Post by Gilvan Blight on Jan 22, 2008 12:51:21 GMT -5
Quickly: Uber Cute and Uber Addictive
[glow=blue,2,300]Summary[/glow]This is a simulation style game set on a mystical island where all pinatas live (while they aren't being cannoned to various birthday parties around the world). You are the proud owner of a patch of dirt and junk in the middle of the island. After a quick introduction by Leefos one of the many NPC helpers in the game, you find out you are to take this piece of crap land and turn it into a beautiful garden. You start this by removing all the junk and loosening the soil. Soon after you start you will have a very cute Worm like Pinata in black and white come check out your land. If it likes it enough it will decide to move in, changing colour and acting all happy. That's when you find out the 'goal' of the game. You make a really cool garden to attract various pinata.
The way you do this is by doing an insane number of different things to your land. You can plant grass, plant long grass, plant a wide variety of fruits, plant trees, buy scenery (fences, paving stones, tiki torches, etc), dig lagoons, build houses for the pinata, and a ton more. Each pinata in the game has a certain requirement before it can be spotted. Spotted Pinatas show up and just check out your garden but don't actually enter your land. Then there is a requirement for pinata to Visit. If this is met the pinata will actually walk on your land in interact with your garden and the pinatas in it. The next set of requirements determine what the pinata needs to move in and become a resident of your garden. The last set of requirements are what that pinata requires in order to mate with another pinata of it's kind. These requirements are things like X% of your Garden being grass, Having 6 Daisy's Planted, Having eaten X number of Fruit, having eaten X pinata, etc. As the game progresses you basically develop your own little eco system with bigger pinatas eating the smaller ones, smaller ones eating flowers, flowers attacking bees, bees making honey which attracts... and so on.
To help you in your garden building are a wide variety of NPCs. There is the Leefos chick who gives you hints and helps you out, then a builder that will build homes for your pinatas (required for mating), A seller who sells fertilizer, seeds, plants, scenery and more, A doctor for taking care of sick pinatas, a hunter who will catch pinata for you, a mail person so you can ship stuff from your garden to another player over Xbox live, a house full of helpers, that later in the game you can hire to take care of some of the mundane tasks like watering plants and selling produce, and a Pet shop where you can buy funny accessories for your Pinatas.
All is not happy happy land though as there are bad pinatas that will visit your garden as well. From slug like creatures that poison your pinatas to bats that suck the candy out of your friends. There are even evil humans that will show up and smash things. Most of these are dealt with using a swift shovel hit to the head, but supposedly you can also tame these beasts and get them to join your garden.
Overall the game is a giant cute silly sandbox, with no real set goal, and no punishment for playing around. If you want to go around all day and whack your pinatas in the head with your shovel there is nothing stopping you. In general you will improve your garden to attact more pinata to raise the value of your garden. You can also raise the value of your pinata by keeping them happy, naming them, paying them attention, giving them accessories etc. Each garden and each pinata is given a rating which you can compair to other players worldwide through Xbox live. Though really there is no way to win, you can compare scores.
[glow=green,2,300]The Good[/glow]Uber cute great graphics. This game really does look great, and half of the joy is seeing a new pinata for the first time, how it moves, how it looks and how it acts. The game reminds me of a mix of Sim Life, Sim Ant and The Sims with just a touch of Theme Park thrown in, and that's a good thing. The open endedness of this is impressive, and this is one of the best sandbox style games I have seen. With no real set goals you can just have fun. The surprise factor is rather nice as well, when you build something new only to have something cool come and check it out it's all rather rewarding. This would be a great family game, as you can even 'share' the garden between family members. Really it's just a great sim game, and I love sim games. Also, my 6 month old daughter really loves the sounds and bright colours, which means she stays quiet while daddy players games and that's a definite bonus.
[glow=yellow,2,300]The bad[/glow]No time adjust. The game runs at a set speed and I find it too fast. Especially when you make a quick but big change to your garden, way too many things seem to happen too quickly. Right in the middle of say watering your new apple tree, three new pinatas will stop by to check it out, due to that you will level up, due to that you get a new shovel and due to that another new pinata shows up and due to that you get a new helper offering to work for you. This all great cool stuff, but rather annoying to have to sit through when all you are really worried about at that moment is watering your new tree before it withers. The pacing could use to be a bit slower, or even better let the player control it. Have speed up and slow down controls. We still can't figure out how to use Fertilizer, which makes me think the in game tutorials could use to be a bit better. There are a ton of them, and I realize that they want you to play and experiment, but some more details on what things are and what they are for would have been nice.
[glow=red,2,300]The Ugly:[/glow]It's hard to keep track of everything all at once as well. Especially when trying to mate a couple pinata and you can't find them, and while looking for them, some bad pinatas show up, which you have to stop and deal with then loosing the first pinata. Some type of top down point and click mode would have been cool, so you could better get where you need to be exactly quickly, while still having the normal interface for normal play when nothing is time critical. A quick select or something else would have worked as well, perhaps a button to cycle through each pinata. No way to skip cut scenes. This is only really bad when you start a second garden or end up watching people start new gardens, there are some things that you only need to see once, and there is no way to skip them. This was painful for us as I had played the Demo, then bought the game and Pandora started playing, then the next day I started playing. I've seen the worm romance dance far too many times in too short a time period. I also found some of the romance games for the lvl 3 and above pinatas a bit too difficult. Sure they were doable, but in a Sim style game I shouldn't have my manual dex taxed that well. Lastly: there is the same problem every game like this has, it's addictive. The last couple nights I have missed too many hours sleep due to this game already and I have really just filled my garden for the first time, I expect more sleep deprivation to come. There's always that 'need' to finish just one more thing.
[glow=purple,2,300]Overall[/glow]A great sim game. Even my bad and uglies above are really just minor gripes. There is way more good to make up for the bit of bad. You can find this game new at Best Buy for $15 right now, and if you have a 360 and don't already own it I suggest you pick it up unless you just hate Sim/sandbox style games.
[glow=blue,2,300]Summary[/glow]This is a simulation style game set on a mystical island where all pinatas live (while they aren't being cannoned to various birthday parties around the world). You are the proud owner of a patch of dirt and junk in the middle of the island. After a quick introduction by Leefos one of the many NPC helpers in the game, you find out you are to take this piece of crap land and turn it into a beautiful garden. You start this by removing all the junk and loosening the soil. Soon after you start you will have a very cute Worm like Pinata in black and white come check out your land. If it likes it enough it will decide to move in, changing colour and acting all happy. That's when you find out the 'goal' of the game. You make a really cool garden to attract various pinata.
The way you do this is by doing an insane number of different things to your land. You can plant grass, plant long grass, plant a wide variety of fruits, plant trees, buy scenery (fences, paving stones, tiki torches, etc), dig lagoons, build houses for the pinata, and a ton more. Each pinata in the game has a certain requirement before it can be spotted. Spotted Pinatas show up and just check out your garden but don't actually enter your land. Then there is a requirement for pinata to Visit. If this is met the pinata will actually walk on your land in interact with your garden and the pinatas in it. The next set of requirements determine what the pinata needs to move in and become a resident of your garden. The last set of requirements are what that pinata requires in order to mate with another pinata of it's kind. These requirements are things like X% of your Garden being grass, Having 6 Daisy's Planted, Having eaten X number of Fruit, having eaten X pinata, etc. As the game progresses you basically develop your own little eco system with bigger pinatas eating the smaller ones, smaller ones eating flowers, flowers attacking bees, bees making honey which attracts... and so on.
To help you in your garden building are a wide variety of NPCs. There is the Leefos chick who gives you hints and helps you out, then a builder that will build homes for your pinatas (required for mating), A seller who sells fertilizer, seeds, plants, scenery and more, A doctor for taking care of sick pinatas, a hunter who will catch pinata for you, a mail person so you can ship stuff from your garden to another player over Xbox live, a house full of helpers, that later in the game you can hire to take care of some of the mundane tasks like watering plants and selling produce, and a Pet shop where you can buy funny accessories for your Pinatas.
All is not happy happy land though as there are bad pinatas that will visit your garden as well. From slug like creatures that poison your pinatas to bats that suck the candy out of your friends. There are even evil humans that will show up and smash things. Most of these are dealt with using a swift shovel hit to the head, but supposedly you can also tame these beasts and get them to join your garden.
Overall the game is a giant cute silly sandbox, with no real set goal, and no punishment for playing around. If you want to go around all day and whack your pinatas in the head with your shovel there is nothing stopping you. In general you will improve your garden to attact more pinata to raise the value of your garden. You can also raise the value of your pinata by keeping them happy, naming them, paying them attention, giving them accessories etc. Each garden and each pinata is given a rating which you can compair to other players worldwide through Xbox live. Though really there is no way to win, you can compare scores.
[glow=green,2,300]The Good[/glow]Uber cute great graphics. This game really does look great, and half of the joy is seeing a new pinata for the first time, how it moves, how it looks and how it acts. The game reminds me of a mix of Sim Life, Sim Ant and The Sims with just a touch of Theme Park thrown in, and that's a good thing. The open endedness of this is impressive, and this is one of the best sandbox style games I have seen. With no real set goals you can just have fun. The surprise factor is rather nice as well, when you build something new only to have something cool come and check it out it's all rather rewarding. This would be a great family game, as you can even 'share' the garden between family members. Really it's just a great sim game, and I love sim games. Also, my 6 month old daughter really loves the sounds and bright colours, which means she stays quiet while daddy players games and that's a definite bonus.
[glow=yellow,2,300]The bad[/glow]No time adjust. The game runs at a set speed and I find it too fast. Especially when you make a quick but big change to your garden, way too many things seem to happen too quickly. Right in the middle of say watering your new apple tree, three new pinatas will stop by to check it out, due to that you will level up, due to that you get a new shovel and due to that another new pinata shows up and due to that you get a new helper offering to work for you. This all great cool stuff, but rather annoying to have to sit through when all you are really worried about at that moment is watering your new tree before it withers. The pacing could use to be a bit slower, or even better let the player control it. Have speed up and slow down controls. We still can't figure out how to use Fertilizer, which makes me think the in game tutorials could use to be a bit better. There are a ton of them, and I realize that they want you to play and experiment, but some more details on what things are and what they are for would have been nice.
[glow=red,2,300]The Ugly:[/glow]It's hard to keep track of everything all at once as well. Especially when trying to mate a couple pinata and you can't find them, and while looking for them, some bad pinatas show up, which you have to stop and deal with then loosing the first pinata. Some type of top down point and click mode would have been cool, so you could better get where you need to be exactly quickly, while still having the normal interface for normal play when nothing is time critical. A quick select or something else would have worked as well, perhaps a button to cycle through each pinata. No way to skip cut scenes. This is only really bad when you start a second garden or end up watching people start new gardens, there are some things that you only need to see once, and there is no way to skip them. This was painful for us as I had played the Demo, then bought the game and Pandora started playing, then the next day I started playing. I've seen the worm romance dance far too many times in too short a time period. I also found some of the romance games for the lvl 3 and above pinatas a bit too difficult. Sure they were doable, but in a Sim style game I shouldn't have my manual dex taxed that well. Lastly: there is the same problem every game like this has, it's addictive. The last couple nights I have missed too many hours sleep due to this game already and I have really just filled my garden for the first time, I expect more sleep deprivation to come. There's always that 'need' to finish just one more thing.
[glow=purple,2,300]Overall[/glow]A great sim game. Even my bad and uglies above are really just minor gripes. There is way more good to make up for the bit of bad. You can find this game new at Best Buy for $15 right now, and if you have a 360 and don't already own it I suggest you pick it up unless you just hate Sim/sandbox style games.