It may be the apex of insanity to sit in front of the moron box, controller in hand, guiding the actions of virtual party favors for hours. Sad piñatas in a would-be garden paradise need candy to bolster—no lie—their “candiosity.” Horny piñatas need to be guided to one another to do a “romance dance” and spawn. Plants need tending, their fallen flowers need collection and removal lest they clutter up the garden. Stinky piles of red doots (not feces, but rather sour candies) want smashing, lest they poison the residents. Sick piñatas require medical treatment. The rather surly and destructive Professor Pester demands to be countered.
Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise should come with a water cooler. In many ways, it’s a job.
Paradise is also a simulation masquerading as a cheery children’s game with the potential to greedily consume hours or perhaps days of a human life. Its addictive charm cannot be denied; managing the actions of papier-mâché animals in a bucolic (or frenzied) garden can become like electronic crack, minus the nasty and unfortunate heart explosions.
A sequel to Viva Piñata, Paradise does not muck with the formula too much. Players are tasked with creating a safe haven for all sorts of virtual insects, birds and mammals. They’re given tools to shape the garden and then largely left to their own devices. It’s this freedom that’s ultimately liberating and alienating: The goal of the game is to attract more piñatas and buy more stuff to attract more piñatas to ensure the snake eats its own tail.
Wonderful discoveries await: A mine reveals a spectacular and mysterious one-of-a-kind piñata egg. A rather unremarkable Taffly piñata can be exposed to flame and turned into a new kind of creature. A gem tree seed, planted, watered and properly fertilized, will produce strange fruit. Feeding odd foods to piñatas can alter their coloring and goofy clothes can modify their behaviors. Paradise offers these goodies at every turn, demanding that players try everything in order to see what happens.
Caveat emptor, though: The game is dense and often unforgiving. Players are given little in the way of guidance or even hints as to what function many of the items in the game perform. Beloved piñatas can be sickened, smashed or eaten. It also puts an arbitrary limit on the amount of stuff the garden can hold, even if seemingly huge chunks of the space are empty. Constant juggling will be required to make room for plants, trees and creatures, which severely dents the idea of the player as god of the garden. At times, in fact, players will seem less like God and more like a bean counter, trying desperately to determine how many poppies must be removed to, say, make room for the statue of videogame heroes Banjo and Kazooie.
Additions to the sequel include two new environments from which piñatas may be captured with traps and brought back to the player’s garden. Here, the game now allows access to arctic- and desert-inclined beasties, provided the player can stomach the idea that while he’s away, chaos may ensue in paradise. The game also makes use of Xbox Live for multiplayer action and the Xbox Live Vision camera to scan special cards that can alter a garden.
And, yes, developer Rare has conceded it made the least friendly kids’ game ever with the original Piñata. Now, with Paradise, the game allows for a murder-free experience with the separate, unequal, but certainly less punishing just-for-fun mode. Now, the insanity really is for everyone, even the little ones.
score Hit out of ten
verdict “Madame, I had a nice, clean place to stay. I left it to come here.” — E.K. Hornbeck in Jerome Lawrence and Robert Lee’s Inherit the Wind.
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