Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise

"No gangsters?"

If there is one developer that has really made a name for itself, it's Rare. They started out strong with the legendary Donkey Kong Country platformers, and also dealt with their various ports, and then continued into the fifth generation with some absolute gaming classics like Conker's Bad Fur Day and GoldenEye 007. Rare has created franchises, with Banjo-Kazooie and Diddy Kong Racing, and while they have had some bumps in the road, they have had a chance to redeem themselves in this generation. Perfect Dark Zero is still my favorite first-person shooter for the Xbox 360, plus they have created an awesome Zelda-esque game, Kameo: Elements of Power. However, one of their more quirky and original titles, Viva Pinata, had yet to see a true sequel. Sure, there was that mini-game compilation that Rare had nothing to do with, as well as the TV show, but we were all waiting for Rare to deliver a sequel to their garden game, which, as the title suggests, revolves around raising pinatas. Finally, we have Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise, and while it's not a bad game in the least bit, it fails to outdo its predecessor by adding a few flaws in some key areas that could have propelled it to the heights of Rare's other games.

Those familiar with Viva Pinata should feel right at home with this installment, as the gameplay is largely the same. You are still recruiting pinatas to your garden by meeting certain requirements, and yes, you can still make the pinatas have sex by buying them homes to live in. A lot of the pinatas from the previous game return, but there are some new pinatas thrown into the mix that are actually a lot cooler than any pinatas you could previously own, like a penguin and a gorilla for instance.

Gardening and all of your work is done by a cursor on the screen. You are free to plant flowers and throw grass seed around everywhere, plus you can buy little accessories for your garden and your pinatas. As you attract new pinatas and complete other milestones through the game, you will gain experience points that increase the size of your garden, as well as opens more shopping opportunities.

Overall, this is the same Viva Pinata that we all know and love. They are definitely some minor improvements. For example, you can now travel outside of your garden to check on pinatas that are approaching to prepare for them to become residents. This definitely makes the game more user-friendly, but there are still other issues to address with the game's added features.

For one, the co-op mode was drastically disappointing. Instead of taking the split-screen route, which could have easily been accomplished, the second player sort of works in the garden as a guest. The second-player is also limited in what they can do throughout the game, plus it's just frustrating to try to complete tasks together since all of the action is occurring on the same screen. Do I usually have a problem with co-op on the same screen? No, with Fable II it worked brilliantly, but with games like Viva Pinata or any life simulation game for that matter, the better route is usually split-screen, and it's a shame Rare didn't pick this up before sending the game out. Four-player online co-op is also available, but it's just rather pointless in my honest opinion, and you'll probably only feel like playing with two people at a time anyway.

Another new feature is the ability to travel to different lands besides just your garden. You can now head to a desert region and an Antarctic region. What's the purpose of this? Well, in these new regions are new pinatas for you to capture and return to your garden to give your garden a little more diversity. However, these pinatas can be captured in the same way as regular pinatas.

You have to set traps in order to get these bad boys. Firstly, you have to buy the trap, and then you have to read the pinata's page in the encyclopedia to figure out what kind of food they want. If you have that kind of food, you can set it on the trap to lure the pinata to the trap. Once they are on the trap, you simply hit the B button back in order to capture the little critter to be sent back to your garden.

The only problem with this is that funds are pretty annoying to come by and easy to lose in this title as the interface just isn't as nice as before. I don't know what the problem was, but I found my funds drained quite often through the game, forcing me to sell my beloved pinatas a little more often than I should have been.

This user-interface problem resurfaces with another one of the game's additions, the new challenges that are an attempt to make the game more interactive. You can now raise pinatas specifically and build their “Candiocity” to make them the most suitable, and then send them off to a party somewhere around the world. They will return, worth more money, and then you can complete new challenges. Still, while this was a nice attempt, it does little to break the monotony that inevitably settles in, like with the previous game, and you will still find yourself waiting around for something to happen. There just needs to be more interactivity for the Viva Pinata franchise to truly excel.

A complaint I had with the previous game was that the romance mini-game for every animal was more or less the same thing, and it really stopped being entertaining after a short while. Rare has changed the mini-game this time around. Your goal is to collect hearts and avoid the bad guys, and when you have enough hearts, your lover will call for you. If you make it to your lover, you complete the mini-game. While the design of the actual mini-game has a little more variety between animals, it is still generally the same mini-game. Hopefully with the next installment, Rare makes these mini-games a little more interesting and entertaining by making them unique for each animal. Actually, Viva Pinata: Party Animals had the right idea with the mini-games, and I think a great idea would be to combine the addictive simulation gameplay of the main Viva Pinata game series with the mini-games of Party Animals as an extra game mode. It makes sense, doesn't it?

The new addition that actually works out nice and is pretty damn fun is the “Just for Fun” game mode. This mode gives you the highest amount of cash available, not to mention pretty much every tool and privilege unlocked. Right when you start this mode up, you should also notice statues of Banjo and Kazooie and Mumbo Jumbo from the Banjo-Kazooie games. The little extra touch of their cameos really makes this mode just that much more special.

Since the TV show gave the series a little more of a personality, Trouble in Paradise tries harder to give the game an actual plot, building off the success of the television show. Pester, that weird tiki-like guy who is red, has tried to steal the data from the pinata database in order to hunt each one down and become their king, but his minion accidentally deletes the files. It is up to you to restore the files while dealing with Pester's trickery and attempts to thwart your progress. With the plot built off of the TV show, Rare doesn't have a chance to create their charming universes like those in Banjo-Kazooie, so there really isn't much to sink your teeth into, not to mention the plot is pretty much just tacked on to give you an excuse to run your garden.

Up close, Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise has graphics that just look a little too simple nowadays. In the original, the level of detail on the pinatas was astounding, but we've already seen that trick, and Rare definitely hasn't kicked graphics up a significant notch. The new environments add weather effects that are pretty cool, but nothing revolutionary. Does this mean that Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise is an ugly game by today's standards? Absolutely not. On the contrary, Trouble in Paradise is easily one of the best looking video games ever made. Look up at the giant mountains surrounding you and you will seriously witness a thing of beauty. The level of detail on these mountains, or the giant flame statue, or pretty much everything that you aren't looking too close at, is insanely gorgeous. However, the textures up close are pretty shoddy and disappointing, not to mention there are some pop-up issues. Cut-scenes look okay, but they sometimes move at a sluggish rate, and this game is just generally buggier than the original, so it definitely should have spent a little more time in the oven.

Instead of classic Rare tunes that didn't really matter, we are giving a more original soundtrack, though it still doesn't do much. The audio quality in Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise is purely average. You're not going to remember it for the rest of your life, but it won't make you want to turn the TV off either. It's really just there, and that's too bad since we know Rare can definitely produce some awesome gaming soundtracks. The noises the pinatas make sounded like they were recycled from games that were on the original PlayStation or something, which was disappointing also.

If you played the original to death, chances are that you aren't going to spend as much time with Trouble in Paradise. The new additions have too many problems to really add all that much to the gameplay, and while you may enjoy breeding and selling your pinatas, this can only entertain for a certain amount of time. As bad as the co-op is, it may give the game a few more hours, plus you'll still feel like playing the game for at least ten hours—that's just how addicting the formula is. Some of the achievements are pretty smart, like encouraging the player to play x number of hours in offline co-op and x number of hours in online co-op, but beyond that the achievements are very dry and there are too many secret achievements for this to really figure nicely enough into the replayability.

Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise isn't a bad game. There are definitely some really nice graphics here, the soundtrack is okay, there is actually an attempt at a plot, the same addictive gameplay of the original game is present, plus the “Just for Fun” mode should be pretty interesting. There are problems though. The co-op definitely should have been split-screen and the plot should have been a little more original. The series needs a graphical update for the pinatas, plus the poor framerate during cut-scenes was just sad. The user-interface needs an overhaul to be more user-friendly, and the game needs to give players more things to do and a little more variety in what you can do would be great. Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise is just as good as the game that came before it, but this series really needs to start moving ahead with the next installment.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 02/17/09

Game Release: Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise (US, 09/02/08)