There are only a handful of games that really achieve great critical acclaim and still fail to fly off shelves. The original Viva Pinata was primed as a kid-friendly pokemon-esque garden manager. Instead the general hardcore nature it aspired too caused the game to achieve the status of a cult classic instead of a mainstream hit. Despite the fact that the original didn’t perform well at retail and the fact that it basically failed at reaching it’s original demographic, it’s still getting a redux. It’s just a shame that, that’s all it is.
Anyone who even remotely enjoyed the original should stop reading and just buy Trouble In Paradise. The basic premise is exactly the same and although the game’s focus away from simply ‘romancing’ pinatas might have changed, the game is largely the same. You still have to lure pinata’s to your garden and you still have to breed them to level up and eventually acquire more. VP1 did a great job of constantly changing the players aims and Trouble In Paradise does an even better job by a including few tweaks to it’s challenge system. It has to be noted that the original was fairly linear in terms of objectives as all you had to do was level up by romancing pinatas. Meanwhile Trouble In Paradise seems a bit more free-form and at some points lacking in direction.
To say that TIP is exactly the same would be cutting it short. The new pinatas help out to no end but any magic of finding the first few is void because you start off by acquiring them in tutorials. Simply it’s the names they have been given that help cement the genius behind the game. Names like Flapyak and Polollybear are always good for a chuckle. The only thing that puts a downer on the new pinatas is that the old ones still have the same models. This results in the new ones looking noticeably better than the old ones.
Meanwhile you’ll notice the games fairly large addition of the Pinartic and the Dessert Desert. These are new areas out side of your garden and although you can’t build or manage in these areas you might be spending a bit of time in them. Your objective in these abandoned lots is to trap and capture wild pinata. You can then bring these back to your garden and eventually meet their requirements so they hang around in your garden. This is interesting at first because it breaks up the constant lure to your garden, feed them stuff, then they move in routine. Eventually though it comes down to being way too laborious and repetitive for it’s own good. Capturing stuff never feels satisfying as your not really involved except for scaring away pinatas you don’t want. It doesn’t help that the higher level Pinatas are visible but they require bait you don’t havn’t unlocked.
The games other notable addition is the Pinata Vision and these are cards you can scan in for beneficial gain. They normally come in the form of Pinatas and this probably helps out too much. Rare have done a good job in putting a level cap on certain Pinatas but there’s nothing to stop you from just scanning in every pinata you have ever wanted. The avoidance of basically breaking the game was nearly dodged but you can still just acquire any critter in the game with ease. Pinata Vision is quite a cool concept because scanning in cards to get things on screen will appeal to kids. But the fact that they aren’t selling them means that any pinata in the game can be scanned in from online and this is essentially cheating. Although cool in concept, in practise Pinata Vision breaks the game and is something to avoid and luckily you can do that easily.
Rare have started, but not finished, on improving the games interface. The original was bogged down with loading screens, animations and weird menu options that made it feel outdated. To the developers credit they have improved a majority of the problems. Finding Pinatas is now quicker thanks to the bumper navigation and a lot of the menu animations have been cleaned up to no end. Unfortunately some still remain and now they stand out more than ever.
They’ve also included a sandbox mode called Just For Fun. This allows you to play around with the world without the shackles of money and levelling up. This seems to fill the void for a younger audience to enjoy the game. The original got way too micro management and way too complex for the older demographic to manage so it begs the question how could the target audience ever enjoy the game? Well Rare have answered that question with the Just For Fun mode.
Trouble In Paradise gives the impression that it’s something totally new when in actuallity it isn’t. The basic premise is the same and although it appears to similar to the original and not really ground breaking it’s actually quite refreshing to see a cult game keep it’s charm without trying to appeal to everyone. The new pinata’s and areas help despite their shortcomings but most importantly Viva Pinata is still the same quirky game you played last year
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