XBOX360 Game Review: Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise

I was completely addicted to the original Viva Pinata, and when I heard that a part 2 called Viva Pinata: Trouble In Paradise was due for release this early September, I began counting down the days till finally I was able to get my gaming thumbs on to a copy.

That day came this past Friday, and ever since I have spent a good 5 or 6 hours a day going at it, trying to obtain pinatas, trying to get them to mate, and trying to keep my garden clear of dangerous Sour Pinatas.

Opening Game:
 
I plopped the game into my XBOX360 and immediately was greeted with a very similar opening menu page to the original game. After choosing to begin a New Garden, I first had to watch a small skit about what the game was all about.

In Viva Pinata: Trouble In Paradise, there is a master Sour called Professor Pester who will continually try and destroy your garden. He is not alone though, you will find yourself fending your garden from the numerous Sours that come out to ruin your garden during the day and the night.

The objective of the game is to attract pinatas to your garden by using the resources given to you. At first you start if small, just like in the original game. You have the crappiest shovel, the worst gardening can, and not much to work with.

Unlike the original game though, Viva Pinata: Trouble In Paradise garden was not covered in garbage, and in a state of despair. The garden was empty when I first began playing. Soon though my garden began attracting a few pinatas. Pinatas from the original game were among the first pinatas to visit my garden.

The thing that bothered me first and foremost was that the games tutorial played automatically. Those who have played the original likely already know how to play and would rather skip the boring tutorials that are just straight up annoying.

Anyhow, once the tutorial was done bugging me to do certain tasks I could then begin playing by myself. I much prefer figuring things out on my own anyway, and even with the tutorial over and done with, there were still quite a few things left for me to figure out on my own.

About 3 pinata days into the game Seedos finally decided to come and pay a visit to my garden. If you remember from the original, Seedos is the ugly voodoo doll looking guy that you will find in your garden daily. You simply go over to him, let him talk for a hot second, and then he will chuck a seed out for you to use in your garden. Seedos will give you anywhere from 3 or 4 seeds a day. The higher up you are in upgrades the more new seeds he will have for you.

New Features:
 
A new feature in this game though was the fact that you could now complete missions from around the world. China for instance may ask for a certain pinata, or France may want a baby pinata.

New control features now allow you to quickly scroll through seeds you have already found, without having to go into the store to buy new ones.

New pinatas, new sours, new plants, and new garden objects were all a warm addition to the game.

Another interesting new feature is candiosity. This is basically how happy your pinatas are. You can make them happy by giving them an original name, by feeding them seeds, fruits, or vegetables, or by having them mate. Once a certain pinata reaches full candiosity, a small pink tag that resembles a hand being raised will float above the pinatas head. You then can direct the pinata to a crate located outside of the garden. The pinata will now be shipped off to attend a party. Don't worry though, he will come back with a badge attached to him that basically gives him bragging rights for attending a party.

The difficulty of the game also seems to be a new feature. In the original Viva Pinata, I never had much trouble with sours. They would simply stroll into my garden, and I'd whack them off with a shovel before they spewed out any poisonous candy that could make my pinatas sick.

In Viva Pinata: Trouble In Paradise however they not only spew out poisonous candy, they also will drop weed seeds when killed. In the original game weed seeds were bad, but easy to get rid of. In Viva Pinata: Trouble In Paradise if you accidentally miss a weed, it will sprout and create a mass grave of weeds that will bring chaos to your entire garden.

About 2 hours into my game Professor Pester came through leaving behind a trail of weed seeds that began sprouting faster than I could hack them. Not long after my pinatas began eating the flowering poisonous weeds causing them to expel poisonous candy for other pinatas to eat, which in turn caused them to get sick.

I couldn't keep up and eventually I lost more than half of my pinata colony in less than 20 minutes. I highly, highly recommend building a workers home, and hiring 2 or 3 weedlings early on in the game. The weedlings will keep weeds from your garden.

The coolest new features though are the addition of different pinata gardens. Located on the outskirts of your garden will be two wooden signs, one on each side of the garden. One sign will take you to a desert, and another to the arctic. By choosing these signs you can go to these gardens to try and trap and capture rare pinatas only found in these areas.

In the arctic you can capture penguins, larger yaks, new sours, and other animals only found in colder conditions. In the desert you will come across new lizards, Vulcan birds, sours, camel pinatas, and so on. Trapping these rare animals can be pretty difficult. First you have to purchase a trap, then you have to set the trap with bait and hope the trap works in capturing the pinata. Not every trap you set will be successful, even the higher priced traps are not fail proof.

Once you have trapped a pinata though you can send it back to your original garden. Once you come back to the main garden you simply go to the post office and pick up your crate. Now you can unpacks your new pinata in your main garden.

The problem though is that the pinata will not stay unless you meet their conditions.

You will have to lay out snow, or sand dispensing on the animal it will require a little sand/snow, or a lot. It may also require certain types of food, or items in the garden in order to remain there. Try and meet the new pinatas needs as soon as possible, or it will leave, and will not come back unless you trap another one.

Dealing With The Sour Pinatas:
 
Sour Pinatas will come in and out of your garden throughout the day and night. There are even more sours in this game than there were in the original. Some original sours are here of course, such as the bat, crowla, shelby, and so on. New sours are added to the group, and it seems that at any given time 2 or 3 sours will try and invade your garden at the same time, making it nearly impossible to tend to your garden, tend to your pinatas, and keep the sours out at once.

Sours will leave behind poisonous candy for your pinatas, sours will ruin lakes, some will even destroy homes, kill pinatas, and leave behind poisonous plants. Dealing with Sours can be difficult, but there are some ways that could help you ease the strain they cause on gardens. You can hire watchlings to scare pinatas out of the garden. Before hiring them make sure you have an employee home built in your garden first. They do a good job at keeping out Sours, but only when you hire more than one. One watchling may do a decent job, but as far as protecting your garden fully- don't count on it! Another way to rid your garden of Sours is to kill them with your shovel. Once the pinata bursts though it will leave behind poison candy or seeds. Make sure you smash these things before moving on.

The best way to rid your garden of a sour though is to buy that Sours Block at the store. They are expensive, but if you feel you are becoming overrun, it's a good idea to purchase the blocks. The blocks will pile up on a tower outside of your garden. When they are turned on, that Sour cannot visit the garden. When off though, they can visit.

Romance Pinatas:
 
The mating ritual for creating baby pinatas is the same as in the original game. If you have 2 of the same type of pinatas in the garden you can allow them to do the mate dance in order to create a new pinata.

For every new pinata created you will get rewarded, and you may get a title upgrade. Upgrades are good because it improves your shovel, and garden size can get larger with enough upgrades.

In order to mate 2 pinatas first make sure you have that species home in the garden. Next you can click on the pinata to see what it needs in order to mate. Some pinatas simply need to eat a certain piece of fruit, or seed, and others may need to munch on other pinatas.

Once you meet their needs though, you can not have them mate. A mini game where your pinata must make it through a maze to the other pinata located on the other side is all that is needed for a successful mate.

Once the mini game is completed, a small skit of the two pinatas romancing will take place. Don't worry, nothing naughty here. Mostly the pinatas just dance around in a strange manner together.

Once they romancing is done, a stork will deliver an egg. They egg will hatch creating a small pinata, which eventually becomes a cocoon, which eventually will turn into an adult pinata.

Controls:
 
Controls in Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise are relatively the same. The A button allows you to choose things, the control sticks allow you to move around the garden, and the D Pad allows you to quickly use items such as your watering can, and shovel. The upper L buttons allow you to scroll through your available seeds if you don't want to wait for Seedos to give you them.

Graphics:
 
The graphics in Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise are 100% the same as those in the original game. Colors are bright, vibrant, and the game simply looks stunning.

Music:
 
Music in the game is once again similar to the original games. Mostly though the music gets drawn into the backgrounds do to the noises the pinatas make.

Multi-player:
 
At any given time if you have a second controller, a friend can pick up the controller and begin playing with you in the game. You can also play online with other players, and trade items/pinatas with others. Personally I don't really dig the multi-player aspect of the game because I don't like others messing with my garden, so I never dabbled in multi-player when playing Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise.

Vision Camera:
 
My particular game came with 5 free cards that I could use in order to obtain new pinatas and objects for in game use. Holding the cards up to the vision camera will upload them into your game. It's a cool new feature, but to be quite honest I have no intentions of buying such a camera as of now.

Issues:
 
Now the original Viva Pinata came packed with quite a few issues that annoyed the hell out of players. Well sad to say it but, Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise is no exception. No less than 4 hours into game-play and I came across one issue that bugged me to no end.

Whenever I would go into a store, or check out pinata information in the encyclopedia, at times the game would freeze! Yep, an in game glitch that I was pretty disgusted with. Thankfully the auto-save in the game does not allow you to loose much saved data, still though its annoying and needed to be mentioned. My XBOX360 is an Elite, and only 2 months old, so it definitely shouldn't be an issue with my console.

The same issue that annoyed players in the original game, will come back to haunt you once again. GARDEN SIZE! NO ROOM!
 
Now in the original game when my garden became clustered I could clearly tell, but with Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise I was a little pissed off when my garden was at its full potential size, I have only 2 pinata homes in it and one employee home, and when I went to put up a fence around my entire garden to try and keep out Sour Pinatas, I was told there was not enough space! This annoyed me because there was TONSof space. Open land was really all there was. It bothered me because it really, really limits customization of your garden.

Another issue is the fact that employee workers still have a tough time doing their jobs. I hired 2 weedlings to keep my garden clear of weeds, and still I was the one who ended up having to hack them down, because they are busy skipping around doing nothing. The same goes for watchlings, waterer's, and other workers. In order for them to do something efficiently you have to direct them to the problem. I hire 2 workers of the same type for better work efficiency, and still there are problems.

Professor Pester is another huge issue that will bother you early on in the game. He comes skipping into your garden it seems whenever things are going good, or whenever you get a rare new pinata. The thing that sucks about him is that there is no stopping him. He will come in and either wreck an entire home, kill a pinata, ruin landscapes, tear down fences, and so on. Why it bothers me is that there should be some sort of way to stop him, or at least distract him and help a pinata that he is about to kill off.

I know that he is set there to add to the difficulty of the game, but some sort of weapon against him would be cool. I imagine when my shovel is fully upgraded I will be able to bong him over the head and keep him out of my garden. I hope?

Overall:
 
Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise is seriously the original game done all over again, just with some new features thrown in. It has the same feel to it, and the controls and objective all pretty much are the same.

All in all you won't be overly impressed if you played the original. I do feel though that those who didn't play the original will love the game for what it offers. It's fun collecting pinatas, it's fun building your garden, It's fun to keep your garden safe, but the game gets tiring after awhile seeing how it is so similar to the original. I feel that MORE needed to be added to this long awaited game.

Although I still like it, and still recommend it, I do wish more was done for the game. The garden size/space in particular bugs me most, and I thought in this game that issue would have been taken care of.

Recommended:
 
Yes

3.5 stars out of 5