Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise (Xbox 360)

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The game has a highly original visual style

To add a little more focus to proceedings you can accept challenges from Langston, a Lickatoad whose job it is to round up piñatas for parties around the world. You'll be asked to round up one or more of a certain piñata type and pack them into a crate for delivery to a party somewhere. It's not as easy as packing them up though, as you'll need to make sure their Candiosity meter is full (their happiness) before Langston will accept them. These challenges not only encourage you to go after new species but also reward you with petals which help towards your overall goal of levelling up.

Since pretty much all of the above can apply to the original game, what exactly has changed in this sequel? The short answer is nothing massive, but lots of little things. One of the most important is the more streamlined interface, which makes access to tools, piñatas and seeds so much quicker. Newcomers will find a well designed control system that utilizes the 360 controller extremely well, while veterans will instantly appreciate the improvements that have been made.

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Two new environments have been included too: Dessert Desert and Piñarctic. You don't have nearly the same level of interaction here as you do in your own garden, instead taking on a hunter approach. Langston also sells traps (of varying quality and price), which you need to place on the ground and bait with enticing items. Other than making sure you've bought the best trap you can and placed the correct item on the trap, you're pretty much a spectator in these areas, but you can't help but get engrossed. We sat in the Piñarctic for a good 30 minutes watching as a giant piñata sniffed around an orange we'd placed on a trap. We could do nothing but watch, making it more of a wildlife documentary than a game, yet when it finally walked on to the trap there was a unanimous shout of joy in the room. Of course, when the beast smashed free of its trap there was a collective sigh, but it's all part of the game. Damn you and your cheap traps Langston!

Also new is support for the Xbox LIVE vision camera, allowing you to scan cards and add new piñatas to your game - a process we found to be rather hit and miss. A 'just for fun' mode essentially allows you to play with unlimited cash and access to all the game's items and tools. Piñatas show requirements above their heads and nasty enemies don't appear either, making it a less stressful game mode that will hold more appeal to gamers interested in seeing the creatures and less bothered about the deep management sim running in the background. The trick system (tapping piñatas with a stick when they perform a trick after eating a certain item) also seems largely tacked on, but it does provide another way to raise the value of your piñatas.

Trouble in Paradise delivers a much needed blast of colour to the Xbox 360 and next-gen gaming as a whole.

Of more appeal is the new co-op functionality. Two players can play a garden together on a single 360 and up to four can play together over Xbox LIVE. Sadly the online play ends up being nothing more than a rather high-tech show and tell, but the two-player single-system play serves as a great way to play with a friend or, better yet, a younger family member. As much as Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise has the appearance of a family game, it's far too deep for novice gamers. Two-player support lets kids play without being overwhelmed by the complexities. The included mini-games feel like novelties, but they are another way to increase the value of your piñatas gain some achievement points (something that isn't easy in Trouble in Paradise).

Trouble in Paradise will polarise people. You can't get around the fact that it's full of incredibly bright colours, insanely cute creatures, twee noises and almost child-like humour. If you're reading this thinking you're going to hate it and want to get back to blasting steroid-abusing muscle men with yet another overpowered machine gun from the future, then go right ahead - you need an open mind if you're going to get the most out of the game. Allow yourself to enjoy the over-the-top sugar-coated sweetness of it all, and it's hard to resist. There are some technical problems that we'd have liked to be fixed (reflection pop-in and some frame rate issues) but on the whole Trouble in Paradise delivers a much needed blast of colour to the Xbox 360 and next-gen gaming as a whole.

The mini-games aren't great but increase the value of your piñatas

If you're new to Viva Piñata you probably won't expect to find the level of depth that's on offer. On top of what we've already mentioned, you can add in the use of special fertilizer to grow new plants, a bouncer board that lets you block entry to certain piñatas, a tinkerer who can completely change items into new objects, variant piñatas, high-level piñatas with brilliant abilities, sharing piñatas with friends, a full-on ecosystem, a complex farming sim where you grow to sell and much much more. If you're expecting a walk in the park, think again.

Rare's original Viva Piñata proved that cute visuals and loveable creatures needn't be packaged up in throwaway party games. Although this sequel could be labelled as Viva Piñata +, in that it more or less builds on the original rather than doing anything drastically different, it's still an absolutely must-own Xbox 360 game. Once you've built a garden with a few piñatas living happily you'll be hooked, with short sessions to check out how things are going quickly turning into mammoth all-day affairs where you simply can't stop until you've managed to entice that smug new piñata into your garden after it's spent a whole day wandering around the edge grinning like the village idiot. Buy Trouble in Paradise, name your piñatas after celebrities, friends and family members, dress them up like fashion disasters and realise you're playing one of the best games of the year.

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