Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise adds camera, co-op, September release

They stuck in a few more taps.

All I know is that when I unlocked that flying dragon pinata, it well worth the goddamn effort. That thing rocked! Everytime it would walk on the ground my controller would vibrate.

But that was kinda the challenge involved with getting further in the game. Otherwise it would be simple paint by numbers. The game did a good job at making each variety have their own issues and needs - leaving you to figure it all out. Hell, the wiki page on it was a lifesaver. It also made for good use of live since you could ship friends pinatas they were trying to get ahold of.

I never used pinata island (the wiki) except to get pictures of pinata to use as AIM icons or such. I still to this day cannot get a multi-headed syrupent, despite many attempts.

I finished Burnout:Paradise without needing to use a cheat sheet, I should be able to do well in Viva. And in the end, I did do well, I played it for 60 hours plus.

But it was clear there were problems that were keeping me from having fun, so I quit playing it.

At the very least, the game should have an indicator that says when a pinata cannot walk into your garden due to object overflow. Cause doing everything right and then watching the pinata walk right by for hours is maddening.

Sorry, it's been too long. I recall now that it was that the new pinatas wouldn't even walk by, even though I had all the prerequisites set right (verified by looking at the pinata description in the game that listed them).

Well, I am sorry that you consider it cheating to look at the wiki to see why a bear refuses to enter the garden, but you can't expect the game itself to tell you every variety of pinata's issues with other pinatas, foods and plants they like and hate, and what objects they may be drawn to. If you do think its such a cheat to read a wiki, then you sir are obiously a much greater and more honorable man than I. So, GJ with the racing game, but this one was a tad more detailed I think. The game would have been a mess of messeges and reading material for them to explain every detail.

Anyway, I thought it was fun, and tough at many points. A challenging game that was enjoyable. Also, it was always fun to see what would pop out of a crate a friend sent you over live. Sending someone a sour Malowolf was pretty funny!

Pinata Island was essential to my playing of this game, but I don't consider it a cheat. I mean, if this was a real garden that I was tending to and I don't know anything about gardening, I wouldn't feel like a cheater if I were to consult a book, or the internet, or a fellow gardener.

I don't consider that cheating any more than creating multiple gardens for breeding or specialized planting, and then sending packages between them in order to, say, import some sort of poison plant needed for a variant without introducing it into the stable environment of my primary garden, where it might kill some of my more curious pinatas.

So you're saying I'm supposed to play a game which doesn't even tell me the rules? And the solution is to ask the internet? Weird. The game lists prerequisites for all the pinatas, and they work for the lower level ones. They list them for all of them and they should work.

I liked sending pinatas too, but my friends didn't ever bother to open most of them. Was rather disappointing to get your pinata back after 3 or 5 days (I forget which it was).

Going to the internet to get step-by-step instructions and spoilers a plenty just takes a lot of the fun out, it turns a game like this which uses a long sequence of steps to make up its length into a total grind. Discovery is gone, and you're just following a recipe.

Elephanilla. And that was one of the last pinatas I got, for similar reasons to those which lead to you not even getting it.

It took too much effort, too much garden rearrangement, and too much luck to get a lot of the pinatas.

I remember just getting the monkeys (which were available early on) was a pain because you had to replace essentially all your trees with the monkey nut trees.

Oh, and I forget the pinata you had to have a certain number of gooseberries lying on the ground to get. You could knock the gooseberries on the ground, but then you had to hope the pinata came by before the berries rotted and you had to start over.

In the end, the pinatas were symbols of the effort you put into getting them. When the efforts were fun, it was a joy to get new pinatas and watch them roam around. When it turned into a total grind, the pinata I had "earned" warking around just turned into a reminder that I was going through the motions more than enjoying it.

Oh yeah, and once you got two of a pinata, getting the breeder award (for 5 of them) was a total grind. Especially with damn flying pinatas. Buy love candy, get two to eat it, get them together, hope they manage to find their way up the bizarrely constructed entrances to the houses, do the maze, etc..

yea in the end I couldn't be bothered to rearange my garden again so I just made a brand new garden (tapping the floor again was very annoying). All that just to get some of thereally complicated pinatas. I totally agree with everything you just said but its a kinds of praise that I was still willing to endure these things just for more piñata. Man I loved that game

Tapping the floor. Heh. You mean prepping the ground at the start? I forgot about that.

And new gardens start small. Ugh.

actually if you start a new garden after you unlock the full size you get the full size garden but its still covered with junk. Can take like 20 minutes to get a grassy square. Really want the option to start a 2nd garden covered in either dirt or grass . Far less fustrating

Same here. I got a lot of mileage out of the first one. If you can get past the "cuteness" its actually a fun, low-key strategy game.