Viva Piñata - Full Review (Xbox 360 and PC game)

'Viva Piñata' presents a tantalizingly unusual premise that you’ll either love or hate; attract a variety of Piñata creatures into your lovingly crafted garden on Piñata Island then tame, personalize and manage them all. These Piñatas come in all shapes and sizes but are all based off of real creatures though with quirky names that reflect a type of candy and a strange array of colours that may be changed, if you can figure out how. There’s no denying it, this is a very casual game for the causal gamer but despite its childish appearance it’s a charming and addictive game with great creative opportunities for those who enjoying gardening, designing and pet keeping.

Developer: Rare (Xbox 360) Climax Group (PC)
Genre: Life simulation
Release date: November 9th 2006
Platforms: Xbox 360 and PC
ESRB: E - Everyone.

Story and gameplay

There’s not a great deal of storyline though there is some attempt to explain what’s going on; you start by walking through a beautiful haven filled with flourishing flowers, trees and crops with piñatas flying overhead, prancing through the grass or drinking from streams and pools. In the centre of all this fluff however is a tiny plot of hard, cracked earth with a woman sobbing in the middle of it all. After comforting her you’re charged with using this plot of land as your own and to turning it from something that resembles the aftermath of an explosion to something more in tune with the surrounding area. You’re given a watering can that’s practically falling to pieces with rust and a shovel that looks like it’ll snap as soon as it touches the earth, armed with these two devices you’re instructed to get to work. The game is vastly open-ended with very few objectives once the tutorial is finished with and though it may appear to be a simple gardening free for all there’s a hidden structure in the way that you progress. As you begin your gardening career you’ll gradually unlock new titles, better equipment, more garden space and different seeds that allow you to garden in more complex ways.

Whilst initially you’ll attract low level piñatas that simply require you to have a certain amount of grass, dirt or perhaps a particular flower or vegetable you’ll soon catch glimpses of wild, black and white creatures as they prowl the outside border of your garden. Attracting the attention of huge eagles, magnificent lions or clumsy elephants will take time, dedication and maybe even a few sacrifices as, after all, the animal kingdom is not known for its kindness towards smaller, weaker creatures. You start out in a very restricted manner; confined to a tiny plot of dilapidated land that’s in need of some serious maintenance but once you’re removed all the junk, beaten out the cracks and grown a bit of grass you’ll be faced with an empty canvass for you to play with. You’re never thrown too far into the deep end yet you’re given just enough freedom to discover a gardening style by yourself. Do you start with patches of flowers and draw in butterflies and bumblebees or do you opt for a vegetable patch to try and allure some rabbits or mice? Either way they’re all low levelled but the way in which you advance and nurture your garden will have an impact on the creatures you’ll lure inside your newly developing patch. Piñatas will only enter your garden once you’ve met their individual ‘visitor’ requirements and, once inside they’ll develop an additional set of requirements in order for them to actually become a resident. Once you’ve finally convinced them that they should inhabit your garden they’ll move in, change into their true colours and settle down to enjoy themselves. Here, they’ll live, sleep, mate and attract other piñatas to become residents too or, if you choose, entertain people at parties should they be that lucky piñata that gets chosen. It’s, admittedly, a very strange concept but still a very entertaining one once you’ve become enthralled in the everyday drama that comes with managing a horde of cute, but ultimately wild, animals.

Although a huge part of the game consists of attracting and taming Piñatas the game is so much more than that and, if you feel like exercising your creative side, there’s huge opportunity to get inventive with your garden’s design. There’s a surprising amount of content packed into this charming game whether that’s levelling up to unlock new features or dressing up your Piñatas to increase their worth before sending them off to children’s parties. If you enjoy gardening then you’ll be delighted at the whole host of trees, crops and flowers you can nurture and at the vast difference a few drops of fertilizer can make. The variety in trees, flowers and crops is actually quite impressive and there are some lovely elements like the magnificent oak tree that, when fully grown, has a trunk that appears to be carved with the forms of many different species of Piñatas. Whilst the huge range of, not only flora and fauna but buildings to, may seem impossible to fit all into one garden due to a build limit of sorts you can have multiple gardens with the same profile. In this case, chocolate coins and your gardening level all pass over so you will still have access to everything that has been unlocked yet now with a completely empty plot of land. It makes sense to have multiple gardens as many piñatas are specialized creatures who will only live in certain environments that would be extremely difficult to integrate into an already beautified and designed garden. Large piñatas such as hippos require gardens that are mostly consisting of water, for example, so attempting to make 80% of your garden consist of lakes and rivers whilst speckled with bulrushes and water lilies will, quite naturally, naturally destroy any attempt you had at a designing a perfectly crafted flower bed and orchard.

You are not the only non-piñata resident on the island however and throughout the game you’ll be guided and helped by the local residents who offer services in shops and, if you pay for it, services in your garden such as weeding, gathering and as either watchmen or night watchmen. Whilst the first couple are pretty self-explanatory the presence of watchmen in the game is unusual as gardening and virtual pet simulation combinations tend to be of the peaceful variety, not this one. Amidst the everyday scraps and brawls that occur between piñatas that don’t get along you also have to contend with outsider aggressors such as sour piñatas, ruffians and the evil Dastardos who’s the ringleader of all of these. Sour piñatas can be made resident and turned into good variants of their sour selves but ruffians and Dastardos are evil for life. Whilst ruffians simply make a nuisance of themselves by dropping poisonous sweets for your unsuspecting piñatas to eat and throwing up land over rivers and pools you may make, Dastardos is actively violent. When your piñatas get sick, by losing a fight or eating something poisonous, Dastardos will show up and break them open with a stick, effectively killing them. Well, not exactly kill them as this is a nice place so rather than die permanently broken piñatas merely respawn as the black and white variety outside of your garden.

Whilst the standard way of keeping these antagonists away from your garden is by taming sour piñatas and using their special abilities to keep Dastardos distracted you can also buy special upgrades. The game’s in-game currency are, quite appropriately, chocolate coins which can be made by selling piñatas, building a mine and selling what you find within it or making and selling produce for profit. Chocolate coins can be put towards a huge variety of things such as garden items, fertilizer, piñata houses, special buildings, hirelings, fashion accessories for your piñatas, seeds, produce or special services like the doctor or the hunter who can capture piñatas for your garden. In order to keep track on everything that’s going on it’s useful to utilize the in-game journal which is there to not only provide backstory about the island and its residents but also to track your accomplishments and statistics such as whether you’ve achieved maximum growth for individual plants or how many piñatas you have in your garden. The journal brings to light several unofficial objectives as it lists each plant and each piñata with several checkboxes beside them all which are checked as you accomplish things such as finding each of the 3 variants for each piñata or romancing a species a certain number of times. A piñata variant occurs when you instruct your pinata to eat something and, after enough experimentation, you’ll find three different items that will change their colour into something else. Whilst this is of course simply aesthetic it’s a pleasant option to be able to discover more hidden elements within the game.

Part of what makes this game so enjoyable is not just the attention to detail and the open-ended, casual gameplay but also the charming personality of your piñatas themselves. It’s quite easy to form opinions on certain piñatas and pick out favourites as the way in which they interact with each other and the environment differs depending on the species. Syrupents, a snake type piñata, for example often start fights and can be quite stubborn to get rid of yet, if you perform special actions with them, can become entirely different creatures that are extremely useful. Many piñatas also enjoy wearing special accessories and, whilst some have the potential to enhance the piñata in some way or form, mostly it’s just to boost their happiness meter or to allow them to ‘romance’ one another. Swananas, for instance, enjoy wearing diamond collars and strutting about, honking snobbishly whilst Cinnamonkey’s are disturbingly human as they sidle about on two legs and who require a fez hat to allow them to breed. As an interesting addition you can also buy domesticated piñatas from one of the several shops as well as put down fencing to enclose them should they be something like chickens or sheep. Amongst all of this is the actual ability to send your piñatas to parties as, now and then, a crate will be given to you with the request for a certain type of piñata or just one of high worth. By packing your piñata off to a party you receive some ‘joy candy’ that makes piñatas happy in return but, what with everything else going on, this apparent ‘objective’ in the game is lost.

Graphics and audio

The artistic style of ‘Viva Piñata’ is both unique and extremely distinctive with its bold, colourful and patterned style. Whilst it may not be to everybody’s taste due to them appearing somewhat childlike it cannot be denied that, visually, ‘Viva Piñata’ is technically impressive and extremely advanced for the time it was brought out. There’s a very fine level of detail in the game that can only really be appreciate when you zoom right in as only then can you witness the growth of plants or admire the little augmentations strewn across buildings and clothing. Every blade of grass can be identified, the clouds roll by as the time ticks by in a well enforced day and night cycle and even your custom designed labels can be seen clearly on the bodies of your piñatas. Not one stone has been left unpolished and everything from the texture of the grass to the beautiful, vibrant scenery has been crafted to maintain that distinctive ‘Viva Piñata’ atmosphere. 

he music of the game is generally very soothing and not at all irritating though, for very long periods of play, it may start to grate a little. All of the Piñatas have their own individual sounds that tend to a little exaggerated such as a ‘peeping’ noise from worms or a strange, haughty honking noise from those uppity swans I mentioned earlier. The personality of the piñatas are all very well addressed in the sounds that they make but truly it’s the overall ambient noises from the gentle swishing of the wind, the hammering of the rain or the combined snuffling of your piñatas. Now and then there are some very abrasive noises such as when a sour piñata enters your garden or drops a poisoned candy but these simply serve as loud, audible warnings that something has happened and so in this sense are not particularly annoying.

Overall

Despite initial reservations ‘Viva Piñata’ is an undeniably good game with a great deal of personality and charm that’s simply hard to resist. With a very solid 30 hours or so playtime the game puts you in a position where you start caring passionately about taming all available piñatas and about making the perfect, piñata paradise. It’s an extremely casual game with some basic multiplayer support where up to four people control the same on-screen cursor and, whilst this is likely to not interest older games, is beneficial for parents and their children. Its very friendly demeanour makes it a great game for beginners with plenty of help at the beginning of the game whereas for those looking for more of a challenge I tell you this; just try and get a hold of a Dragon piñata, then tell me it’s not challenging.

The Good:

• Looks fantastic, very detailed, very vibrant
• Relaxing, casual gameplay 
• Deceptively challenging at later stages 
• Addictive and ‘collection’ orientated mentality of meeting all objectives 
• Fun for all ages 
• Unique and distinctive gameplay 
• Lovely audio and music 
• Multiple gardens a nice addition for allowing themed gardens 
• Piñatas are very charming, huge variety

The Bad:

• Co-op play limited to sharing the same cursor
• A lot less to do as you level up 
• Some autonomy happens as you employ staff making you feel a little redundant 
• Lacks any real storyline and objectives which could have given the game more structure

The Score: 8/10

Final thoughts: "This is quite possibly the best 'gardening' game I have ever played, despite there being an updated version of this game (trouble in paradise) I still find this one to be the most accessible."

Harvest moon: It’s a Wonderful Life, Special Edition - Full Review (PS2 and PS3 game)

The Harvest Moon series is a series of games that revolve around farming and relationships in some way or another.Harvest Moon: Wonderful Life, Special Edition is available on both the PlayStation 2 and on PlayStation Network as a graphical remake for the PS3. I’ll be reviewing the PS2 original but bear in mind the PS3 has slightly better, smoother graphics though they are otherwise the same game. 

You play a male character who has inherited an unused farm from his deceased father. His father’s old friend has invited you to take over the land and to raise a family here too, which you agree to. We know nothing of our character other than this so whatever ties he had to a previous life are left unmentioned; whether he’s running from a dark, desolate past or a violent crime spree there is just simply no way to know. You start out with a very basic set of equipment to help you get started and one lifestock though with great opportunity to expand. This Harvest Moon game is slow paced but incredibly addictive and a satisfying experience that will give you a fresh love of games that incorporate the simpler things in life; farming, fishing, friends and family.

Story and gameplay

The game is set in Forget-me-not Valley and the Valley consists of your farm, a neighbouring farm that doubles as a shop you’ll use a lot, a dig site where you dig for treasures, several houses where people live, a large mansion, a river, spring, swamp, beach and a few ‘special’ houses like a mad scientist’s lab and an artist’s caravan. You build your farm up using a small variety of methods which fall into the category of either ranching or actual farming; that is, crops and trees. You look after a rather large selection of crops and trees by planting, watering, fertilizing and so on and generally it takes quite a bit of attention to get your crop to its best possible state. Produce and crops all have ranks that are improved through either care of the animals; ie, hugging and brushing your cow, feeding it good stuff and keeping it out of the rain produces better quality milk or fertilizing and watering your plants which will produce a better quality of crop. The animal selection is fairly generous; a variety of cows, chickens and roosters, ducks, a goat, sheep, ducks, dog and cat. You also get a free horse to speed up travel around the valley, a much appreciated addition.

Crops are grown according to their seasons and generally need to be watered twice a day, except when it rains, and if you want to increase their rank they require fertilizer twice a day too. The time it takes for a crop to grow varies and some are fast growing though some can take an entire season. They cannot get diseased and will only die if they’re trying to grow in the wrong season or they’re not watered. Later on in the game get the ability to create ‘hybrid’ fruit and vegetables by meeting certain criteria after the first game chapter where you can then combine fruit or vegetables seeds into new, weird ones. There’s something really entertaining about seeing what a turnip combined with a strawberry would create, then turning it into a delicious meal. There’s a huge number of crop and fruit tree variants which can also be enhanced using flowers found in different seasons that grow around the valley. These enhancements can be applied to seeds to give benefits like growing in any soil, growing in any season or by raising them up a rank level without need for fertilizer.
Crops are generally there to be sold, eaten, given as gifts or using a ‘seed machine’ turned into twice as many seeds to continue the cycle. There’s also a wide variety of meals that can be made which incorporate crops, fruits and also produce made on your farm like butter, milk and cream. There are dozens of different things you can create from soups to desserts which you can then sell either on your store or to a trader who visits bi-monthly. Alternatively, you can always put them in your fridge so later on your wife and child have something to eat. The immersion of creating three course meals for your family is a fun addition and, even if essentially pointless, gives you something else to strive for.

The large array of animals is restricted to just eight pens in your main barn and you’ll likely have cows since they’re the most profitable. Cows can be bred once they reach adulthood and, if you’re buying new cows, they need to have a calf before they can give milk. You can breed them by having your own bull or by buying a ‘miracle potion’ which is basically artificial insemination. Cows can be milked twice a day and start out giving ‘B grade’ milk which is the lowest and, by looking after them and increasing their love for you, they’ll give ‘S grade’ which is worth a lot more. Milk prices also depends on the breed of cow and there’s roughly 5 different breeds, all of which can be purchased. Sheep give wool once a month and by looking after them they can give ‘clean’ or ‘golden’ wool. Chickens give eggs, unsurprisingly, which can be hatched into chicks using an incubator. There’s also extra animals like a goat and ducks and pets like the horse, dog and cat.

The gameplay is slow though, extremely slow. If anything is going to put you off this game it’s likely to be how slow everything progresses. This is not a game where you dip in for a quick blast about and go home happy. Sometimes, it feels intentional as the sheer about of work and patience required to complete this game is reminiscent of actually having to sweat and toil on a real farm. The minutes tick by very gradually and it can be so dull that many players are tempted to just sleep away the days which, ultimately, will wreck your farm. Slow gameplay aside it is actually genuinely enjoyable if you don’t mind the slow and steady approach and enjoy building up something from nothing.

The game is divided into chapters with different elements to keep things a bit more interesting as time goes on. The first chapter will include you starting your farm and finding yourself a woman to marry. There are four women who you have to get to know, woo and then marry at the end of the year. To enhance the relationship there are cutscenes with the girls which can be triggered at different times in different places. To check how much a girl likes you you can check their diary since rather than communicate using words they just draw the number of hearts which best describe their feelings. You also share the valley with a lot of residents other than the 4 bachelorettes and all of them can be befriended by giving them certain gifts, depending on what they like. There’s no actual way to tell what they like other than to use an online guide or to just keep trying and failing, a lot of this game is like that actually. In the second chapter you’ll have a toddler who can barely talk but who you can start influencing. This kid’s personality, skills and interests will vary depending on who you marry and also how you influence him or her. Your child will start out as a toddler and, as the years go by, will grow into a child, teenager and finally an adult. By the end of the game they’ll choose one career out of six, one of which is taking over your farm. Influencing your child into a career makes up a chunk of the later gameplay. This is an especially fun component of the game if you’ve always wanted to be that pushy parent who gets angry when their future-scholar toddler shows you their non-scholar related drawings. Gameplay also includes past-times that are related to money making or befriending people such as helping out at an archaeological dig, opening your own store, fishing, cooking, flower picking or some pointless mini-games like ‘milk drinking’ or ‘territory capture’.

Graphics and environments:

There’s no denying that the PS2 version has extremely muddy and unbearably bad graphics, there just isn’t. Everything is seamed, blurred and generally low quality. The villagers all have unique appearances however which makes them identifiable from just a glimpse across the valley. There are scenic areas in the game like Turtle Swamp where a turtle in a handkerchief wanders around or the Harvest Spring where an abominable snowman resides in winter, and weird fairy ‘sprites’ hide otherwise. Almost everything can be looked at and interacted with to some degree and in this version you get different outfits for every season. You’re restricted to one large area, the valley, and the border of it is kind of like a large hill with some half assed 2D trees floating around behind it. The ocean is also restricting you from exiting the other side of the valley but, considering, the valley is quite large with several different locations. It is though the sheer lack of interactive areas in the game that is rather unfortunate as most areas are fairly pointless and really just for show. Saying that, you will notice tiny little details that enhance the overall feel of the game like tiny little leaves falling from branches in the fall, an expanse of tightly knit together flowers that sway gently in the wind and the surprising details you'll find inside people's homes that reflect their business or personality.

The seasons are noticeably different and you’ll get snow in winter, scorching summers, wet autumns and mild springs and it makes a sincere difference to the way you run things; not only what you plant and harvest but also how you care for your animals. The surrounding scenery is particularly responsive to the seasons as trees turn from their summery forest green to shades of red, pink, orange and yellow in the autumn time before turning bare, cold and dead during the winter season. Someting else that this game does incredibly well is the rain; waking up in late autumn I could already hear it absolutely hammering it down outside my house and my first, panicked, thought was, the cow! The strength of the rain varies from light showers to complete downpours and when it's the latter you can barely see where you're going which, frankly, is incredibly accurate. The light levels also noticeably change depending on the time of day which is a nice addition and the sunsets and sunrises make good use of what graphical ability this game actually has. 

Music and audio:

The audio is surprisingly good with nice, hollow sounding rain when you’re inside and changeable music tracks. You can collect music discs by buying them and befriending villagers, there’s around 16 in total, and you can change the background music by putting a disc on your record player in your house. The music itself is different enough to be worth pursuing this goal of getting different records but until then you’ll probably grow sick of the same song and just turn the music player off. No characters speak in the game; it’s all done by text and the most sound you’ll get out of someone are squeaks, ‘hmm’s and laugh’s depending on what they’re saying. Every animal and action has a sound, whether that’s a plopping noise as a fish latches onto your bait or whether it’s a boinging noise as you jump over your cow pen’s fence. There’s nothing special going on in terms of audio, apart from the nice guitar playing that a couple of villagers engage in, but there’s nothing particularly wrong with the audio either. The fact that no characters actually speak is most likely intentional and, frankly, I don’t think I want to hear what some of the residents sound like so it’s probably for the best.

Playability:

Once you’re into the game you’ll likely find it very addictive and it will keep you occupied for, quite easily, longer than 40 hours playtime.  If building up something from nothing is your thing then you’ll be right at home with a harvest moon game and if you’re a perfectionist then I’m sure you’ll enjoy the challenge of making your efforts as efficient as possible. It’s admittedly a fairly cutesy game but no more than your average fantasy RPG, aside from all the chicken cuddling and cow nuzzling, and it’s not too cheesy and lovey dovey. In fact, half the characters in it are jerks until they’re friends with you. What’s unusual about this game is there’s a lot of ‘hidden mechanics’ in the way certain things work and it can be quite hard to break into as a newcomer. This is one of those games that will last with you for the years to come, through childhood to adulthood as you develop fond memories of this odd little game that keeps you entranced with its slow but thorough approach to entertainment. 

Overall – 8/10