Viva Pinata: Pocket Paradise
Score: 88% ESRB: Everyone Publisher: THQ Developer: Rare Media: Cartridge/1 Players: 1 - 2 Genre: Simulation
Graphics & Sound: Viva Piñata originally came out for the 360 and the PC back in November of 2006. Since then, it has become a widely popular game, so much so that it has been ported to the DS as Viva Piñata: Pocket Paradise. It's not an exact port, though. There are some changes to make it more workable on the handheld system. So now, you can take your piñatas with you everywhere you go! Since I haven't played the 360 or PC version, I can't tell you much other than what I've read about the original. Graphically, Pocket Paradise is quite pretty. You would think that it would be hard to keep track of the entire garden on a little screen, but they did a wonderful job of designing it so that you can see everything and find everything quite well. When you reach major moments in your piñata-raising career, you'll get cut scenes to explain new things. These scenes are the only time that you get to hear the piñatas talk. They're really cute and I enjoyed watching them all. You can skip them if you want to, though. The choice of music is very pleasing too. For most of the time, the music is nice and peaceful and just the sort of thing you want to raise your sweet little piñatas in. You can tell when something bad is coming, however. The music gets really dark and creepy to warn you in advance.
Gameplay: In Viva Piñata: Pocket Paradise, you are in charge of a garden to raise your adorable little piñatas in. You'll start out with a small patch to learn on. The game is very good about telling you what to do to attract more piñatas and how to keep them there. The very first thing you'll attract is a cute little worm-like thing called Whirlm. They're really easy to attract and breed, you just have to have a certain amount of dirt/grass. See, the patch of land that you're given starts out as all rocky, and no one would want to live in a garden like that. First thing you have to do is use a shovel to break up the rocks into dirt. After you've got the dirt ready, you'll need to plant some grass. That's just the basic stuff, though. You'll also need to buy seeds of various types to plant. The seeds will take a little more care, so you'll have to make sure they stay watered. Different plants will attract different piñatas to your garden. Once you see a piñata, even if it isn't a resident, you can tap on it and sometimes find out information about it. If it is a known piñata, you'll be able to see what you'll need to do to convince it to become a permanent resident. Once you've already had that type as a resident, if you don't want to wait to attract them again, you can send the hunter to capture one for you. That will cost you a certain amount of money, however. To make money, you sell things from your garden. You can sell practically anything, including the flowers, fruits, and piñatas. The piñatas are worth the most money. The harder they are to attract and breed, the more money they will sell for. You will definitely need to be selling things because it's not cheap to run a garden. You have to pay for all the seeds that you buy and houses for the piñatas. Every once in a while when you've done a good job, the party organizers at Piñata Central will ask you for some piñatas to send to a party. Don't worry, though; they will come back from this party unharmed. They'll also come back with gifts, so you want to send them if you can. If you're just one or even two short, I recommend sending the hunter out for the extras that you need to satisfy Piñata Central.
Difficulty: I found Viva Piñata: Pocket Paradise to be relatively easy to play. The game is very good about telling you what you need to do to get new piñatas. If you can't figure it out, then just start planting various seeds and usually you'll get what you need. It might seem like a lot of work to keep all of those watered, and it is, at first. After you get past a certain point in the game, though, you can hire a helper to water for you. They make sure that everything stays watered during the day. They do go home to sleep at night, but they'll be back in the morning. Usually nothing will die in that amount of time. The one thing that I found difficult was the fact that you do not have room for a house for each type of piñata that you have, at least I didn't. So you'll have to sell off one to make room for another. I like things neat and orderly and would have loved to be able to just set everything once and not have to move it around. But that's pretty much impossible given the way that the garden grows equally on all sides. The other thing I found difficult was keeping certain types of piñatas apart. One of them kept eating the other, and I never could get the fences set up right without selling off things that I didn't want to get rid of. That could just have been from my poor organization, though.
Game Mechanics: Most things in Viva Piñata: Pocket Paradise are done by using the touch screen. You touch the various icons to pick up your tools like the shovel and the watering can. When using the shovel to break up the rocks, you can simply hold the stylus down and move it to the area you want to hit. You don't have to tap the screen continually. Quite often you're going to want to tell your piñata what to do. First, if they're in the house, you can use the shovel to tap the top of the house and they'll come out. Then, tap the piñata and drag the stylus to wherever you want them to go. Sometimes you'll want to attack other piñatas, sometimes you'll want them to eat something, and sometimes you just want them out of your way. The bigger your garden gets, the harder it is to find what you want by just scrolling around. You can tap the icon in the top left corner to get the overview. This is really helpful because it shows you where all of your residents are and where any visitors and unknowns are. Your residents will show up as a colored icon with their picture. If you tap on the resident, you can see its status. The visitors and unknowns will show up as a grey paw print. You can tap on it to see if you know any information about it. Pocket Paradise has 3 game save slots, which is really nice since so many DS games in particular don't let you have more than one game save. It will autosave for you at the end of each day if you want it to. You can decline the save. At any time, you can press the (Start) button to bring up the Save option. I have really enjoyed Viva Piñata: Pocket Paradise. It is shocking how quickly I was addicted to such a simple game. If you're into any kind of simulator or Sims games, you should go get Pocket Paradise today.
-Cyn, GameVortex Communications AKA Sara Earl
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