Return to Piñata Island

The original Viva Piñata® offered a wondrous mix of creative design married to a brand-spanking-new original franchise. This world-building, micro-management paradise introduced us to Piñata Island and its exotic and charming inhabitants. Happily, Rare is back at the helm for the true sequel, Viva Piñata®: Trouble in Paradise.

Professor Pester's got plans … big plans.

Alas for Piñata Island though, the nefarious cackle-happy Professor Pester has infiltrated the computer mainframe and deleted every last piñata file, plunging all future gardeners into ignorance. It's up to you to rediscover the secrets of the island and its piñata inhabitants!

It respects the original game at every turn while still finding ways to lavish new features and refinements throughout.

Foundation Unchanged
Thankfully, the core gameplay remains unchanged. You still craft your garden to entice piñatas to take up residence, you still pair them up for romance with a chosen partner, manage your individual piñata's needs and your entire garden's ecosystem, and you still attempt to create the most companionably diverse garden all while hoping to attract new, more valuable members.

And you continue to do a brisk trade with Costolot for seeds, items, upgrades and the like, hire out help from Arfur's Inn, and employ Willy and Bart to get busy building and tinkering in your garden.

Rare has done themselves and the community credit by not messing around too much with an already outstanding foundation. That doesn't mean you won't find change and polish around every corner though. You will.

Quick-select your piñata with the shoulder buttons. Very nice!

A Helping Start
Trouble in Paradise goes a long way toward making sure you never feel overwhelmed by the sheer volume of options, thanks to a quick series of challenges introducing you to every aspect of the game.

Each challenge teaches some of the game's most important mechanics, and highlights the next step in the process for you from start to finish. Where the first game unleashed you to your own devices very early on, Trouble in Paradise provides a greater sense of focus and direction.

Challenge Time
While the initial challenges help teach you how to play, they don't stop there. You'll find dozens more asking you to discover all manner of exotic, elusive piñatas, pack them full of Candiosity, and ship them off to faraway parties all around the world. Despite the no doubt raucous treatment they receive, your piñata is returned to your garden as good as new within a few short days of departure.

Satellite Piñatas
Also new are two satellite environments, one Arctic and one desert, where you can track down many of the brand new piñata animals exclusive to Trouble in Paradise, though not without an extra wrinkle of challenge.

Whenever you brave the Dessert Desert or Pinarctic regions, you must arrange traps outfitted with bait tailor-made to the piñata's taste if you hope to snatch them up and post them back to your home garden.

Helping Hands
Perhaps the most stunning and welcome addition to Trouble in Paradise is the newfound ability to take your garden onto Xbox LIVE® and play together with up to three friends.

Looking a little cluttered. Invite some friends to help.

Veterans of the first game know just how frantic a garden can get after hours of play as you attempt to maintain your current menagerie while luring newcomers, tackle weeds, break up fights, stay on top of the watering and fertilizing needs, and keep a sharp eye out for sour piñatas and that infernal Dastardos, among much else. The luxury then of divvying up responsibilities is very sweet indeed.

With four players putting their heads together, you have access to substantially more creativity and experimentation, and it's here, when you're fiddling with a piñata's diet, environment and mating habits, that you can uncover some of the game's most remarkable and gratifying secrets.

Depending on just how much you trust your buddy not to mess up your garden, you can also set their "permissions," to grant them limited, full, or no access to change your garden.

Couching!
Of course, while Xbox LIVE support is much appreciated, so too is the ability to fire up a second controller and get to work with a friend/parent/sibling right in the comfort of your home.

The secondary player can earn bonus points depending on how helpful they prove. Earn enough points and they can perform a special skill free of charge: heal a sick piñata, tinker with an item, or instantly fill a piñata's Candiosity meter.

Vision Support
Trouble in Paradise introduces Xbox LIVE Vision camera support as well, allowing you to scan special-made cards to collect in-game goodies. One such card comes with the game itself and you can find others, among other places, at the official website.

You can trade these cards with folks on Xbox LIVE, making contacts with your friends and their friends in the hopes of tracking down some truly rare piñatas and items.

While the preceding points touch on many of the larger features, there's still the mini-game races and contests to consider, the new tricks you can teach your piñatas and the much appreciated Play for Fun mode, which allows you to tackle a garden with infinite resources, cutting away much of the challenge so you can focus on cultivating the Viva Piñata garden of your dreams.

Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise is in many ways the perfect sequel. It respects the original game at every turn while still finding ways to lavish new features and refinements throughout. Piñata Island is beckoning!

Article by Ryan Treit