Viva Pinata: Pocket Paradise Review

Viva Pinata: Pocket Paradise, is the DS version of THQ’s Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise for the 360. You are on an island with different vegetation and litter scattered about. Your job is to take your small patch of land that is given to you, clean it up and to fulfill the requirements to keep the pinatas on your land and flourishing.

As you succeed in the game, your garden grows in size, which in turn gives you more land to give different species of the pinatas to have families and grow.

There are three different modes to Viva Pinata: Pocket Paradise. The main mode gives you a garden and not much else. Playground can be used to give you a chance to build a full garden with all the species and characters up to that point, that you have unlocked. I may have noted Episodes last, but really it should be your first stop as it will guide you through a series of tutorials.

Once you’ve gotten your garden built,  the pinatas will come. When they come it is your responsibility to make sure they are taken care of and fill the requirements so you can grow, level up and get into different pinatas.  You can start to breed them and either choose to sell them, feed them to other Pinata, or use them for a few other purposes that pop up later in the game, like the Pinata Party service. Breeding plays out in pretty much the same way as making them residents, by meeting certain requirements that are laid out in your encyclopedia that you can reference at any point in the game, which will detail all the information you need to know about any Pinata you’ve encountered so far.

To help you to create the ultimate Pinata utopia, you can call on a few other local residents that will provide you with seeds, medical care for ailing Pinata, shop services where you can buy various items, and even a local builder that can create "love shacks" for your Pinata to mate in. All of this should be really familiar territory to previous Viva Pinata players, and for the most part it seems like everything works out the same way on the DS as it did on the 360.

The graphics obviously are not as good as its "big brother" on the 360 but this version does a good job keeping the colorful and bright world alive. The stylus controls are very easy and you should be able to pick them up relatively quickly.  The menus are simple and honestly I think it’s easier to control on the DS than the Xbox 360.  Musically, it’s taken directly from the first version so it might not be original, those of you who have played the game will feel right at home.

I couldn’t find much to complain about this port as it feels just as comfortable on the DS as it did on the 360.  If you liked the original, you will really like this one.