Revisited this mostly as a way to check out how well Xbox's Cloud Gaming service works (the answer? better than you'd expect but I'd imagine the lag would be complete misery in a game that isn't mostly slow paced like this is) but also because sometimes you just gotta replay a childhood classic to remind yourself that this world isn't completely terrible, y'know? Going in I figured I'd put together a garden, maybe run through all the sours and then call it a day, I've put so many hours into this game over the years that not every playthrough needs to go for 100%. What I didn't expect was that this game would hook me in yet again just like it did all those years ago and I'd wind up playing and playing until I couldn't pinata anymore.

Personally I've always considered the Viva Pinata series to be Rare's last hurrah before their quiet and peaceful death (and indeed before their unceremonious revival as an unholy shambling corpse at the hands of Microsoft's necromancers). It kinda feels like a fitting end for the company that was indisputably the king of gaming in the 90s, it's very much ahead of its time like so many Rare classics are, it's among the best-looking of its era and features so much of that classic wry British charm that Rare's always had in spades, while at the same time feeling like a far cry for the company that infamously (and at the time recently) broke off the legendary partnership with Nintendo that made them a household name because they really wanted to chase the M-Rated high Goldeneye gave them. This was also the last game composer Grant Kirkhope worked on for the company that made him famous, and you can tell in some of the music tracks that he too recognizes this as an end of an era.

But really, if this was Rare's informal goodbye to the game industry, then it's a hell of a way to go. Maybe it's nostalgia talking because I played this game so much when I was around 10 that the strategy guide I had literally disintegrated, but I think that Viva Pinata is the single best life simulation game ever made with the exception of Animal Crossing. As with all of Rare's best games, Trouble in Paradise is packed to the gills with stuff to do and things to collect so you never get bored and everytime you feel ready to take a break you're always struck with that feeling of "Welllll...lemme just do this first." All of the many collectible papery critters are delightfully colourful, wonderfully designed and just so damn expressive that you leave the game feeling nothing but love for each and every one of them. They're all just so full of life and personality that you can't help but say "aww" as a wild owl ravages its way through the mouse population you've spent hours building up. You feel genuine excitement every time you trigger something new to appear or visit or best of all decide to stay in your garden, and there's no greater feeling than when you come up with a massive plan involving redesigning your garden to bring in something new and everything goes perfectly.

The one thing I'll knock Trouble in Paradise for is that sometimes it can be a little frustrating. For one, you're kind of at the mercy of what wild pinatas the game spawns outside your garden barriers. You could have everything ready for one specific critter only for it to just not show up for days on end for seemingly no reason, and that gets very annoying, especially if you're waiting on something specific to show up before you can move on to the next thing you have planned. Usually my playthroughs of this game end when I just don't feel like waiting around for stuff to show up anymore, and that's more or less what happened this time as well. I also think that the antagonists who want nothing more than to ruin your day are way too OP here, particularly main baddie Professor Pester. This red-faced jackass comes into your garden on a daily basis with the goal of smashing your most valuable critter, and dealing with him is a colossal headache. There are ways to manage his visits but they range from expensive to unreliable, so in the end the only real way to stop him is by exploiting a fence glitch that leaves him completely befuddled for a few minutes outside your barriers before heading home. In all my years of playing of this game I've yet to meet another fan that doesn't utilize this glitch in every playthrough, and that's because completely removing the Professor from the equation does nothing but improve Trouble in Paradise. There are also a few requirements that border on complete insanity, like the five elephants needed to free the eagle. I read a comment once that said something along the lines of "90% of this game is super fun and relaxing, but man, that extra 10% is a pain" and I couldn't agree more.

Yes, Trouble in Paradise is far from perfect, and yes, a lot of my love for the game comes from nostalgia, but I still think that this is one of the most underrated games to ever exist. The only thing it really did wrong was release on a console that mostly pandered to the FPS crowd in an era when that genre was the only thing people bought an Xbox for, because I've always thought it deserves more love. The best compliment I have for it was that even with the lag of Cloud Gaming I still had an amazing time revisiting Pinata Island.

Viva Piñata (original and TIP) is so relaxing; it's the perfect game to chill with.

I remember watching my closest older sister play this until late at night; it was such a cosy time.

A couple of years later, I got myself this game and spent a long time being addicted. I would sometimes spend days doing nothing but watching the Piñata animals walk around the garden, interacting with different items and with each other.

Maybe you were a kid like me who grew up with very little Nintendo products. I switched between Playstation and Xbox consoles through the generations, and only used Nintendo handhelds. Everyone was always talking about Zelda and Mario and ANIMAL CROSSING, and I’d just be like “I got Mariokart DS, it’s pretty fun.” The first and only Pokemon game I’ve played to completion is Pokemon Diamond. When you hear about all these games that everyone says are great, you search for alternatives. Luckily Microsoft and Rare were working on something to please my childhood needs.

Normally people are weary of the combination of Microsoft Studios and Rare Entertainment, but in my opinion Viva Piñata is the diamond in the rough to come from this duo. For those who don’t know, in Viva Piñata you live on an island inhabited by piñatas and grow a garden decent-looking enough that the candy-filled creatures want to set up camp in your patch of grass. Viva Piñata is MY Animal Crossing.

Viva Piñata has a heavy emphasis on experimentation and self discovery, as most of these piñatas are not hidden behind a level up wall, but instead are waiting for you to set your garden up a certain way. Every plant you grow will probably have a new piñata sniffing it out, and more aquatic piñatas are waiting for you to dig a lot of ponds. Some will show up once you’ve tamed another species just to show them up, and some “sour” piñatas are cranky and need you to heal them. Feeding piñatas certain foods will transform them with new color schemes, and some flat out transform into entirely new species!

Trouble in Paradise is the 2nd main game of the franchise. Most mechanics have stayed the same, but new features have been added. For the most part these features to me feel slapped on or rushed. Apart from your main garden, you can now visit The Pinarctic and The Dessert Desert. Instead of building a livable space in these areas, your goal is to set traps for the piñata in these places so you can bring them back to your mainland. This is an interesting addition, but I soon became bored with them because there’s very few piñata that actually utilize these spaces. It’s weird to say, because the number of piñata species have increased by over 50%, but it feels like not enough new breeds have been added. The species-count has increased from 50 to 80. Only 11 of these new species are split between The Pinarctic and Dessert Desert, 14 if you unlock the 3 species hidden behind food experimentation with breeds you already have. All of these 11 species are hidden behind simple level walls with no need of experimentation to unlock them.

Trouble in Paradise comes with a “Just For Fun” mode where your money is unlimited and all villainous obstacles are removed, allowing for newcomers to practice gardening and veterans to make the garden they truly desire without the setbacks. This mode is really fun, but I feel they took things away from the main game to set them apart more. In the first Viva Piñata, you’d originally unlock a yard decoration that would ward off all Ruffians (antagonistic characters who come in a wreck your shit unless you pay them money). The decoration is still purchasable, but it has no effect. The only way to ward off Ruffians, or more precisely their leader Professor Pester, is by having either a Dragonache or Limeoceros living in your garden; two of the fattest piñata in the game. It becomes apparent how annoying the population restrictions are, and you begin wishing for a more lenient restriction system and a larger garden space. I’d rather the decoration just have a larger price tag and be unlocked at like level 60. I’ll still feel a sense of accomplishment for getting it, and I don’t need to keep this dumb rhino that tramples my smaller animals and makes them depressed.

Your piñatas can now be entered into contests for sport. I’ve only played this a few times cuz it’s really just a bunch of quick minigames that add nothing to the rest of the game. No emphasis is put on playing them whatsoever so i feel no interest in attempting them. TiP also comes with online multiplayer modes, but I cannot give any input on the quality of that cuz I have no friends currently playing a 12-year-old game about gardening. They’re all too busy playing the gardening game that just came out this year on their Switches.

Older mechanics have been tweaked but possibly to a detriment. Your shovel can be used to dig a pond, but in the first game your X button was bound to digging the pond while your Y was bound to filling in ponds. In TiP however, both of these are bound to the X button. If your cursor is above ground you dig, if it’s above water you fill. It keeps you from creating that even deepness you could originally have in your ponds which satisfied the OCD part of my brain. The Y button is now set to a sort of larger dig/fill where you mark the boundary of what you want to mess with, but I really can’t figure out how to get this finicky mechanic to do what i want it to.

When “romancing,” or breeding, piñatas you have to complete a maze-like minigame before they can properly mate. In the sequel they seem to increase the difficulty of these minigames and it sort of reduces my interest to achieve the Master Romancer award through the normal way. You just need 7 of the same species in the garden, and I’d rather just pay Gretchen the Hunter to acquire them for me, at least for the harder mazes.

When you look at the core of Trouble in Paradise it’s very similar to the original, but these additives and retouches feel a little sloppy. It’s almost like Microsoft gave Rare a checklist of what they wanted added to the game (online capabilities, utilization of the Xbox camera) and once those were completed Rare shoved in what they originally wanted to add before the deadline, but none of it feels fully fleshed. The same piñata species that were buggy in the first game are still buggy now. For sure the game is still fun and super addictive with its steady flow of new content, but these jagged edges to the game keep it from being as truly great as its predecessor.

Trouble In Paradise retains all the good qualities of the original Viva Pinata and builds on them and adds absolutely no bad stuff in the process. All it does is add more depth, intrigue and satisfaction to the loop. Now you can capture Pinatas from Desert and Arctic regions and bring them back to your garden to satisfy their demands and add them to your garden permanently! And with Desert and Arctic Pinatas comes terrain like sand and snow, which you'll have to be mindful with placing in your garden because you wanna have some of it to satisfy the Desert and Arctic Pinatas who like it (and to attract some new Pinatas who might like it), but you also don't wanna turn off your typical normie grass-loving Pinatas! Roll with the times, hippies! Pot is ruining our youth!

The nasty stuff in Trouble In Paradise is far more problematic than it was in the original. Weeds are far more plentiful, they spawn from downed Sour Pinatas and plant themselves automatically if you don't destroy them quickly, becoming a nuisance in a variety of ways. Professor Pester is a problem in this game compared to the first, this motherfucker shows up on your doorstep so often you half expect him to start preaching the word of Jehovah. Luckily you can exploit the game pretty easily by building a fence in front of him and blocking him off your garden and possibly making him glitched and incapable of entering your garden ever again! Nice! Gotta love a good old glitch that actually improves your quality of life.

Even then, I'd argue that the more sinister aspects of Viva Pinata popping up more frequently in TiP works to the game's benefit. It makes the game more exciting, it keeps you on your toes and it's more satisfying to keep your garden in tip-top shape when you're actively having to overcome such adversity to do so. It's not like there aren't ways around these things! It's simply adding more elegant flourishes to the game's core loop.

This game has some real nice QOL improvements over the original too. Selling items to Lottie actually works now, you don't have to wait over an item you've clicked to sell for 2 seconds so the icon of her head pops up above it and you can be sure, you just push the button and you're good to go. You can set corners when digging a pond to create perfectly evened-out bodies of water, you can go straight to a Seed Bag or Fertiliser Bag from the wheel instead of having to go the shop for these items every time.

All the while, you're still getting these cute, charming animals thrown at you left and right in these adorable cutscenes, and there's a ton more added in TiP. Like, a ton more. Way more than I remembered. There's also tons more Pinata evolutions which - while still needlessly cryptic (and this would be my one real criticism of the game, that and some glitches) are pretty fuckin cool. Give your Rashberry a Cheesecake and he turns into a Warthog! Give your Doe a Fir Seed and she turns into a Moose! It's awesome just how many Pinatas feel like they have a distinct purpose now aside from just being your favourites that you wanna keep in your final garden. (This is furthered by the unblocking mechanic, where some Pinatas won't be able to enter your garden until some kind of roadblock is removed for them, which often requires you to have a certain amount of specific Pinatas in your garden to do so.)

A near-perfect sequel, one that only misses out by still being too cryptic and a bit too clearly low-budget in some places. Considering this game came out barely 2 years after the original though, it's still a really impressive effort. I think people who try and assert this game doesn't iterate enough on the original would do well to remember that. (Also there's literally a Desert and Arctic biome with brand new exclusive Pinatas that you TRAP??? Which is an entirely brand new mechanic in and of itself??? Also the original slapped so why fix what ain't broke???)

Anyway my favourite new Pinata is FLAPYAK