make use of the co-op features. However, the reviewer did note that the game hasn't radically changed from its predecessor, primarily providing more of the same. The GameSpy review commented favorably on the streamlined user interface and more user-friendly experience, while remarking that it was still a pain to have to wade through several levels of menus for some actions.18 Despite any such criticisms, the title still received a score of 4.5/5, along with an "Editor's Choice" award.
The harshest critique came from the Official Xbox Magazine, which described frustration at being unable to effectively control the garden's residents as well as frequent interference from destructive intruders.23 This, coupled with continuing issues running out of space within the garden, resulted in a score of 6.5/10. The review concludes, "Even if there were room to experiment, a few dozen animals aren’t sufficient to lure back veteran gardeners for long, and newcomers are bound to wonder why life on the island is so needlessly difficult".
Nonetheless, the 1UP.com review captured the general sentiment of the majority of reviewers by summarizing, "If you hated the original, Trouble in Paradise isn't going to change your opinion. If, however, you somehow missed out completely on the piñata party the first time around, I implore you to check it out now -- it's certainly much deeper and more addictive than its playful visuals would lead you to believe".17
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