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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Viva Pinata Party Animals - Not quite as good as Mario Party, January 9, 2009
Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars
I originally purchased this game because my fiancee loves Mario Party for the N64, and I wanted to get a game for our 360 that she would enjoy as much. After searching around for a little while, I found Viva Pinata Party Animals. I read several reviews of people comparing it to Mario Party, so I purchased it from Amazon.
After playing, I can say that the game is a nice attempt to recreate a Mario Party-like game, and while fun, it ultimately isn't as good.
For starters, the way the entire game is set up is that you do a race followed by 1-3 mini-game challenges. 3 is the highest number of mini-games you can do per race, so if you want to have a lengthy game, you're going to be doing 5-7 races just to get enough mini-games to be fun. I would have preferred the ability to play more games per race, or possibly even just make the races a mini-game themselves.
Which brings me to the races: they're fun, but pretty much pointless and easy for one player to dominate. It seems that no matter who I'm playing with, I win every single race. And yes, perhaps I'm better at it than everyone else because I'm a fairly seasoned gamer, but I think a game like this should be about equal for everyone, regardless of gaming experience. That's what makes party games fun - no one wins all the time.
One thing that I like about Mario Party that's missing from Party Animals is the game board itself. The way Party Animals is played is that you do a race followed by 1-3 mini-games, and the characters get different amounts of candy for getting 1st-4th place, and the person at the end of the game that has the most candy wins, etc. You miss the nice luck/random chance element that comes with rolling the dice and being subject to wherever you land. In that sense, Party Animals plays less like a board game with some mini-games thrown in and more like a bunch of mini-games back to back.
For example, in Mario Party, you can land on Bowser and he might either take away a star or all your coins, which can move you from first to last place. In Party Animals, once you have your candy, it can't be taken away. Once someone pulls ahead of the pack, it's pretty hard to catch them.
Speaking of the mini-games, let's talk about those now. There is a nice variety, although several of them are very similar. You have some shooting games, where you have a reticule and you aim to shoot moving targets, some games where you have to press buttons in rapid succession to match a pattern you just watched, some games that involve hitting pinata stars with bats to burst them open, games that are simply about reflexes, counting games, games where you have to fight everyone else off to collect the most candy, and several other types. Each type of game has 2-4 varieties, not all of which are very different.
Overall, I'd say that Viva Pinata Party Animals is a great start for party games on the 360, but we need to refine this formula and produce more games that are a little bit closer to the Mario Party style. Not that I simply want a Mario Party for 360 - I want something new and different. However, I think Mario Party has set a good bar for game makers to reach for when making party games.
Don't let my negative statements about this game make you think that it's not fun to play, as it still is. Notice that I did still give it 4 stars. If you enjoy party games, this is definitely worth checking out.
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