Viva Piñata: Pocket Paradise (Nintendo DS)

As you begin to accumulate more and more piñatas you’ll quickly find that there is not enough room for all their houses, which is a requirement if you want your piñatas to have baby piñatas, the game sort of takes care of that by increasing the size of your garden over time to accommodate these new piñatas but you will have to make a choice as to whether you want to keep the piñatas you have or get rid of them for newer ones.

As I said before the in game time is displayed on the top screen and like in real life determines time of day, as with most games the time moves faster than it would do in reality which when you first start out can make night times seem a little tedious as you’ll have nothing to do while your piñatas slumber the night away but that quickly changes as you get more and more piñatas the game begins to get extremely hectic during the daylight hours with pop-ups telling you you’ve done this and that along with offers to send your piñatas off to parties and my personal favourite when a pop-up takes you out of the game to give you yet another episode tutorial while you were trying to do something important.

One thing you begin to realise when playing this game is that it’s deep, and I mean as deep as the ocean deep, there’s an encyclopaedia full of information on all the piñatas in your garden and a piñata pyramid showing which piñatas you have and where they place on the pyramid. But the one thing that made me think “wow” was that certain piñatas will change their requirements from night to day thus making it easier/harder to get them to stay in your garden.

The touch interface is rather intuitive meaning gameplay is smooth and uninterrupted but only when you remain stationary, when on the move however, such as on a train or a bus you'll find the stylus based controls make it very difficult to accurately plant seeds or turn over specific portions of soil when you’re being rattled around on your way to work, but as a ‘play when you’re bored’ game at home it fills that need quite well.

Since the DS isn’t a power house of 3D graphical power don’t expect graphics anywhere near its 360 counterpart, the game is in 3D and most the piñatas look pretty darn good for the most part with only a few minor complaints being that the piñatas themselves look more like normal animals that lost a fight with Laurence Llewellyn Bowen in a putrid mix of garish colours but like I say the DS is no power house and the fact the game is in 3D at all with graphics that are more than half decent for the console it something I won’t purposely moan on about.

The title music is very upbeat and lively fitting into the whole age group the game is geared towards, other music tracks in the game seems to take a page from ‘The Sims’ with a more melodic elevator music kind of tone to it. Sounds in the FMV’s are a little distorted, this could be due to compression in the videos, and it isn’t really that noticeable unless you have headphones plugged in so it’s nothing really to worry about. In game sound effects are accurate and sound crisp and clear, everything from the shovel hitting some junk, to the eggs hatching all fit the game perfectly.

The game is rated U by the BBFC which I think maybe a little too low as the game text is unsuitable for younger players, the game can also get rather hectic at times with pop ups and icons flashing constantly all the time. But all that aside if you are looking for something a little different with a sense of depth to it then this game should be added to your list somewhere.