Viva Piñata

Best For: Ages 10 and Up
ESRB Rating: E for Everyone
Genre: Simulation
Available For: Xbox 360
# of Players: 1
Fun Factor: 4 out of 5

"Viva Piñata! Filled with fun!" You'll have a hard time getting that theme song out of your head if you pick up Microsoft's first real foray into kid's gaming on the Xbox 360. Skip the ABC Kids TV show of the same name. On TV, Viva Piñata is trite, silly, and unremarkable. On the 360, Viva Piñata is wild, inventive, educational and a terrific buy for parents of brainy kids.

Viva Piñata isn't an action game -- it's more like Animal Crossing on the GameCube or Dual Screen systems, or The Sims on PC (all excellent options for non-360 owners). You play an omniscient gardener. With quirky characters as your guides, you'll dig out your garden, attract critters, make conditions viable for them to mate, and allow the rest of the game to unfold in front of you. The creatures, all piñatas of course, are beautiful and rendered in high-definition. They act independently, but you can intervene in their world by planting seeds, fending off predators, and altering the terrain to attract more creatures. You can even breed them and sell them off the surplus. Each creature that makes a home on your land can be given a unique name.

Parents take note: Unlike most of these kinds of games, the circle of life plays a role here and developer Rare didn't pull the punch. Your kids might not like it when a sparrow hawk decides to feast on a newly hatched worm, but they'll delight when they learn that eating a worm is what a sparrow hawk needs to do to hatch a new baby sparrow hawk. Creatures fight, but it isn't violent. Seeing them explode into (what else?) candy, is both amusing and disturbing at the same time. The game also requires a curious mind and long attention span. Some kids are bound to find it boring.

Filled with fun, enchantment, a wicked sense of humor, and abundant sense of taste and style, Viva Piñata offers almost limitless replayability for kids old enough to navigate the complicated menus, which is why we recommend it for 10 and up.

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