Live from NYC: Viva Piñata

If you had asked me to guess what type of video game Microsoft® would release to combat its rivals this holiday season, I would have automatically said that it's some sort of first-person shooter, so you can imagine my surprise when I learned that Microsoft Game Studios' biggest holiday title won't contain any blood, decapitations, or even a hand gun. Rather, it's all about world building, and, most importantly, piñatas!

Rare's latest creations.

That's right. I just said piñatas, those colorful animals made out of paper that contain candy in their bellies. Microsoft is planning to release Rare®'s upcoming Xbox 360™ title, aptly named Viva Piñata™, this fall, and it's also throwing all of its support, as well as a fat and healthy marketing campaign, behind it. But there's a lot more to this title than being just "another game from Rare."

Simplicity is what Rare is shooting for, a game
accessible to all ages yet with a serious
amount of depth just waiting to be uncovered.

If this IP takes off, and both Microsoft and Rare think that it will, it may become a powerful entity not only on Xbox 360 but also on the Saturday morning cartoon lineup. You see, Microsoft has partnered up with 4Kids Entertainment, Inc. to do a cartoon series that will air during 4Kids TV™'s four-hour Saturday morning cartoon slot this fall on FOX, with the game releasing shortly thereafter. Then, if that isn't enough, in 2007 we'll see the release of the merchandise.

The cartoon show features various characters and their exploits on Piñata Island, but, as I discovered, the actual game is a little different. Instead of being a typical platform title (which would have been the easy way out), Rare elected to take various play mechanics from several popular franchises and merge them into an original title that's never really been seen on a console, and, based on what I saw at today's Viva Piñata event in New York City, the developers have done an excellent job.

A beautiful world to create and maintain.

Basically, in Viva Piñata, you receive a patch of unattractive land and your job is to create this thriving forest that's full of greenery, bodies of water, houses, or whatever your heart desires, and the overall goal in doing this is to attract friendly piñata creatures to your special place and then convince them to stay there.

Eventually, and with some good planning, you'll have created a beautiful area that's pulsing with life, and, thanks to the power of Xbox 360 as well as Xbox Live®, you'll be able to either trade piñatas with your friends or take a trip to other people's forests. Plus, Viva Piñata is never ending. In theory, you could still be playing it 50 years from now, so if you're all about replay value as well as stretching your dollar, then this game will definitely pique your interest.

Kudos to Rare and Microsoft for coming up with
a concept that's drastically different.

As I previously mentioned, you begin the game with a small plot of land, but you also have three tools at your disposal: a shovel, a watering can, and seeds. Those three things are all that you need to create your paradise, and, quite frankly, that's a refreshing change of pace when compared to other sims on the market, each with a zillion commands and item lists to wade through.

Simplicity is what Rare is shooting for, to design a game that is accessible to all ages and extremely easy to pick up, yet one that contains a serious amount of depth just waiting to be uncovered by more dedicated players. But regardless of your skill level or the amount of time that you invest, you can achieve excellent results, so you won't have to worry about playing at a certain time of day or being away from the game for too long. Well, serious neglect usually leads to piñatas and your helpers taking a hike, but more on that in a bit.

Quirky creatures of the candy-filled sort.

When it comes to landscaping, there's a plethora of options at your disposal. Part of what's going to make this game fun is the limitless amount of customization, and Rare has included a myriad of different items to check out such as rocks, lakes, houses, statues of famous videogame characters, fences, seeds, and other cool things. And while I haven't had the opportunity to actually play the game, it appears that selecting and placing these things is pretty easy.

To purchase items, you're going to need to have some chocolate money, which is Viva Piñata's official currency. This can be acquired by selling stuff to the game's various shops, though at this point Microsoft hasn't revealed how many shops there will be or who will be running them. All they told me was that these stores will be manned by helpers, which are human-looking characters that assist you in learning the game as well as performing various chores. However, they will not do this for free. You'll need to pay them with chocolate in order to keep them happy, and if they're not satisfied they'll flat out walk off the job.

Viva Piñata is yet another shining example of Rare's
technical brilliance. The fully 3-D worlds are lush,
vibrant, and brimming with detail.

The second part to Viva Piñata, aside from building these fabulous worlds, is to attract actual piñatas to your domain, and this is no easy feat. The game's 60 piñatas, each of which resembles a different animal, has its own set of needs that must be fulfilled, and if you're not up to the task of caring for these creatures they'll leave, though you do have the option of keeping them in a pen.

However, if you decide to lock up a piñata that cannot live in your forest, it gets sick and becomes susceptible to enemies, most notably Dasardos, a freaky looking guy that breaks your sick piñatas into a thousand pieces and consumes the candy inside of their bellies. That's not a very attractive prospect, so it's best to make sure that you're capable of caring for your pets.

Each piñata contains signature features beginning with their names. Rare has come up with a lot of cute and catchy names for these creatures, such as Moozipan, Elephanilla, Buzzlegum, Mousemallow, Parryboo, Fudgehog, and Horstachio, each of which is a merging of animal and food (Mouse + Marshmallow = Mousemallow, for example).

Furthermore, each of the piñatas come with a specialized house that can be used to, ahem, mate the piñatas. But don't worry about this process, as it's completely G-rated. In fact, piñatas mate by dancing. Whenever two piñatas get together to cut a rug, the game displays an enjoyable cut scene showing both creatures engaged in a Romance Dance, and afterwards you're presented with eggs, because, as we all know (or now know), all piñatas come from eggs.

Piñatas "mate" by dancing.

Also neat are the individual tags, which are located on each piñata. You use these to give your piñatas names and record other useful bits of information, and you can use the tags to track your piñatas after letting them out into the world or, more importantly, Xbox Live.

Just as there are good, cuddly piñatas in the world, there are also plenty of enemies, all of which are colored red, making them easy to identify. Seeing them is the easy part, but dealing with them is a whole other story. These bad guys, which include wolves, bats, moles, and poisonous plants, just to name a few, cause all kinds of damage. They can bust open your piñatas or make them sick by dropping sour candy onto the ground, and those are just a couple of the nasty things they can do.

You can take care of these foes in a couple of different ways, the easiest being to just whack them in the face with your shovel. But Rare is encouraging us to take a different approach. You see, through experimentation as well as some patience, it's possible to turn these creatures to the light side of the force, so to speak. In other words, you can turn a bad wolf good, and after doing this it'll shed its red colors and live peacefully with all of the other piñatas.

Something as ambitious as this is new territory on Xbox 360.

Because I didn't get my hands on a controller I can't tell you how well the game plays, though I can certainly tell you how absolutely gorgeous it looks. Viva Piñata is yet another shining example of Rare's technical brilliance. The fully 3-D worlds are lush, vibrant, and brimming with detail. Every blade of grass, tree, stone, and house has been expertly crafted, and the piñatas are outstanding, especially when they burst and their candy spills out onto the ground.

Ah yes, breaking piñatas. It's a tough job, but you have to do it, and there are a couple reasons for this. First, and as I previously mentioned, if your land is being invaded by pests, you can hit them with your shovel, but that's easy. The hard part is deciding whether you want to sacrifice one piñata for the greater good.

In other words, you may come to a point in the game when you really want one type of piñata to live in your forest/town, and the only way to do this is to meet all of its requirements, one of which may be to feed it a certain type of candy that's contained inside of one of your other piñatas. So the real question is, do you have what it takes to break an old friend in order to gain a new one? That's not always an easy thing to do.

Apparently pirate ships attract croc-like piñatas.

It's too early to predict how huge Viva Piñata will be, but I see it succeeding because something as ambitious as this is new territory on Xbox 360. The concept of building something and nurturing it is nothing new to dedicated PC gamers, but this is really the first time that someone has made a serious stab at doing a game of this scope on a console.

To that end, there could be a huge market for this type of product, especially since violent videogames have made parents a little more aware of the types of content that they're allowing into their homes. Furthermore, Viva Piñata, despite it looking like a kids' game, is truly accessible to all ages. I definitely enjoy first-person shooters, but there are also times when I want to relax and play something that's not as intense, and Viva Piñata may turn out to be the alternative that people are looking for.

Lastly, kudos to Rare and Microsoft for coming up with a concept that's drastically different from what I expected. It would have been very easy for them to announce that they're going after that coveted older male demographic this holiday season by releasing something war-themed, but instead they sat down and created something totally original.

In this industry, where sequels are pumped out with reckless abandon, that takes a lot of guts. You don't just magically create a new IP and throw millions behind it in the hopes that it's going to take the world by storm. I mean, you certainly can, but the odds of you being in business tomorrow aren't so good.

Lots of information remains undisclosed about Viva Piñata, but the game will be playable at this year's Electronic Entertainment Expo, and you can expect detailed impressions in the very near future.

Article by Chris Buffa, GameDAILY Senior Editor