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Great fun for all ages!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 14 / 16
Date: November 11, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This game is addictive fun. I picked it up today - began playing - and before I knew it - 3 hours of gameplay passed. I found myself sitting at the edge of my seat, focused on the happenings of my garden. As noted in the title of my review - a person of any age can have fun playing this game - I'm 26.

Highly Addictive Gameplay

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 47 / 56
Date: November 12, 2006
Author: Amazon User

When I first heard about this game, it reminded me of Animal Crossing for the Nintendo Gamecube. I never liked Animal Crossing because the game was just a bunch of item collecting.

I'm glad to say that Viva Pinata is 100% better than Animal Crossing. You're basically building an ecosystem of pinatas in the game, there are alot of tradeoffs based on your actions.

You're even capable of sending items from your garden to people on your Friends list, which is a neat extra feature.

To give you an idea of how fun and addictive this game is, I bought Gears of War earlier in the week (one of the best games I've played in a long time) ... and I ended up playing Viva Pinata instead of Gears over the weekend.

fun game for all ages

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: November 18, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Great game and truly for all ages. Love the animations. Easy to learn. Provides many, many fun-filled hours of gameplay.
Only drawback: Watch out - it can get addictive :-)

A Great Game, Not Just for Kids

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 97 / 100
Date: November 20, 2006
Author: Amazon User

In Viva Pinata you have inherited a garden in a fantasy world populated by living pinatas and an assortment of odd characters. Your mission is to build your garden to attract pinatas to live there. Everything you grow in your garden, including the pinatas, vegetables, flowers, and trees, can be sold for chocolate coins. You can use the coins to buy more seeds and grow more plants or to otherwise improve your garden. Viva Pinata is like a cross between Pokemon and The Sims and virtual pets, but I found that the result is greater than the sum of its parts!

This is a sandbox game of the best sort. You can make whatever decisions you want to and your garden can look however you want. You have the ability to dig ponds, grow grass, build houses for your pinatas, and all sorts of other activities that I am still discovering several hours into the experience. The decisions you make about how your garden develops will determine the kind of pinata who want to live there. The open-ended nature of the game is its best feature, and it really makes you feel like you are in control of the game's environment. The feeling of empowerment that kids receive playing Viva Pinata is enhanced by the excitement of constantly finding new things to do and play with.

I am impressed that a game that is so easy for kids to pick up is also so complex. My daughter is nine and was familiar with the controls and basic concepts within a half-hour. Yet the underlying concepts of the game are complicated. The skills I see her working on in this game primarily have to do with resource management, which as we adults know is critical for daily life. You have a limited amount of space for your garden (just like in real life), yet if you are not organized in your approach then the garden will quickly become a place of chaos. Kids will also learn the concepts of working to make money and how to budget for the next big item they need to improve their garden.

As other reviewers have stated, this looks like a game for kids, but it will suck an adult into its world just as easily. I couldn't wait for my kids to go to sleep the first night so I could start on my own garden. Time is greatly accelerated in the game, and the result is that you are very busy - you may suddenly look up from the game and see that a few hours have passed in the real world almost as quickly. The pinata are just the right amount of cute so that they are fun to watch, not annoying. There is no lull in the action for at least a few hours, at which time you may have been able to hire some helpers to take off some of the pressures of a big garden, such as watering and gathering your sellable items. This too is a good introduction to kids of the concept of people management. Lots of times you have to tell your helpers what to do, rather than just letting them do their own thing. Otherwise, their priority list is typically different from yours and those plants that you just planted may die because your helper was busy watering something less important.

Viva Pinata has way too much to offer to cover it all in such a short review. The environment is incredibly well done, from the sounds to the graphics. The game play is very addictive. Playing Viva Pinata actually got me excited to go out and do lawn work in the back yard! For parents wondering if this game is suitable for their kids, I will say that I am picky about what I let my kids watch and play and there is nothing here which offends me. There are all sorts of euphemisms around breeding pinatas (they call it "romancing") that sound very innocent but will make the adult chuckle. It is very tastefully done. And there is no doubt that your kids will be using their brains a lot more while playing this game than while playing the typical platform-style kids game. This is exactly the kind of game I was looking for to provide my kids with an enriching, non-violent video game experience. If Viva Pianta is an indication of the future of kids video games then the future is very promising.

MOST BEST GAME IN THE HISTORY OF GAMES

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 5
Date: November 22, 2006
Author: Amazon User

this is the best game ive ever played...i love the garden and that the garden becomes huge! there are tons of different animals that can appear in front of you. my friends say "Oh they're so cute!". its an addicting game.

the aspect that most of the animals are built on real animals, is awesome. one thing that does stink really bad is that when your pinatas are sick they can be smashed..............

Favorite game since animal crossing

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: November 23, 2006
Author: Amazon User

A mix of animal crossing and harvest moon, Viva Pinata is a colorful game with much to do. It is a very full game and is addictive. I always seem to lose track of time when playing it. It is open ended, so one just worries about their garden and works to improve it which is great fun.

Tons of fun, but plagued by a devastating glitch!

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 6 / 9
Date: November 25, 2006
Author: Amazon User

All the wonderful things about this game that other reviewers have raved about are absolutely true; this is an incredibly cute and fun game (although it would have been better without the ruffians).

Unfortunately, there is a horrid glitch in the game that causes things in your garden to turn invisible--forever. Fo no discernible reason, I keep losing more and more of my pinatas, flowers, trees, fences, pinata houses, etc. every time I play the game. It's so frustrating and ruins the fun of the game. I have to keep selling off the invisible items (assuming I can find them) and go through the trouble of replacing them.

It's amazing to me that this sort of game-breaking glitch survived their beta testing, considering how widespread it is among everyone who's played it. I'm on the verge of returning it unless they can get it fixed. It's not fun to suddenly lose, through no fault of your own, pinatas and a garden you worked very hard for.

So yes, it's a wonderful game, but I would strongly suggest you stay away until they release a patch that addresses this.

Brilliant colors and a ton of fun

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: November 28, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I've always enjoyed Animal Crossing style games where I can go about my business without any real structure. This game sure fits the bill. I've only played for a few hours now, but so far it is fantastic. The colors look brilliant and the gameplay is fabulous. This game is a great game for people of all ages, but be warned, it's pretty addicting. I was playing last night and before I knew it, it was 2 hours later. The only downside to the game that I've found so far is that it's a bit slow at the beginning as you are forced to do certain tasks (sort of like a tutorial) to learn the general features of the game. This tutorial is helpful, but seems to drag on at times (all told it's only about 5 minutes, so this isn't even much of a complaint) Overall 5 stars!

So cool!!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 6
Date: November 29, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I played this with my friend and it is such fun,I wish they would make it for playstation 2 though or nintendo ds,The horse is really cool and it is a great game for little kids as it is so bright and colourful but its great for adults aswell.

Addictive Barely Describes It

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: December 08, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I bought this game on a whim being a fan of Animal Crossing. I was worried that it would be childish and a waste of money. Now I find myself drawn into the "donut of life".

I am typically not the gardening type, but this game is extraordinary. You are required to not only garden, maintain species, and help in the evolution of species but you also have organize labor.

While I think that this would be a great game for an older child who wouldn't be disturbed by the death of pinata and could understand the concept of the "romance dance" between pinata (those scenes are a little iffy even if they are intended to be benign). I think that the average adult would also be easily drawn into this one.

Cooperative play over XBox Live is also useful for trading pinata and meeting other gardeners! Viva Pinata!

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