Name 5 trademark Xbox 360 games of the top of your head! Gears of War, Halo 3, Forza 2, erm... Dead Rising... *cough*. Well? Still missing a game. Yes, I know it’s on the tip of your tongue but you are afraid to say it. No? Ok, then I’ll say it for you: Viva Piñata! One of the most unique looking games released in the last 10 years, this jewel from Rare didn’t receive the amount of attention it deserved on the 360. So, after over a year the game is trying its luck with a different crowd, one that is known for being more open towards original ideas. Can Viva Piñata make it on the PC?

The land of candy

Children like beating piñatas. Heck, even adults don’t mind having a swing if there is enough alcohol in their bloodstream. There is just something joyous about breaking a cute colorful donkey into parts and have candy drop out. But believe me, after playing Viva Piñata you’ll probably never even consider hurting a piñata again. If for no other reason than simply because according to this game these things aren’t made, but born. Yes, that’s right. All of the piñatas are actually fully homegrown, alive and kicking, cross my heart, hope to die if I hurt one, creatures.

You see, just like in a typical fairytale you are told about the existence of a secret island where the piñatas come from. On this tropical/candy paradise piece of land experienced gardeners tend to the land, making sure that the piñatas have everything they want and that they aren’t harmed. If both conditions are met and they have a house to their name the piñatas then happily reproduce. Before you get any dirty ideas about candy stuffed duck on duck action know that the deed actually encompasses a very trendy dance and lots of purple hearts flying about the place.

But I regress. We were talking about the world of piñatas. The island is obviously as colorful as the piñatas themselves, but its bright colors are not what first catches the eye. No, that honor is reserved for this huge cannon located in the middle of the island. For those of you who haven’t played the game yet on the Xbox360 (which I bet there is a pretty high number amongst you PC only folk) you might be getting your hopes up with warfare ideas circling around your head. I’m sorry to disappoint, but that is not what the cannon is used for. On the contrary, the cannon serves as the highlight of a piñata’s life – being delivered to a party as the main attraction. Is it just me or is the whole idea of growing up and enjoying life only to be fired away by a giant cannon so you can be smacked to pieces kind of grotesque? Regardless, you don’t have to concern yourself with this little detail most of the game anyway.

Preparing the package

But story isn’t really important with games like this. I could have said the game is a Pokémon clone for all it matters. Actually, the game is sort of a Pokémon clone, minus all the hunting and fighting. Instead of you going out and hunting the piñatas you play it smart and make the little buggers come to you. To achieve this all you need to do is make you (at first) small lot of land interesting enough for them.

As you start out the measly square of land they give you is filled with debris, trash and most importantly hard ground. The piñatas might be colorful and cheerful most of the time, but even they are not high enough to live in a place like that. In fact, the only thing capable of sticking around is the crying assistant of the previous lot owner. It takes only a few moments in your company for her to relax and entrust you with bringing the garden back to its former glory (my oh my, wish I was this charming in real life). And since no gardener can do any real work without his trusty shovel you are immediately given one. Going by its looks the thing probably survived WW2 and the couple of nights with a mad necrophile in the middle of a graveyard, but since the lovely assistant assures you the thing can’t break there is not much you can do but sink your teeth into the task of fixing the garden up.

First on the to-do list are the hard soil and all the trash littering the place. Both are easily dealt with by using pounding them into oblivion with the shovel. When you are done you’ll have a nice square lot of mud in front of you. Lovely, isn’t it? Well, according to one of the piñatas which immediately comes to check out the thing, things could look better. If you had to guess the type of animal this piñata is, it wouldn’t take you long to figure out that worms are its closest siblings. I’m not into gardening, but I think that a patch of mud isn’t exactly what most gardeners aim for. Your assistant seems to agree on that, so you are immediately given a bag of grass seeds. You can use them to cover your land with grass within minutes. Obviously your wormy friends won’t be too happy with the affairs, but as long as you leave them a small patch of mud they won’t complain.

With the grass in place some other piñatas will come to visit your garden. You can probably see a pattern emerging here? Yes, with every major step in making your garden better, more piñata kinds come to check it out. But, as the diversity of your garden visitors increases, so does the work you have to put into making them stay. You see, every piñata that visits your garden first needs to be convinced that the place is actually suitable for its needs. Most of the “lower end” piñatas don’t have a long list of needs – as an example one of the bird piñatas that you attract early on wants a bird house (built by you – will explain in just a moment) and some food. The problem is that its main dish (and side dish and appetizer and probably desert as well) are those wormy piñatas that are by now probably residents of your garden. It’s your call if you’ll let the bird eat the worm, but considering the little squirmers  breed like mad due to almost no needs that shouldn’t be too much of a problem. “Higher end” piñatas aren’t as easily satisfied however. They’ll require all kinds of treats, from mundane like flowers (which you need to plant seeds for) or vegetables to more problematic stuff like grabbing a bite or two of the nearest deer-like piñata. And even when you fulfill all of their needs and they finally decide to stick around you still won’t be done with them.

The catch (no pun intended) is that you don’t want to catch the piñatas, but breed them. So, while you’ll have to put a lot of work into attracting the first two specimens of each kind and making them stay, it will take considerably longer to make them breed. Some of their added requirements are easily met – building a species specific house they can reside and breed in will be the least of your problems. Much like the needs that had to be fulfilled to get the animals to stay, the happiness needs required for the little fellas to fall in love tend to require considerable planning (it’s like all the piñatas are female or something!). Once you finally do manage to get the happy couple to mate it’s time to play a mini-game. Your two protégés will be put into a little maze, and you’ll have to guide one of them (presumably the male of course) through the thing without touching the walls all the way to their partner. Sounds simple and it actually is. But (you didn’t think it was that easy, did you?) you’ll have to do this every single time you want your creatures to breed. It doesn’t take long and it is hardly challenging, but having to do it over and over again every few minutes gets old really really fast.

So with all the inbreeding (my Worm °n2 and Worm °n3 didn’t mind when their son/daughter happily humped Worm °n1 who was the parent of °n3 and partner of °n2), vegetable planting and piñata house building even the best gardeners need help. This comes in the form of various shops that sell goods and services for a reasonable price (or not). So, while the island is pretty wild and uninhabited for the greater part, there is a settlement somewhere nearby your garden. The inhabitants are all smiling, cheerful folk that are just waiting to help you. Well, I’m guessing that they are smiling since they all wear these ridiculous masks and act like complete goofs (put these guys into a dark alley and they can be the stuff of nightmares, I tell you!). You gradually gain access to the various shops so that the game doesn’t overwhelm you. At first the only assistance you will get is the local builder which builds the piñata houses at your request (after charging you for it of course). Later on you can buy and sell various things (vegetables, items, candy, toys, etc.) as well as employ various helpers to take care of the more mundane tasks in your garden (such as watering the plants). You can also order the local hunter to hunt for a specific piñata, so that you can find a mate for that lonely bunny piñata that has been alone in your garden for ages. You can also call for the local doctor’s help should one of your piñatas get ill. At first this isn’t so much of a problem, but soon angry (sour) piñatas start appearing and one of them can’t wait to smash the sick piñatas to bits.

Controlling the mayhem

If you haven’t figured out by now that Viva Piñata is some sort of strategy game you are either not reading the review right or haven’t played a game of the genre yet. For those of you that figured this out though, you can probably imagine why playing the game on the PC should in theory be better that on the Xbox360. Yes, the mouse/keyboard combo is still unrivaled when it comes to strategy titles. Unfortunately though, Viva Pinata doesn’t really excel at being user friendly. Sure, most of the stuff is still pretty easy to pull off – camera controls rarely come between you and your enjoyment of the game. But other than that, the Xbox360 controller is simply better suited for this game (being a Games for Windows title the game fully supports it of course). Just doing common stuff like picking up items or directing piñatas takes up an unnecessary amount of clicks. The cup goes to using 4 buttons though. On the 360 this was easily achieved with the 4 face buttons, but you can to move your mouse to the upper right corner and click on the desired action and then move it all the way back to where it was before you can do what you want. So, one button click on the 360 and mouse move, click, mouse move on the PC – you tell me which is more intuitive and takes less time.

At least the rest of the conversion fares better. In fact, the conversion is pretty much flawless when it comes to the technicalities. The graphics still look great, which is mainly due to the very interesting way the game renders fur and grass. You have to see the thing in action for yourself to truly appreciate it, but I guess the screenshots do a fair enough job of carrying the general impression across. The animation is as expected from a Rare game pretty much flawless, but not due to the intricacy of it (of which there isn’t any really), but more due to the cute and funny way everything in the game moves.

And unlike most Xbox360 to PC ports that require systems from the year 2010 the game runs surprisingly well even on middle range computers. The video options also have a surprising amount of sliders, so with some tweaking the game ranges from OK looking to absolutely stunning. Yes, the game might be over a year old, but when you play it at 1920x1200 with full details Viva Piñata looks more like a Pixar movie than a game.

What about the sound? Well, I’ve yet to see a conversion that botched the sound aspect of a game (*knocks on wood*), so Viva Piñata normally sounds just as childish as it did before. From the menu music to the character voices – everything sounds like it came of straight off a Nickelodeon cartoon. I grew tired of the cheery music after a while, but I guess that’s just me and my love for heavy metal riffs and guitar solos.

Another important aspect of Viva Piñata for the PC is the Live! implementation.  If you have a gold Live! account you can access portions of the game that are otherwise reserved for Xbox360 users (in game messaging, piñata trading, etc.). The features are hardly worth shelling over 50 bucks annually for, but its nice to know that he option is there. Without a gold subscription you can still use many of the Live! features, but you have to register (or login) to access them. In fact, unless you create a dud account or use your regular one, the game doesn’t let you save your progress (I’m all for Live! integration, but please leave me the choice to stay away from it).

Conclusion

Yes, there is nothing manly about playing Viva Piñata. And no, playing it in front of your girlfriend won’t make you seem sensitive and caring. It will probably make her throw you away from the PC and take your place however. Then, weeks later when she will finally have that final elusive piñata happily reproducing she’ll thank you for your help during the entire length of the game. For as cute and child friendly as the game looks at first, there is a lot of depth to its piñata ecosystem. Having more than 10 types of piñata living side by side isn’t as simple as it sounds and for all their fuzziness the cardboard animals can be quite fierce when it comes to food gathering. So even if you are a hardcore gamer that skipped this game on the 360 due to its looks, please give it a try. I’m sure you won’t regret it.