Rare’s hit virtual living piñata simulation is now available in pocket size on the Nintendo DS. But is it filled with as much fun as the bigger Xbox 360 version? Read on to find out.

The answer is a big YES! Viva Pinata works surprisingly well on the DS, and in some ways plays even better, too! While Viva Pinata is a free-roaming, do whatever you want kind of game, your main goal is to plant a garden to attract all sorts of piñata animal visitors. Sparrowmints, Fudgehogs, Fizzlybears, all your favorites. Encourage piñatas to live in your garden, and even build them houses to live in. You can even breed your piñatas, but don’t worry, this isn’t sex education class. The piñatas just do a little ‘romance dance’ and poof, you get a baby piñata egg. But watch out! Pests can enter your garden to cause damage, and some piñata animals don’t get along with others and may start a fight. It’s like your own little piñata ecosystem inside your DS.

Even though Pocket Paradise doesn’t have the beautiful 3-D graphics of its bigger Xbox 360 cousin, the touch screen and stylus control makes planting your garden and managing your piñatas so much easier, and even tedious tasks on the 360 version aren’t so bad here. Use the shovel to till dirt and dig holes for ponds, and the watering can to soak your plants. Of course these tools have other uses, too. Viva Pinata DS has some great interactive tutorials to help get you started, and later there’s more advanced ones to help you make the most of your garden. In fact, after playing the DS game, I have a much better understanding of some of the gardening tips that I never even knew about in the 360 title.

It’s amazing how much retained from the 360 to the DS Pinata game. All the tools, shops, piñatas, etc. They even crammed every romance dance video clips PLUS snippets from the Viva Pinata Saturday morning cartoon show! Through Xbox Live, 360 Pinata owners could even trade and give away piñatas over the Internet, and you can kind of do that with the DS version, too. Except here you can only trade wirelessly locally with a friend who has a DS and a copy of Pocket Paradise. Unfortunately, the main problems with the 360 Viva Pinata game are present here, too. It can be hard to manage a full garden when pests and piñata fights happen all at once, and it can ruin a lot of what you worked so hard on. But even so, Viva Pinata: Pocket Paradise is a very solid rendition of the Xbox 360 favorite.

Kid Factor:
Viva Pinata: Pocket Paradise is rated E for Everyone with the ESRB descriptor of Comic Mischief. The piñatas may get into fights, but the loser only gets busted open and candy spills out. No one dies or gets hurt, really. Viva Pinata is best for older kid gamers, though, as strong reading and multitasking skills are a must. Fortunately for younger fans, Pocket Paradise has a Playground mode where they can play around with gardening and all the piñatas without worry of cash and other requirements.

The Other Games in the Viva Pinata Family:
While I’m talking about Viva Pinata on the DS, I figured I’d go ahead and give my brief opinions on the other games in the series, just for fun! All the following games are for the Xbox 360, by the way.

Viva Pinata
The initial game in the series was one of the first games on the 360 that actually grabbed my interest. It came out a couple of years ago, and last year when I finally got an Xbox 360, Viva Pinata was one of the first games I got for it. Luckily, it had been out long enough that I was able to get it super cheap. It’s a pretty neat little game, but it certainly has its problems as well. Mainly that garden work is tedious and it’s hard to keep track of all the warnings when pests and fights break out in your garden.

Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise
This ‘sequel’ recently came out a few weeks ago, and I got it for my birthday. It’s pretty fun, but overall I’m disappointed with it. While they did add a few things like being able to trap piñatas in other regions and such, there’s not enough new things to make it feel like a sequel. More like an expansion pack, really. Not even the graphics have changed. It somehow feels less rewarding, too. For those reasons, if you’ve never played a Viva Pinata game before, I say go with the first one. It’s MUCH cheaper, and the improvements in the sequel are minimal. Only good thing is that for younger players, the sequel offers a few good modes for them. One, two players can manage a garden at once, so a younger player can help out an older one. Plus, it also has a Playground Mode like the DS version has.

Viva Pinata: Party Animals
This party game takes characters from the Viva Pinata Saturday morning cartoon show and pits them in min-game and racing competitions. It’s like a cross between Mario Party and Mario Kart. It’s neither as good as the two, though. Reviewers panned it when it came out last year, but I liked it pretty well. Especially since I waited until the price went way down. Plus you can play online. I recommend this one for young Viva Pinata fans, too, as it’s pretty simple to figure out. Get it if you can find it cheap!

Tags: Game Reviews