Customer Reviews

Viva Piñata

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

The most oft-repeated phrase in any review for "Viva Pinata" is that it's "not just for kids." This is not without good reason. While the packaging and overall feel of the game is as bright and shiny as a candied marble and is specifically designed to draw kids in, the gameply is consistently entertaining and is challenging enough to daunt any experienced adult gamer...

I'd even go so far as to say that this is one of the most original and interesting games to come along in years. It's rare that I become so engrossed in what's going on in a given game that hours pass, seemingly, with speed of a blink of an eye- but such has been the case, since I installed Viva Pinata.

Now- a word of caution: I'm running the game on a dual 3.1 GHZ system with a Radeon 512 MB 3d accellerator, and the game automatically put my graphic preferences at the lowest level, when I started it up. I manually changed things to medium, which resulted in a very pleasing improvement in graphics. However, my system now routinely ratchets up to overdrive, during play. One can only assume that you need a pretty hot system to view the game in its full glory. That having been said, the game plays smoothly as silk, and lacks the lags during autosave that have been a bane to Xbox gamers.

In closing, I heartily reccommend VP. To those gamers who reject this game because of the "cute factor," I can only say:

It must suck to be you...

I didn't imagine that what my friends were labeling "that cool pinata game" was actually an engrossing habitat simulation. You can garden, landscape, breed animals -- er..pinatas. And they're all named after sweets! There is nothing more rewarding than attracting that long sought after animal to your garden.

The game is so lighthearted and dreamlike. Even death is given light treatment -- the creatures don't "die", but are busted, leaving their candy "essence" behind. Every creature has a unique house. They're all so creatively constructed that you'll find yourself buying every building just to see what they look like. What's even more fun is trying to figure out some of the more obscure food references. "Swanana" shouldn't leave you wondering for too long. ^_-

I'd recommend this game to any one of any age.

Before you buy this game, you should know there is a huge bug that has yet to be patched. Occasionally, autosave will corrupt your save file! There will be no warning about this and God forbid the power go out while you're playing the game. To make matters worse, people have been unable to backup save files due to the way the saves are structured (ie attached to user profiles).

That being said, the game is a highly addictive ecology sim and truely one of the most creative games I've played in years.

I ordered this game at my sons request. He's 12, I knew it was appropriate for him and didn't worry about it. I was surprised to see my younger children were able to jump right in and join the fun. The game is addictive and keeps the family busy for hours. I say "Give the kid what he wants" sometime... :-)

My whole family loves this game, from our five-year-old to his old 30-something parents! It's truly addicting once you get into it, and there are a lot of internet sites to help you along the way. So much fun, and appropriate for all ages! A brilliant game.

A fun game, I am a father to 3 little boys who like this game but they did have a little trouble learning how to do a lot of the things in the game. It is somewhat complicated (Coming from an eight year olds perspective teaching his little brothers). But as I was teaching them due to them constantly asking for help I learned about the game and actually enjoyed it very much. It does have enough in the game to entertain even a full grown adult and for the average gamer that is frustrated with another game and just wants to relax with a fun easy game. No real rush to things so you can move at your own pace. I bought the game guide to help jump forward a few steps instead of having to unlock each one individually and it was well worth it because of the insight it gives you.

This game also has a strange sense of humor that made me laugh, its my sense of humor so it worked out pretty well. The NPC's in the game all are family members and you hear their families story line as you progress through the game and find out why each NPC acts the way they do. As well you can cause abnormalities with certain pinata's by completing certain tasks and end up with a completely original garden with animals that don't exist such as unicorns, flying pigs, 4 headed snakes and so on. All in all I would recommend this game to anyone that enjoys relaxing with a non violent game just to step back from the hectic gaming genres now and to little kids. No noob teenagers that turn up their noses at any game without blood and gore.

Filled with bright furry paper creatures and wierd, Earth creatures that you work with to clean up you garden. At a first empression I like it lot. Light hearted game play as far as I went. Pinata being the name though I keep expecting someone showing up with a stick and smaking around my little aniamls. The game ended up freezing up on the computer I was using (and it is a high end computer) so I would expect that older computers might have some trouble running it. As first empressions go I'd recommend it it you like SIM games or games were your building worlds.

My 11-year-old daughter asked me to buy this game for her. She loves it!! The only drawback is that she isn't able to play it on her own computer because the minimum system requirements are too high. So be sure your video card and processor meet these requirements before you buy otherwise it won't work.

Ahhh, the good old days of Banjo Kazooie on N64. remember that?
There are images I remember seeing in Banjo Kazooie. This is a fun, relaxing game. Smiles

Watch out for the system requirements on this one. I installed the game only to find out it would not run on my computer (which is only two years old). It needs 10GB of free hard drive spaced and a pretty heavy duty video card, both of which I can not afford. Unfortunately I am now left with an opened Viva Pinata game that I can not use.