The Mother series of games is a big deal to RPGers. Known as the Earthbound series in the United States, these role-playing games are not another thud-and-blunder series, but instead are set in the West, albeit from a Japanese point of view. Enemies range from aliens to hippies, your weapon is more like to be a Star Tropic-al yo-yo than a sword. The series started in 1989 with the Japan only release of Mother for the Famicom. The second game in the series was released in the U.S. as EarthBound for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in 1995.
Mother 3 was in development for 12 years before it was released in Japan in April 2006 for the GBA. Ostensibly the most popular title of the series, it is similar to Dragon Quest IV in that it divides the tale up into several chapters. Each chapter features different characters whose stories all tie together in the end. The original game received a 35/40 from Famitsu Magazineand sold 205,914 copies in its first 3 days on sale.
Hello, World!
Earthbound 3 was announced as an N64 title, but was scrapped. Ever since, fans have been clamoring for an English version. As of today, they need clamor no more. A group of talented fan programmers known as Starmen.Net have translated and patched the entire game. After two years of work, the translation patch was finally released today, October 17, 2008. Any fan with the ROM can run the patch and enjoy Mother 3’s humor in English. I intend to do just that this weekend and give a full review on Monday.
Well, if by “queen” you mean “zombie nurses”, and if by “gun”, you mean Pyramidhead and his giant sword, then yes. Silent Hill is back, and everything old and creepy is new and creepy again. This time your protagonist is Alex Shepherd, a young solider returning from war to the psychotic battlefield of his hometown of Shepherd’s Glen. The sleepy little town is, of course, overrun by the Silent Hill cult and overrun with the kind of creatures that would squick out H.P. Lovecraft.
Oh hai...
Homecoming marks a change in guard for the series. Instead of being made in Japan, Silent Hill: Homecoming was to be the first in the series produced by a Western developer called The Collective. That was almost the case, except that The Collective had merged with Backbone Entertainment in 2005 to form Foundation 9 Entertainment, and Foundation 9 then merged The Collective with Shiny Entertainment to create Double Helix Games. Silent Hill: Homecoming is a Double Helix production.
Double Helix draws heavily on Silent Hill and Silent Hill 2 for this outing. Most of your classic terrors are there (i.e. Pyramidhead and his sexually abused nurses). In a twist that usually doesn’t work, however, Double Helix adapted some things from the Silent Hill movie. For example, the “tearing” sound when you slip between worlds is straight out of the film, as is the nurses’ reaction to light.
With all of these homages, it should come as no surprise that Silent Hill:Homecoming plays more like a Greatest Hits disc than a new game in the series. The visuals are sharp, the voice acting is reasonable, and the controls are a big improvement from Silent Hill IV: The Room. Silent Hill fans may find themselves playing through looking for a twist that never comes, however. The interactions with classic series antagonists are creepy, but don’t get under your skin the way they did the first time you saw them. And forget about save points. The save system is a ruthless checkpoint system married to a “find the glyph” save point. Prepare to lose time and effort here.
They kept the glyph, but not the title.
Silent Hill: Homecoming is a darn sight better than Silent Hill IV, and is a welcome addition to series fans who have ben waiting to get their Hill on for so long. It’s also not a bad entry point into the series for someone who has heard about Silent Hill, but never played. Just don’t expect anything revolutionary.
For being a solid, creepy game with good visuals, voice acting and controls, Silent Hill: Homecoming gets 4 Weiners out of 5
Welcome back, Blue Bomber. Forget Mega Man X, Mega Man Tutu Adventures, Rush eXtREME, and the rest. Mega Man 9 is the real deal. 8-bit graphics, delightfully tinny rock music, and punishing gameplay. Authentic flicker options complete the thing, making Mega Man 9 a worthy and true sequel.
For those of you who weren’t around or paying attention in “the old days”, Mega Man is a little blue robot designed by the wonderful Dr. Light. He starts out by shooting little power pellets at his enemies as he leaps and bounds through painfully difficult platforming levels. At the end of each level is another robot, this one designed by the Evil Dr. Wily. When Mega Man defeats these evil robots, he acquires their sweet, sweet power. There’s a dog, too. Rush, Mega Man’s canine companion starts with the ability to spring you to new heights, but can gain the abilities to race you across spikes and more.
Exciting new "box art"!
Mega Man has always been part shooter, part platformer, and part puzzler, and MM9 is no exception.There is a “best” way to make it through the game in that some powers are designed to make traversing other levels much easier. I won’t give away too much here, but isn’t Galaxy Man’s board shiny?
All of this is not to say that there is nothing new under the pixellated sun. This time around, Mega Man can collect screws that he can trade to his buddies Auto and Roll for power ups, including Shock Guards and Beat Calls, which will allow you to avoid one spiky death and and pitfall per purchase. There are also a number of challenges, ala XBox Achievements, such as “Complete the game in 90 minutes” and “Don’t miss with the Mega Buster and finish the game”. Yes, its layering brutality on top of brutality, but isn’t it fun?
The first lady robot in the series and she's a mermaid.
In general, MM9 lets you party like its 1989 for only 1000 Wii Points and all the hair you can yank out of your skull while playing. If you have any left, that is. Apparently I’m old, because when I started playing MM9 in front of some of my late 80s baby friends, they began to giggle and squeal that the graphics were so blocky and the music was so annoying, and why did I keep dying? After I threw them out of my house, I continued to enjoy myself, and decided to give Mega Man 9 four weiners out of five.
The day has come, Weiner fans. This is my first 1 Weiner out of 5. I tell you up front because I believe in fair warning, accuracy and succinctness, concepts with which the developers of Alone in the Dark are obviously unfamiliar.
Cutscene Brand Cutscene(TM).
The original Alone in the Dark series is the scary godmother of the survival horror genre. These PC-based thrillers drew on such diverse source material as H.P. Lovecraft, H.R. Giger, and the voodoun tradition. The original games starred Edward Carnby, a private investigator with a habit of treading into darker paths than he would like due to his passing sensitivity to the parnormal. The original Carnby is a fairly unassuming detective – a bit of the “everyman” with just enough skill and verve to live to spy another day. The original games had everything a gamer could want from survival horror – good stories, decent visuals, okay voice acting, and enough terror to make you want a night light for a while.
In 2005, Uwe Boll released another one of his cinematic abortions, this one based on Alone in the Dark. The movie starred Christian Slater as an overwrought Carnby who was experimented on as a child, giving him the power to see paranormal phenomena. (Shockingly, Boll had to replace Slater with Korean-American actor Rick Yune for the upcoming sequel, because Slater “declined” to return.). Most of the plot points in the film directly contradict the game, and the entire thing is a vomitous heap of bad acting and terrible visual effects.
So, which version of AITD did Atari choose to emulate when they decided to revive the series? You guessed it – Uwe’s baby. Today’s Edward Carnby is a grunting whiner who believes that fire is the answer to everything. The “immersive” Central Park setting is a repetitive grove of dark (and flammable) trees. Yes, you can pick up and interact with almost anything (when the nice buttons announce you can), but the limited “hey, wanna buy a watch” jacket inventory system and the fact that every single thing in the game appears to be completely incendiary makes the whole thing a moot point.
Visually, AITD is a dud. I played the PS3 version of the game, and it looks passably grim. Light help you if you attempt to play the PS2 or Wii versions. Even on the PS3, the cutscenes look like they were rendered by first-year students working on Grape iMacs, and the in-game character modeling has two settings: “brooding” and “undead”.
Give me pouty!
OK, dead eyes, dead eyes!
The controls do not improve the situation. AITD handles like Resident Evil 1’s mentally challenged younger brother. It’s a shame, too, because every time you die you are kicked back quite a ways, and have to relive each cutscene or listen to the exact same ambient noise or dialogue as you burn your way to the next checkpoint. And burn you will, because fire is the answer to everything and if you try to take the time to cobble together some items to find a new way of dealing with a situation, you will be killed thanks to Atari’s “innovative real time action”.
I found myself wishing that Atari had taken a page from BioWare and allowed for pauses to experiment with the inventory. That would have gone a long way toward making this a playable game. As it stands, after five tries, I don’t care if you’re trapped in the elevator ma’am, I just want you to shut your mouth. Permanently.
In the end, AITD’s developers managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of very possible victory. They had a strong series of games to use as source material, and adequate time and processing power to make something awesome happen. Instead, they took the road less traveled (at least by cinemagoers) and followed Uwe Boll down the road to damnation.
For being a terrible remake of an excellent series due to shoddy controls, adequate visuals, and the waste of what could have been an excellent inventory and interaction system, Alone in the Dark “earns” 1 Weiner out of 5.
Raiding raiding raiding. Is World of Warcraft all about the endgame? The folks at Casually Hardcore don’t think so, and they tell us all about it every Sunday at 12pm EST, 9am PDT (their local time) at WCRadio.com.
CH is more than just a WoW show, however. The current hosts, Gnomewise, Iolite and Grail are all parents and “real live grownups” with jobs and responsibilities. As a result, CH becomes as much a show about balancing geekdom and family as it is about 5-man instances and in-game events.
The show doesn’t skimp on WoW content, though. During their recent “Masters of 5” series, Gnome, Io and Grail provided comprehensive walkthroughs of every 5-man Outland instance, complete with loot tables. Other shows have discussed the beta at length or talked about professions in exhaustive detail.
Interesting fan-made music and a weekly in-game dance party round out the program. Each week Gnome starts a musical preshow at 11:00 EST, 8:00 PST, and there is a lengthy music break during the show. Listeners can expect to hear everything from death metal to game-related filk, and everything in between. If you want to dance, head over to Booty Bay, Ratchet, or wherever Io throws the weekly party. Prepare to suicide like lemmings off the nearest cliff after the show.
For being an excellent, funny, well-balanced WoW-related radio show and podcast, Casually Hardcore gets 5 Weiners out of 5.
Casually Hardcore is available on Sundays at WCRadio.com, or via iTunes as a Podcast soon after the broadcast.
I was fairly excited about this release. I tore the box open this week, ready and willing to relive hours upon hours of my wasted youth. I squeed with delight as the Dragon Quest theme began playing in all its tinny regal splendor. And then the game began.
Let me say, first and foremost, that I did enjoy playing Dragon Quest IV. Arte Piazza, the art directors from Dragon Quest VII, took the lead on this remake, and it shows. The refresh on the art is welcome, but not intrusive or overdone. Akira Toriyama’s monster design is still charming and bright, including the bosses. The sound is a near-perfect translation of the original and still rings true after fifteen years. The problem is that most of the mechanics are also still the same after fifteen years, and they don’t quite stand the test of time.
JRPGs are known for slow-paced combat, and DQ is the grandaddy of them all. Twelve year-old me had no problem with this, probably because I didn’t know anything else. DQIV is turn-based, and forces you to go through several menus to choose exactly what everyone wants to do, every time. Unlike the recent re-release of Final Fantasy IV, there is no Auto-Attack option. This means is that early fights can take forever as you whittle down slime after slime.
OMG, 176 damage!
Inventory is suboptimal. When I didn’t know that only being able to hold eight items per person (plus one overflow bag) was an arbitrary difficulty modifier, it didn’t bother me. Today, trying to stock up on Medicinal Herbs that don’t stack and cannot be used except by the player who is holding them is nearly unforgiveable. This is particularly true in the early stages, when those herbs are your lifeline, and its a long way back to the save point.
Ah, yes, saving. Another “fun” DQ innovation. In DQ, you save by “confessing” at a church. That’s it. No save points in dungeons, no way to port out and port back in, nothing. This means that if you trudged all the way out to some Light forsaken tower and spent two hours grinding through it just to die on the final boss, you are out of luck. Do it all again. This time with feeling. And mana regeneration? Forget it, until you can obtain items that will do restore your juice. So make those spells last. They’re the only ones you’ve got.
Slime after slime.
Finally, level grinding. I’m a 4-year WoW player, so level grinding is nothing new to me. That being said, years of playing WoW and Final Fantasy games have conditioned me to expect that if I play through a game normally, entering dungeons and facing bosses in sequence as I meet them, I stand at least a fair chance of prevailing. Not so in DQ. Most of the time, if you try to take on a challenge as soon as you encounter it, you’re going to die. End of story. Expect to wander around aimlessly looking for fights for at least an extra level, better two, beyond the level you are when you first encounter The Next Big Thing. Oh well, at least you make lots of gold, right? Wrong. Forget being able to get the latest and greatest gear available from each new town, at least at first. DQ is stingy with the money, and dungeons drops are rare. Be prepared to wander.
I knew all of this going into the game, though. I knew that there were things that were going to bug the heck out of me because I’ve come to expect more from my RPGs since 1992. That’s why I still enjoyed DQIV so much.
The storyline is still fairly epic, even by today’s standards. The characters have life, and feeling, and the localization teams have done their best to make each Chapter feel like it takes place in a completely different part of the game world. Even if this does lead to some horribly funny Japanese-to-Russianesque-to-Rusjapenglish in Chapter 2, it gives you the feeling that you are a large world with varied ethnicities and real danger.
My favorite Chapter is still 3, the tale of Mara and Nara, the dancer and the fortuneteller. As a kid, these ladies inspired me even more than warrior princess Alena. That part hasn’t changed a bit. Fighting with clubs and daggers is de rigeur, but using fans, claws and cards as weapons is a blast. Grinding through the merchant quest still sucks, though.
The city of Townsville.
I also have to give credit where credit is due. What little new stuff there is here really works. The DS two-screen approach offers a lot of screen real estate for this game. This is invaluable in dungeons because it lets you get a better sense of where you are going, and cuts down on the random lost roaming of the original. The towns look lovely, almost on par with Dragon Quest VII. There is an online Chance Encounter mode that allows you to expand your own town through Nintendo WiFi play. If you have other nostalgia-starved friends who pick this title up, you’ll enjoy sharing your own little piece of Heaven with them.
All in all, I think Arte Piazza did a good job updating this classic for the modern era. I hope this brings a new generation of proto-geeks to DQ, and to the appreciation of substance over style (I’m looking at you, Final Fantasy X-2). I’m looking forward to the ports of Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride and Dragon Quest VI: Realms of Reverie, the second and third titles in the so-called “Zenithia trilogy”. Most Americans (including me) have never had the chance to play DQV and VI. DQV was released in Japan in July, so hopefully the U.S. release isn’t far behind. Maybe they’ll even evolve out some of the rough parts this time.
For being an epic RPG that, despite its many flaws, is still playable and enjoyable fifteen years after its original release, I am giving Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen 4 weiners out of 5.
Rock Band is back (as if it ever left). The new disc offers about 100 new songs, including Bob Dylan’s first foray into videogames and Harmonix in-house band Speck’s dork ode “Conventional Lover”. For folks who have been rocking out since last year, its more like a huge song pack than a sequel, and that’s just fine.
It’s getting better all the time. The visuals are a bit shinier, the band members a bit more customizable, and the interface a little more streamlined. For example, you can switch between instruments with the same character without having to do a restart. For folks who want to just rock out and have fun, there is a “no fail” option. For those who complain that the nerf bat was used too liberally in Rock Band 2, there are now options to speed up tracks or take out the visual lines entirely.
The updated instruments are the real coup here. The new drumset is a sea change from the day of release set I’ve been rocking since last year. It is solid where the original was flimsy, generally quiet where the original was loud, and provides a better, more satisfying play experience. I’ve been excited about these skins since we tried them at PAX, and I am glad to have them home.
The new hotness.
The guitar is likewise excellent. Gone is the “mushy” strum bar of Rock Band 1. Here to stay is a great feel and wireless rock. An improved accelerometer picks up Overdrive cues nearly without fail. This is a great plastic instrument.
All in all, though, Rock Band 2 is a lot of fun. And, because the Rock Band 2 and Guitar Hero World Tour instruments are now interoperable with their respective games, you can pick and choose whose sets you like best and enjoy the loads of content on the discs and beyond.
Now if you will excuse me, Gwyddia, The Stig, and the rest of Pathological Monsters! are playing for our airplane in a few minutes.
For listening to their fans and cleaning up what needed to be cleaned up, plus providing a ton of excellent songs to enjoy (500 by Christmas, they say), I am giving Rock Band 2 five weiners out of five.
From our tech in the field, funjon, comes this review of the Cradlepoint CTR-500 portable broadband router. Tired of paying $10/hour at a Starbucks, funjon decides to blaze his own trail. Gaming on the go or no go at all? Read on.
A funjon.
Funjon:
In early July I bought a Cradlepoint CTR-500 portable broadband router. Its quite the useful little device – can set up and share mobile broadband anywhere, including the car. Great toy, if you’ve got a USB data card or ExpressCard/34 data card. Which I do – the Novatel Wireless Merlin XU870. Which as served me wonderfully over the past year.
Except it’s not supported by the CTR-500.
It worked from the start, sort of. The router saw it. With the appropriate AT commands, it would connect. But it crashed and rebooted, a lot. I think the longest runtime was 2 minutes before it went boom.
All is not lost! It appears that with the new (August 08) release of firmware, 1.3.1, the CTR-500 likes my Novatel Wireless Merlin XU870 ExpressCard. Obviously, it continues to not be officially supported, but it will connect. It connected before, too, but this time it doesn’t crash. Or at least, hasn’t yet. In fact, I’m posting this through the CTR-500/XU870 combo right now.
Of course, I went and bought an Option GT Max card used on eBay for $120, so I’d have -something- that worked with it right now. Which, I’ll probably keep for the time being, it never hurts to have a backup (or an officially supported device). With the Merlin, I don’t get the nifty signal-strength feature, but it does seem to be working.
Now I just need to find something to put the router in while it’s in my backpack so it doesn’t get scratched to hell. Oh, and I really need to fix the cigarette lighters in my car, so the router will work on them.
Official support would be even cooler, but making it not crash on this unsupported modem is MUCH APPRECIATED. I’m glad I didn’t spend $350 on a data card (and $200 on a router) in vain.
Now to get a couple of mag-mount antennae put on the car for super mega signal. The router -and- the Merlin card both have external antenna connectors. Hooray for a 80mph WiFi hotspot!
All in all, I’d probably give it 4 weiners out of 5. There have been some teething problems (occasionally config options dont get saved to flash), but it has additional features I’m not using. You can also plug in a USB broadband card, or you can use a phone as a modem, and there’s a wired ethernet port that can be either a WAN or LAN port, configurable in software.
I know this is like comparing apples to oranges. The Razer DeathAdder is a gaming mouse, pure and simple. The VX Revolution is a wireless notebook mouse. So why bother? Because if you’re like me, using more than one computer in the course of your day, you find yourself needing more than one mouse. Hopefully this review will help suggest the right mouse for the right job.
I first bought the Revolution because I wanted a mouse to play WoW on my MacBookPro. I chose a cordless mouse to maximize my mobility. The Revolution connects to the computer with a small dongle that sticks out about an inch. Most of the time this wasn’t a problem, but one one occasion Indy ran by and knocked over my laptop. The computer was fine (thank you MagSafe adapter!), but the USB dongle snapped clean off and I had to replace the mouse.
Note the dongle.
The Logitech VX Revolution
The Revolution has a nice form factor. I have small hands, and the Revolution is a smaller mouse. It is ergonomically designed and I never have any wrist pain when using it, even after hours and hours of scrolling and clicking. It is reasonably accurate without noticeable lag. the “Hyper-scroll” feature is great for heavy surfing and certain games. The battery life is reasonable – I have to change the two AAs about once every 3-4 months.
The DeathAdder is like butter. Within seconds of plugging it in I was experiencing the silkiest, smoothest mousing experience of my life. It had better be, with a 1800dpi Razer Precision™ 3G infrared sensor and a 1ms response (compared with 8ms for standard mice). This thing has pinpoint accuracy, and its almost a waste to be clicking on lootable bodies rather than fragging the heck out of some sucker in TF2.
It slides, it glides, it juliennes fries!
Again, the form factor is nice. The DeathAdder is a little larger than the Revolution, but not overwhelmingly so. The cord is 210cm long, so I never feel that I’m pulling at it. If anything, it may be a little too long, because I had to find a place to tuck it out of the way. The exclusive PAX ’08 paintjob isn’t really that great looking, but there were only 400 made and I got one, so the smug feeling of dork accomplishment compensates for the bowling shoes design. This is my desktop mouse of choice.
Strike! Oh, wait. This is my megamouse.
In the end, it really does come down to the right mouse for the right job. For high-tension gaming, particularly in a desktop setting where mobility isn’t a factor, it’s going to be the DeathAdder every time. When a gnome’s gotta go, though, the VX Revolution goes with her, and does a serviceable and comfortable job.
Logitech VX Revolution Wireless USB Mouse (USD$69.99):
Weiner-worthy: Portable, accurate and comfortable
Be Curful: One good thwack at the right angle and you’ll need a new mouse.
Weiner-worthy: Smooth, ultra-responsive, and comfortable.
Be Curful: Razer’s long cords can be a problem if you don’t have the room.
5 Mousing Weiners out of 5
If you’re my friend or my poor husband, you’ve heard me running around for months singing the following (to the tune of “La Cucheracha”):
Viva Piñata, Viva Piñata
It is a nice piñata game!
Viva Piñata, Viva Piñata
No two piñatas are the same!
Olè!
Yet another piñata clone cries itself to sleep.
Before this week, though, it was a lie. All of my brightly colored papery pals were the same. Same colors, same Candyosity, same names. Never more.
Viva Piñata:Trouble in Paradise from Rare and Microsoft Game Studios builds on the original Viva Piñata formula of building a garden, attracting and breeding piñatas, and sending them off to children who enjoy their sweet sweet candy. Players who “dug” the original will like this one, because it has everything the first game has and more. New gardeners won’t feel left behind: the game has an excellent and reasonably interesting tutorial system that will set you up with gardening basics. Besides, it’s not that difficult a game.
That is not to say that VP:TIP is not without depth. As in the original, your job is to build and nurse a budding ecosystem literally from the ground up. Start with clearing enough grass or soil and you’ll attract adorable little Whirlms in your garden. They’ll soon attract Sparrowmints, who will eat the Whirlms and may themselves be eaten by a Buzzenge as a part of their Romance requirement. It’s all a part of the great circle of life. Or something.
VP:TIP improves on the original in several ways. First, it simplifies the menu system, particularly the buying and selling aspects. Gardeners can now just highlight objects for sale and they are automatically marked, rather than having to trudge all the way to the village. On the retail side, objects are placed immediately in the garden right before the money (chocolate coins) changes hands. This saves you “travel time” and really helps in letting you preview how you want to plan your garden. Check out this gameplay footage:
Other improvements include the introduction of an actual storyline. Professor Pester, leader of the sour piñatas, has a plan to destroy this paper paradise forever. He’s a man (a “straw” man?) with a plan, which both unfurls and unravels as you level up your garden. The Prof’s intrusions can range from just sending Sour Shellybeans to eat up all your seeds to building stone walls that keep essential piñatas out of your garden until you can pay to knock the walls down.
I mentioned “no two piñatas are the same”, and this time its true. Not only can you still name each and every piñata, and design a custom tag for it, but they also all have varying states of happiness. These states are known as the piñatas’ “Candiosity”, and are an indicator of how happy your paper pal is in your garden. The higher Candiosity level, the more your piñata is worth, and the more likely that she or he will stay in your garden and make lots of little piñatas.
The Prof’s machinations, along with a more structured mission system (usually “raise a piñata with maximum candiosity and ship it somewhere around the world”) really add to the adventure without taking away from the sandbox feel.
Rounding out the new features are opportunities to leave the garden, both in game and out of game. In game, you can use signposts to nip off to such exotic locations as the Dessert Desert and and the Pinarctic region. You don’t play in these gardens – you go there, capture new and exciting piñatas, and bring them to your home garden. Out of game, you can search other folks’ gardens if they are on XBox Live, or use the Xbox Live vision camera to scan piñata cards (ala Sony’s Eye of Judgement) and import new piñatas into your garden. Full garden multiplayer, both at home and via XBox Live, completes the set.
If this all sounds like a lot, it is because it is, which is one of the chief issues with the game. The problem is not that it is too deep, but rather that there is too much thrown at the player too fast with not nearly enough space to use it all. For example, in order to get a pair of piñatas to do their Romance Dance (mate) they need a home. Each species of piñata has its own type of home, and even the smallest of these, the modest Whirlm home, consumes a considerable amount of real estate. By the time you’ve built the Sweetle home required to complete the final tutorial mission, you’re out of room for more piñata homes unless you significantly tear up your little slice of heaven. Your garden size does increase, but the first bump isn’t until level 12, by which time you’ll really need the extra space.
The more things change, however, the more they stay the same. The developers obviously spent a lot of time lovingly crafting piñatas and items. Why, then, could they not manage to record all new bits for the speaking characters? As far as I know no one had a deep-seated attachment to the exact phrases spoken by shopkeeper Lottie Costalot as she swindled you out of your coins. In fact, most of her phrases (and the other villagers’) were pretty annoying. There are some new spoken bits, but most of it is reruns.
All in all, though, Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise is a worthy sequel to Viva Piñata. The visuals have been upgraded, and the piñatas actually look like paper. The game controls better, and the new Romance Dance cutscenes are hysterical and adorable. If you haven’t seen a VP Romance Dance, check one out below.
The bottom line is that if you don’t like sandbox games or god games, you’re not going to start liking them with Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise. If you do enjoy them, and particularly if you enjoyed the original Viva Piñata, you’ve got a lot of love coming in this title. Share it with your friends! Just beware of papercuts.
I’m giving Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise 4 Weiñatas out of 5.
Playing With My Weiner 