Viva Pinata: Pocket Paradise (DS)

Is that a piñata in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?
9/18/2008 6:30 PM | 3 Comments | Page 1 of 2

Ah, Rare. How cruel a developer you are, both pleasing and tormenting gamers with your unique talent for crafting games that appeal to casual and hardcore audiences alike. Only you could come up with something like Viva Piñata, a game that can take themes like sex and violence, roll them up in a cute, candy-filled wrapper, and leave fans everywhere with their hands out like Oliver Twist begging, "Please sir, I want some more." Unlike poor Ollie, though, Rare answered with a "Sure thing, buddy," dishing out a heaping helping of piñata goodness with Viva Piñata: Pocket Paradise for the Nintendo DS.

It may be surprising to see the Microsoft-owned developer taking an Xbox 360-exclusive franchise to the DS -- until considering that the developer in question is Rare. Long before Rare brought Perfect Dark, Kameo and Viva Piñata to the 360, the were giving Nintendo plenty of love with games like Banjo-Kazooie, Donkey Kong Country, Killer Instinct and GoldenEye 007. So it's safe to say that the Rare crew is more than a little familiar with developing for Nintendo's hardware. Besides, since Microsoft is the only player in the console market without a handheld, bringing Viva Piñata to the DS would seem to be a perfect fit -- and guess what? It is.

The Viva Piñata premise is pretty simple. You're given control of a rundown piece of land, and tasked with the responsibility of turning it into a lush garden. As you care for the garden you'll draw a variety of different living piñatas. Depending on how you've got the garden set up and what a particular visitor's requirements are, a piñata may decide to stick around and become a resident. From there, you'll continue to build and refine your garden, planting all sorts of flowers and trees, luring in all manner of creatures, raising little piñata families, and keeping everything running smoothly.

Originally, I couldn't see how Rare could possibly cram the entirety of the 360 experience into one tiny DS cart. Guess I'll be eating Crowla now, as Rare has done just that, with a few tweaks for the DS hardware. For starters, the bulk of the game is controlled with the stylus, with the main action taking place on the bottom touch-screen of the DS. A simple drop-down menu in the upper right corner gives the player instant access to all of his available tools without interrupting the onscreen action. An icon in the upper left corner of the screen opens up a 2D map of the entire garden, allowing players to immediately zoom in on any of their inhabitants without having to slide around the screen to track them down.

Obviously, the DS doesn't pack the same visual punch as the 360 does. While Rare has done a surprising job of pushing the DS's 3D capabilities and generating some faithful recreations on the handheld, the move doesn't come without a price. The biggest sacrifice is probably in available space. As in the original game, players start with a small plot of land that grows as levels increase. Unfortunately, in Pocket Paradise, the land's boundaries never seem to grow enough. A lot of time is going to be spent clearing out recently built houses to make room for new buildings, simply because there's just not enough room to work with. In some ways, it guarantees that the player will always have something to do in the garden, but occasionally it just feels like a hassle.