Reviews// Viva Piñata: Pocket Paradise

At one point I was trundling along quite nicely. I'd got a few species in my garden, different plants going, romance was in the air - all was going well. Then my piñatas started getting poorly. I got the vet in for the Sparrowmint – no worries. But when Whirlm 3 (I couldn't bring myself to name them, but the option's there) started to feel under the weather, I realised I had no funds to get the vet back out. Over the course of the next 20 minutes or so, every bloody one of them seemed to get sick, leaving my garden's population all but wiped out. Basically, I'd neglected my capital base in favour of pandering to the piñatas' every whim. Don't neglect your capital base! You can't afford to treat Viva Piñata as purely a character collecting game.

Anyway, I had a point. The point is that the main game is more challenging than I thought and younger children might struggle. Fortunately, there's a playground mode which players can just dip into at will, playing with the piñatas and garden customisation options without the hindrance of budget constraints or sometimes stringent conditions put in place by the fussy piñatas. It's enjoyable for a while and will no doubt entertain youngsters, but I was bored within half an hour.

One advantage of the game not being so straightforward as my preview experience led me to believe is that I didn't fill up my garden. I hit the upper limit of how much my garden could hold when my game was artificially levelled up, but going through the pitfalls of the horticultural world for sort-of-real, that's not something I came across. I'm quite sure that given enough play, people will hit the limit, but don't expect it to be a persistent problem throughout the game.

Pocket Paradise is, of course, unrelentingly cute. It's so cute that I felt like my teeth were rotting out of my gums and forming an enamel coating on my tongue just looking at it. It's so cute that... well, it actually managed to charm me. I like to brake suddenly when my dog climbs onto the front seat of my car to see what happens and... it charmed me.

The game is presented with oodles of video, some taken from the Viva Piñata TV show and some created for the game. I didn't find it totally annoying, so it will probably go down well with the younger audience.

The dialogue, the graphics, the design of the whole game is very pleasing and well polished.

The game comes with the option to trade piñatas and other objects wirelessly with other players. It's not something I got to try out, playing it pre-release, but it sounds like a natty feature, if not one that will add anything huge to the experience.


[i][b]SPOnG Score: 91%

Viva Piñata: Pocket Paradise is a deep, enjoyable and rewarding experience. It benefits hugely from its portability and I found that, while I wouldn't be all that inclined to switch on a console version of the game at home, it's a massively enjoyable experience on the go. While it's undeniably aimed at kids, older gamers looking for a rich experience on the DS will get a lot out of it.[/b][/i]