- Huge variety of exciting mini-games
- Engaging gameplay for people of every age
- Bright, detailed and inviting graphics
- Great online play – up to four players can play in one room, or join a game on Xbox Live
Product Description
Item #: N25546. Compete in a variety of zany battles and races in the social party game Viva Pinata: Party Animals. Control the fame, fortune, and destiny of all your favorite characters from Viva Pinata: Fergy Fudgehog, Paulie Pretztail, Franklin Fizzlybear, and Hudson Horstachio. It’s party time! Product Description: Viva Pinata Party Animals – complete package
Category: Games
Subcategory: Games – simulation
License Type: Complete package
ESRB Rating: … More >>
If you are familar with the Mario Party concept, you are familar with this game! If not, here you go: it is basically a set of head-to-head minigames. The concept is pretty simple. You start off with a race (there are seven different courses) and then you can play between one to three mini games (your choice) after each race. You can also choose the number of times you race, etc. There is a large number of mini games: more and more are unlocked as you play the game. Up to four people can play at a time.
As to the game, I will let my ten year old daughter take over: “This game is really fun. Because they have some funny comments and funny mini games. After each race, two pinates say funny jokes and the pinatas have funny dances and say funny things when they win. I think this game is good for kids between 6 and 13. My dad thinks it is fun too and he is forty something.”
I should add that this game is entirely appropiate for any age range. If your kids like Viva Pinata, they will also like this game. Enjoy!
Rating: 4 / 5
Great fun! But very different from the original. This is a bunch of mini competitions. The kids love playing against eachother. The graphics are good. My only complaint is there is too much talking in between the games and the pinata’s don’t always do what your controller is telling it to. But other than that i would reccomend it. My kids 4-10 love it!
Rating: 4 / 5
I originally purchased this game because my fiancee loves Mario Party for the N64, and I wanted to get a game for our 360 that she would enjoy as much. After searching around for a little while, I found Viva Pinata Party Animals. I read several reviews of people comparing it to Mario Party, so I purchased it from Amazon.
After playing, I can say that the game is a nice attempt to recreate a Mario Party-like game, and while fun, it ultimately isn’t as good.
For starters, the way the entire game is set up is that you do a race followed by 1-3 mini-game challenges. 3 is the highest number of mini-games you can do per race, so if you want to have a lengthy game, you’re going to be doing 5-7 races just to get enough mini-games to be fun. I would have preferred the ability to play more games per race, or possibly even just make the races a mini-game themselves.
Which brings me to the races: they’re fun, but pretty much pointless and easy for one player to dominate. It seems that no matter who I’m playing with, I win every single race. And yes, perhaps I’m better at it than everyone else because I’m a fairly seasoned gamer, but I think a game like this should be about equal for everyone, regardless of gaming experience. That’s what makes party games fun – no one wins all the time.
One thing that I like about Mario Party that’s missing from Party Animals is the game board itself. The way Party Animals is played is that you do a race followed by 1-3 mini-games, and the characters get different amounts of candy for getting 1st-4th place, and the person at the end of the game that has the most candy wins, etc. You miss the nice luck/random chance element that comes with rolling the dice and being subject to wherever you land. In that sense, Party Animals plays less like a board game with some mini-games thrown in and more like a bunch of mini-games back to back.
For example, in Mario Party, you can land on Bowser and he might either take away a star or all your coins, which can move you from first to last place. In Party Animals, once you have your candy, it can’t be taken away. Once someone pulls ahead of the pack, it’s pretty hard to catch them.
Speaking of the mini-games, let’s talk about those now. There is a nice variety, although several of them are very similar. You have some shooting games, where you have a reticule and you aim to shoot moving targets, some games where you have to press buttons in rapid succession to match a pattern you just watched, some games that involve hitting pinata stars with bats to burst them open, games that are simply about reflexes, counting games, games where you have to fight everyone else off to collect the most candy, and several other types. Each type of game has 2-4 varieties, not all of which are very different.
Overall, I’d say that Viva Pinata Party Animals is a great start for party games on the 360, but we need to refine this formula and produce more games that are a little bit closer to the Mario Party style. Not that I simply want a Mario Party for 360 – I want something new and different. However, I think Mario Party has set a good bar for game makers to reach for when making party games.
Don’t let my negative statements about this game make you think that it’s not fun to play, as it still is. Notice that I did still give it 4 stars. If you enjoy party games, this is definitely worth checking out.
Rating: 4 / 5
The first thing to note about this game is that the camera angles and controls are awful. I didn’t try playing it with other people because I am lame and have no friends, but playing alone was rediculous and boring. If you are a solo gamer who is a fan of regular Viva Pinata games I still dont reccommend this. If you have a Wii get a Mario Party game if you want to play something with friends or your kids. If you need a party game for your XBOX 360 get Rockband instead.
Rating: 1 / 5
What this game offers over the original Viva Pinata game is that it includes the actual characters from the Viva Pinata television series. You get variations on characters — their alter egos, if you think about — in both male and female versions, such as Fergie and Francine, as examples. The voices are a perfect match, and the pre-race and post-race commentary is exactly what you would expect from Viva Pinata.
This game, however, gets very repetitive, very quickly. After the first hour into the game, it became fairly obvious that there isn’t much to the game. For the most part, you pick a “length”, and that decision determines the number of races and challenges that you must complete. Once you complete a race, you complete one or more challenges, which are mini games that mostly involve button-mashing. Honestly, the “short” length is just the right length, with any other length getting extremely tedious. The game randomly picks the challenges, so you have no control over the sequence. In fact, during a medium-length game, I had to play the same challenge twice between two races. This gave me the opportunity to practice, of course, but the game should be able to track the challenges between races to avoid duplication and subsequent boredom.
From a control perspective, this game is a mixed bag. The races are easy to play, although my 7-year old daughter complained about the controls being too difficult for her. The mini-game challenges are a completely different story. Before each challenge, there is a summary screen that explains the controls and goals for the selected challenge. The game makes an effort, at times, to display on-screen control tips during the challenge (especially during any challenge that involves drinking soda and burping). But some of the “run and smash” challenges are difficult to control, and aiming in many of the shooting and smashing challenges is tough. At times, things are so frantic, you can’t keep track of your own score and you don’t even know if you’re getting it right. Sometimes I’m surprised when I win the challenge.
What I like about this game are the achievements, which are quite creative and somewhat challenging to obtain. Although after an hour, you might unlock 20% of the achievements, there are quite a few that will require some creativity to unlock. It’s not just about winning, all the time.
If it weren’t for the multi-player (offline and online) aspect of this game, I probably would not recommend it. Fortunately, it has good replay value because of its multi-player modes. I would not recommend it for children younger than 9 or 10, since the controls are not always intuitive. It’s a fun game with a few issues that make it less than perfect.
Rating: 3 / 5