A wonderful, magical game.
Viva Piñata is set on Piñata Island, a fantastical world inhabited solely by paper-mache fauna. You are entrusted a small patch of land by Leafos, a helper, and from there you set off to emulate the once great Jardiniero's legendary piñata garden.
Starting with a little patch of dirt, you are given a watering can and a spade and left mostly to your own devices. You will get a lot of training at the start, but the rate at which your garden improves means that you'll soon be leading the hectic life of a gardener who just has far too much to be dealing with. You'll have to attract new species by designing your garden to get them to stay, and then meeting their demands so that they will procreate. Doing these tasks will increase your level and title, and this will in turn increase your garden size, allowing for you to attract and house further species, and carry on in that manner until you've developed the best garden possible. The structure does become a little stale after about 15 hours, but is also nightmarishly addictive, so you probably won't notice.
There many other little facets to the gameplay that add a greater sense of freedom to the game. For one, you can hire staff once you earn enough chocolate coins to do the odd jobs around your garden, thus freeing up your precious time for more pressing matters. You can also plant flowers and trees to either attract new species, or in order to create a stable cash crop. There are also competitions, hybrid species to breed and the opportunity to create valuable piñatas and gardens.
All of these micro management aspects of the game are at a polar opposite to the saccharine nature of Viva Piñata's presentation. Look up the term "Light Bloom" in a technical dictionary and more than likely you'll see one of the piñatas toothy grins staring right back at you. When the sun is shining down on Piñata Island, everything glows, so much so that it seems that the Island is set near the abandoned nuclear site of Chernobyl. The piñatas themselves are vibrantly coloured and intricately detailed, with the piñatas and helpers convey a level of imagination that Rareware are world famous for.
Piñata Island is a rather serene and tranquil place, and aside from the few chirps of all the piñatas around the place, there isn't any sound pollution, helping to emphasise the peaceful side of the island.
Sims are famous for their addictive nature and Viva Piñata is no different, probably in no small part due to the achievement points. All of them are worth 20 points each, and all are easily attainable with enough dedication and hard work that comes with any gardening job. There isn't a limit per-se on how many hours you might spend with Viva Piñata, and a drive to attain the best garden and rarest piñatas will spur the more avid players to spend as many hours as possible on their little plots of land.
Closing comments: Viva Piñata is a truly magical game which should not be missed by any 360 fan looking for something completely different.