Product Description Viva Piñata invites gamers to create an immersive world where living piñatas inhabit an ever-changing environment. Beginning with a few basic tools, players build and take control of this environment, using their creativity and imagination to attract, protect and manage over 60 different piñata species that can visit their world and make it their home. Utilizing hundreds of customizable elements, players can create a unique piñata paradise.
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Viva Piñata is a window to another world where wild-roaming, living Piñata animals inhabit a growing, changing garden world. Take control of this environment and the piñata within it, influencing its contents to create your very own pet paradise. The "Viva Piñata" gameplay experience presents a customizable, social and spontaneous world in which gamers play an absolutely crucial role. The world players create is an evolving paradise teeming with fantastic living piñata creatures and vibrant plant life, all determined by the player's choices and actions. "Viva Piñata" boasts the following qualities:
 Rare releases their second exciting title for the Xbox 360. |
 Create the perfect environment for your favorite piñatas! View larger. |
 Watch as piñatas adopt to the garden spaces you've created for them. View larger. |
 Both sweet and sour piñatas will enter your garden. View larger. |
 Go online and help other piñata owners like yourself! View larger. |
Creating a living garden
It's your very own world. Your choice of contents will determine which of the piñata species are attracted to your world, since they all have individual requirements. Sowing grass, digging ponds, planting flowers and growing trees all affect which of the unique piñatas you will see. It's not just about plants, either; there is a whole range of ornaments and structures that could be decisive. Your reward for creating an appealing paradise is to watch the piñatas visit and eventually reside there, which is where the fun really starts.
Getting to know and understand the personalities and requirements of your piñata is essential if you want them to stay happy and thrive. Make your world their ideal paradise, and they'll want to raise a family and expand your community. Players decide how much help they want from the local guides, shopkeepers and work force. Go it alone or get them involved as you choose. Once you have resident piñatas, you can begin to personalize your loyal community. Piñatas can be individually named and given their own personally designed tag to put on display as a declaration of their home turf. And the customization doesn't end there. You can make the colorful critters more distinctive by customizing them with all kinds of costumes and accessories.
A thriving community awaits
The "Viva Piñata" community is a rewarding place to be, whether you remain within the boundaries of your own world or venture out into the real world or your friend's piñata world via Xbox Live, the first and only global, unified online console games service. Via the Xbox Live online community, players can contact other gamers to lend a hand, lay down a competitive challenge or trade items. Plus, it's not just new piñata species that are drawn to your world; untamed sour piñatas with bad attitudes and troublemaking ruffians do their worst to spoil your creation and must be dealt with. Maintaining harmony within a growing community isn't always easy when rivalries, illness, injuries and even candy-spilling fights occur. If players turn their backs, who knows what their piñatas will do?
Special edition extras
Both kids and adults can break into the two-disc Special Edition "Viva Piñata" Xbox 360 game with added bonuses for the whole family to enjoy. The Special Edition game, available for a limited time, will include playable demos of the season's hottest family-friendly titles and an episode from the "Viva Piñata" animated series. In addition to the "Viva Piñata" game, which will allow players to create their own environment where they can attract and host more than 60 species of wild piñatas and customize piñata-filled adventures in their unique-ever-growing world, the Special Edition "Viva Piñata" game will include playable demos of LucasArts' "LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy," the arcade classic "Frogger," "Cloning Clyde," "Time Pilot," and "Marble Blast." Also included in the Special Edition "Viva Piñata" game will be a sneak peek at the wacky, zany, anything-can-happen animated TV series, produced by 4Kids Entertainment and Bardel Entertainment. With this full-le! ngth episode of the colorful animated series, Kids can experience Piñata Island for themselves, where multitudes of happy, colorful piñatas live the sweet life.
Fun for non-traditional gamers
I'm a 24 year old female graduate student with a boyfriend who plays MMORPG's. Wanting SOMETHING to do while he was playing his games, I decided to try this. It's super cute, and really easy to get into. I'm not going to turn into quite the gamer he is, but it's really a lot of fun just to goof around with. I'd highly recommend it to anyone.
Tons of Fun
This is one of my all time favorite games! I'm 21 and I've been playing this game for over a year. The colors are so vibrant and the pinatas so much fun to collect! I can't wait for the sequel!
A Little World, a Lot of Fun 
This has to be one of the most surprisingly fun games I've played in awhile.
I'll be honest, I have no idea what's going on with the story nor have I ever even heard of the television show so I don't really know the whole point of the game but I do know one thing, it's a lot of fun.
So the game begins with you at your farm which you were just given the deed to. There is this green lady crying over your farm and she later gives you a shovel to get to work on fixing the place up (if she had the shovel why didn't she do anything about it?).
As you begin to change the atmosphere of your farm (by breaking down the tough dirt, planting grass, or digging pond space) animals begin to take notice and join into your ecosystem. As the animals join others who prey on those animals also come. You can also plant flowers, trees, or vegetables in order to attract other forms of animals.
The animals interact by preying upon species which they find to be tasty. For example, the fox pinatas will eat the rabbit pinatas that they see in your garden so you have to be careful if you want to keep them around.
As you progress you're given new abilities (like digging the ponds), you attract better pinatas, and are given more land. So the game starts off fairly simple and becomes more complicated as you go which is the correct way to handle the learning curve. It's a beautifully designed game in that sense, I must say.
As for the level of maturity of the game, I'd say grade school children could probably easily play. Reproductive related activities are present in the game between pinatas but they just do a love dance and a flying faery lady comes by and drops off an egg. The food chain preying also isn't too bad and when the pinatas crack open candy comes out (just make sure the kids don't start thinking real animals have candy in them).
The game also has an XBox Live component which was nice of the developers to work in but I have yet to experience it so I'm sure someone else here can give a better review regarding that.
All in all a great game and just as much fun for us adults as for kids.
Is and is not a kiddy game
I was a little concerned this would be too young but when it arrived, my kids weren't home so I tried it myself. At first my fears were realized, as it has a very young feel to it, but once I started working on my garden I really enjoyed it and played for hours. My kids arrived home and soon each had created their own garden. They will play for ages. The graphics are very good and the effects - like a drop of water on the camera lens are really cute. There is skill in keeping a good garden, free of pests and the kids learn they have to work to attract exotic pinatas to their garden. I gave it a 4 because I am now a little bored with it myself and for a 5 it would have to keep me entertained too [smile] but since the kids still love it, it is well worth the $20.
A whole lot of fun
I bought this game for my girlfriend because she is really anti-gaming and she loves it! It is a very clever and creative doll house game that has been very entertaining for the most part.
Although it is designed for younger audiences, it does keep the older ones entertained as well.