Viva Piñata!

I've been able to import a new game before the scheduled 1st Dec UK launch. Viva Piñata is quite possibly the polar opposite of anything I’ve been playing in the last couple of weeks. From Gears of War's ambitious urban settings and slaying a Locus horde to last night when I spent an hour trying to convince two little Piñata birds to bang each other (or as they call it 'Romancing') to make more cute little chicks.

I've barely scratched the surface, but as far as I can gather I'm an enterprising gardener with a penchant for Piñata. To begin with it asked me for the name of my new plot of land. After careful thought I decided upon the name "The Kingdom of Smiles" as not to alienate the online community with something vulgar - I'll save those for my Piñata names. The first resident; a tiny Piñata called Whirm wandered into my garden. I took the opportunity to rename the cute little wormy thing to Spaz and he pottered about making odd snuffling noises while I acclimatised myself with the simple controls.

Spaz occupied himself and explored the garden until another worm came along, imaginatively called Whirm2; so I renamed him Spack and they got on like a house on fire. I was offered a tutorial on how to build Spack and Spaz a little house made of pipes but excited at the prospect I skipped through it and was left confused at well, lets face it - a children’s game. It turns out the Whirms would need a home to begin the 'romancing' side to the game so I was definitely interested in this. After trawling through all 4 available pages of the ever-expanding Journal, I managed to get a kind man to build the Whirms a home to start what in my mind was some sort of pornographic worm dungeon love. In actuality their 'Romancing' was played out through a sweet dance which if true, I've probably fathered many a child in the early 90s during all those school dances.

During the creation I was distracted by a new resident arriving and totally forgot about the Whirm 'Romancing' project I’d started. Maybe I figured they were getting on so well that I’d lost interest anyway. The new arrival was a little bird that seemed pretty reluctant to stay awake even during the daytime. The extent of his laziness is still the bane of the Kingdom of Smiles as he simply won't show any interest in 'doing' the other bird that turned up minutes later. I've tried different approaches, pushing them together, buying them a home, even showing them a crude demonstration using the cursor but the buggers won't even gain eye contact.

In any case, Viva Piñata seems to be a great game. I'm enjoying its total change of pace when stacked up against the epic Gears of War. Seriously, if Amazon had an ounce of sense they'd offer this as one of their 'Perfect Partners' and they'd sell plenty more in the run up to Christmas. I like the idea of using this game as a cunning excuse to buy an XBOX360 for people who have young kids too, I certainly would choose this avenue of deceit if I had a child and hadn't have already splurged £300+ on one.

Without a doubt, Viva Piñata’s one of the more surprising flagship titles to turnout my wallet this year, t'is good.