Status maeday Apr 20, 2021
As I said in my previous post, Viva Pinata had two major titles to its name. This is because outside the original and its sequel, "Trouble In Paradise", it started to shift more towards poorly made spin offs like the DS version or the utterly incomprehensible Party Animals title that essentially wanted to be a Mario Party clone. I feel …
As I said in my previous post, Viva Pinata had two major titles to its name. This is because outside the original and its sequel, "Trouble In Paradise", it started to shift more towards poorly made spin offs like the DS version or the utterly incomprehensible Party Animals title that essentially wanted to be a Mario Party clone. I feel like Viva Pinata didn't know which route to stick to. They clearly wanted it to be a major successful franchise for the console, but obviously - especially back when the original came out, not so much the case these days what with success of Stardew, Slime Rancher and the like - it was a very complex and somewhat new sort of game for its time.
A pseudo farming simulator that focused on raising pinatas? And hell, having 100% it, you needed a goddamned spreadsheet at times to do everything just right. It was certainly, despite being super kid friendly in every way, was barely for kids just because of its absolutely absurd and often times tedious sort of gameplay. Had it been released in the last few years, I think it would be a super successful title now that that sort of genre has really caught on, but alas this isn't the case.
So seeing it not do super well (I know it sold well enough to become a platinum title but it obviously didn't have much staying power beyond the initial release, otherwise we'd have more), I think they instead chose to branch out and try to make it a party game that did appeal more to children and casual gamers, which really only sacrificed it all the more. It sucks because games like it and De Blob were basically rarities among those years for being light hearted and colorful, instead of grey and cold. I do really hope that Viva Pinata gets revitalized at some point in the future, lord knows Rare is still around and I sincerely hope we see it return from the ashes.
But if not, at least we got, what I consider to be at least, one of the most original games ever made.
