Sep
Last night I started playing Viva Pinata. It had been on my list of games to try, and when I found out that my company has an internal game library for us to borrow from, I promptly checked the game out. I brought it home and dropped it into my Xbox 360 with the intention of playing for an hour and then maybe getting a little WoW time in.
Over three hours later, I finally dragged myself away and went to bed past my bedtime. All day I was thinking about the game and excited to play it again tonight. It’s a game for children and adults too. I guess it maybe has the same sort of appeal as Animal Crossing, though I had a terrible experience with that game and cringe at the thought of it. Maybe I’ll share that story some day, but anyways, Viva Pinata is also a game that isn’t really a game, per-se. You don’t exactly have a goal, you just are trying to make a pretty garden and attract bigger and better pinatas. You’re controls are to dig holes and plant seeds, make a pond, plant grass, and to instruct pinatas to eat things. You can buy different things as well, but that’s the gist of it. Different pinatas are attracted by different things in your garden, like having enough water, or having carrots, or even having specific other pinatas (because they do eat each other!).
Yesterday it was always clear what to do next. I was cruising through and always had something bigger and better to do next. But today things were tougher. I couldn’t attract any new pinatas. Or I’d finally get one to come visit and a mean evil pinata would stomp through and kill it before I could make it move in. After a bunch of struggle I felt like I just barely took one step forward after a couple hours of play where as yesterday I ran a practical marathon of progress! Maybe I just suck! Who knows, but my enthusiasm has already waned. And yesterday I unlocked 6 achievements and today I only got 2. Yesterday I got 2 little “yay, you unlocked achievement” MOVIES and today, zilcho. Sad.
We’ll see if I pick up excitement as I get the cuter animals into my garden. I have mostly birds and butterflies and insects right now. And one annoying fox-type critter who I named Ralph who keeps attacking all my other pinatas. He’s wreaking havoc on my gentle little world but he’s my first named pinata and he’s my buddy! I don’t want to have to whack him (and by that I mean hit him repeatedly with my shovel until he bursts open, yes whack him, and he is no more), but if he keeps up his bad behavior I don’t know what choice I have! Oh, the dilemma.
So I’m maybe not as obsessed with the game as I was this morning, but it’s still good. And it’s only $20 right now, so I will probably buy it, because it’s worth $20, no question. But maybe that burst of crazed excitement was just a puppy love and now I’ll settle into a more comfortable friendship with the game.