Viva Pinata: Trouble In Paradise Review

Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise is the new release into the Viva Pinata universe. You will once again need to cultivate the land growing rare and common plant life, attract and now also capture pinatas to add to your garden, compete in competitions, and completely quests.

Viva Pinata is a colorful and fun game whose graphics don't neccesarily push the envelop but look pleasing to the every day person. Each Pinata is unique in design, and this time around some of them can be outright humungous. The characters that help you along the way are back with a couple of additions, and once again their models look awesome, their appearance will even give you a hint as to what they can do for you.

The controls are the best part to this game, its very simple but it allows you to do so much. If you're not one that completely graps hot keys you can always get to whatever you need (shovel, watering can, or seeds) with one additional key press. The one tricky thing for non-gamers is changing the view and zooming in and out, but these, once learned, aren't too much to ask for.

The music is very light and smooth for the game, there are times where the music changes a bit during the night and its hard to tell if there is something wrong or not, but other than that it fits the game. The different sounds the pinatas make can also confuse the beginner gardener, but after a while that seems to blend into the surroundings.

This game has challenge in it, and can also be a fun game to play to just clear the mind, I recommend this to almost anyone who is into simulations, and even to some that are puzzle gamers. With the tutorial more structured towards showing you the challenges that can be taken on, how to mate two pinatas, how to successfully grow a garden, and finally an overview of all the controls, I think that this game has improved on itself. I know that I had voiced some concern about the dumbing down that might be coming but its not really dumbing down, its more of a simplifying things for the user so that they can get more out of the game. Also this game totes multiplayer in a couple of different arenas, my personal favorite is just hopping into the garden and helping my soon to be wife in the garden (though how to do so is not made clear whatsoever by the manual or the tutorial, once you're through the tutorial the second player can just hit start, but be careful the camera will do some wierd things if you and your partner are trying to do two different things). I'm happy to see that this franchise has continued, and even though I'm still wary to even try the camera thing I have to give this game an 8.9 out of 10.

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