Viva Pinata

E3 2006 First Look Preview

Last year marked the true debut of Rare in terms of providing Microsoft’s consoles with real content (sorry fanboys, but ghoulies and a remake of an N64 game don’t really cut the mustard), with the debut of the oft-delayed Kameo and the, well, oft-delayed Perfect Dark: Zero. While these titles received somewhat mixed reactions critically and commercially, it still marked the return of Rare as a viable development house.

Viva Piñata is the next title from Rare for the Xbox 360, and it’s not exactly what you’d expect. Drawing together elements from Animal Crossing, The Sims, Nintendogs and several other quirky titles, Viva Piñata has you building up a colony of little piñata type creatures and mating them to make more little piñata type creatures. With the massive potential of Xbox Live to outfit your piñatas with new accessories and couple them with other people’s piñatas from around the globe, Viva Piñata could be just the unique and quirky title that the 360 needs and is sorely lacking.

Viva Piñata requires you to take care of your piñatas, basically nurturing them along in their development so they can grow up big and strong and make little piñatas. When you try to mate your piñatas a little mini-game ensues where you must guide the piñata to his mate and get them together. Once together, they’ll disappear into a house for a little bit to do the devil’s bidness. When they emerge, they’ll have a brand new youngster in tow for you to shape as you see fit.

The mini-games are different for the many kinds of piñatas in the game, so you can play through a variety of them whenever you want to get your piñatas together. The different piñata types will also do a little romantic dance when they hook up, unique to the type of piñata.

Viva piñata is gearing up to be an impressive little game with great customizing elements and huge online potential.

For All E3 2006 Previews