Viva Pinata Party Animals

Sydney Morning Herald

Monday January 21, 2008

Jason Hill

VIVA PINATA PARTY ANIMALS

Xbox

X360

$69.95

G

Rating: 1.5/5

Viva Pinata was Microsoft's obvious attempt to widen the Xbox audience and appeal to families. Yet underneath the gloss was a game of surprising complexity, depth and difficulty that proved unsuitable for youngsters. Party Animals makes the opposite mistake of being shallow, vapid and lacking any challenge whatsoever.

Brisbane developer Krome at least got the presentation right: Party Animals is gorgeous, with colourful, detailed backdrops and appealing, beautifully animated characters. But the simple and repetitive mini-games have no lasting appeal.

Players can choose to battle three mates on the couch or faraway friends over the Xbox Live online network. Computer-controlled rivals can make up the numbers but provide feeble competition. Matches include a series of randomly chosen mini-games interspersed with Mario Kart-style foot races across seven colourful locations such as tropical beaches and treetop villages.

Races are important to your score and final podium position because winning earns you bonus points in subsequent mini-games. Unfortunately, races are too often decided not by who exhibits the most skill or who makes best use of each track's short cuts but rather which of the (too powerful) weapons you are randomly allocated to impede your rivals.

The 40-odd mini-games include apple-eating contests, counting challenges, candy-collection duties, bug stomping and hot-potato passing. Highlights include challenges where you run around leaving a trail of paint and games in which your pinata repeatedly burps to propel a sailboat, which amused our young testers no end.

Unfortunately, the games lack variety - too many involve simple Simon-says button pushing, target shooting or banal Whack-a-Mole thumping, so it feels like a much smaller selection than 40 games. It's also annoying that you cannot select which challenges you wish to play, except in a pointless practice mode.

ENDGAME A shallow, repetitious party game that will not keep youngsters amused for long. JH

© 2008 Sydney Morning Herald

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