Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise

Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise is a garden simulation game released in 2008 for the Xbox 360 developed by Rare and published by Microsoft Game Studios. It is the sequel to the 2006 Xbox 360 game Viva Piñata. It is included along with its predecessor in the Rare Replay compilation game released for Xbox One and can be played on Xbox One by backwards compatibility.

Plot
Professor Pester has managed to break into Piñata Central. He attempts to hack the terminal containing information about Piñata to steal data about the location and weaknesses of every Piñata in the world, so he can capture every Piñata in the world and become the Piñata king. However his minions accidently destroy the data records. He then devises a plan to stop the player from obtaining certain species by having roadblocks which block some Piñatas from entering your garden.

Gameplay
In this game you own a garden that you can customize to your will. Piñatas may come to the garden if you meet certain requirements. You can also grow plants and trees, and sell and purchase items. Level up by earning awards which are earned by successfully growing plants, getting Piñatas into your garden, and romancing Piñatas which makes a person deliver an egg to create a new member of the family. Leveling up increases the selection of items you can purchase such as upgrades to your tools, new surface packets, food, buildings, and decorations.

Not everything is easy and carefree. Some Piñatas will eat other kinds of piñata to meet a certain requirement, be it becoming resident or even to romance. Some kinds of Piñatas just don't like certain other kinds and will fight as soon as they get in contact, such as the Barkbark not liking Kittyfloss. Certain red plants are potentially dangerous to your Piñatas, but are required to meet a certain requirement for a piñata. Also, red sour Piñatas exist primarily to harm your garden by doing bad deeds in your garden, such as eating seeds or starting fights with your Piñatas. Also, after getting your garden level up enough Professor Pester will order Ruffians to attack your garden, and eventually, he himself will start to bash your most expensive Piñatas in your garden, breaking them immediately. You must deal with him immediately lest you lose one of your prized possessions. If a Piñata stays sick for too long, Dastardos will come to destroy it, however you can cure it by various means, the most simple one is to ask Doc Patchingo to cure it for you.

With the discovery of the Piñarctic and the Dessert Desert, some Piñatas roam around these areas. However these areas are out of your contracted area so you are unable to simply drag them into your garden. Instead, Langston now sells traps and bait to allow you to capture them in a crate manually. After capturing a piñata successfully a crate is sent to the Mailbox for you to extract to your garden. After extraction you must complete residential requirements to get them to stay in the garden.

Also, two new mini games exist, pinata racing and a Piñata showcase.

Why It Rocks

 * 1) Ninety-eight different species of Piñata creatures to discover and make resident in your garden. The kind of creatures you can find include worms, birds, skunks, ladybugs, crabs, geckos, gorillas, and vultures, among others.
 * 2) Beautiful stylized graphics.
 * 3) Lovely soundtrack scored by Grant Kirkhope.
 * 4) Customize your garden with fences, toys, houses, and new sand and snow surface packets.
 * 5) Teach your Piñata tricks with a new Trick Stick. After feeding the Piñata the correct food it starts to do a trick. Quickly pull the Trick Stick and hit the Piñata and it will learn the trick for you to activate again with the Trick Stick.
 * 6) Two new mini-games you can play, a race and a show off. The race mode has you running on one of five lanes, and it is your job to stay on the pefered surface type to keep running fast. The show off mode is a mode where a sequence of five judges, four player chosen and an additional random judge, rate the four Piñatas, and the one with the most points wins.
 * 7) Two special zones to capture Piñatas, the Piñarctic and Dessert Desert. You can't build in these areas, instead you plant food in these areas to attract them to your traps.
 * 8) Get a special Choclodocus Piñata which is very rare and can only be obtained once.
 * 9) A new bouncer board allows you to choose which Piñatas you don't want appearing in your garden after getting the Master Romance Award.
 * 10) New Just for Fun mode which gives access to most of the Piñata species, unlimited coins, and all of the plants except weeds.
 * 11) New shortcuts to make handling your garden easier.
 * 12) Send your Piñatas to parties at any time when its candiosity is full. Also there are new missions to complete by sending your Piñatas to parties.
 * 13) You can now take pictures of your garden and save them into an album.
 * 14) Repeatedly taking pictures of piñatas and the garden can unlock hidden concept art pictures in the gallery.
 * 15) The game uses the Xbox Live Vision camera to allow you to take snapshots of cards to get items in your garden (this feature is called "Piñata Vision").
 * 16) Langston Lickatoad appears in Piñata form, when purchasing traps for Piñatas in the other area.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) Long loading times when entering shops such as Costolot's can sometimes take 30+ seconds to load the shop so you can enter it.
 * 2) If you have more than 8 gardens it can take 20+ seconds to load the list of gardens you have, and it takes even longer if you have captured pictures in your album.

Tips

 * 1) Do not install the game to a USB device. It makes the game take extremely long to load and also lowers the frame rate of the game play dramatically making the experience more choppy. Either install the game to the internal hard drive or don't install the game.
 * 2) Tame the Sour Piñatas as soon as you can, as they spit out sour candy and do bad things to your garden. If you don't tame them they keep coming back to your garden to do the bad stuff all over again.
 * 3) All weeds will grow without intervention and will spread rapidly due to its short lifecycle and it spawning multiple seeds upon death, so if you see one in your valuable garden you should pay chocolate coins to "sell" it to Costolot for a cost (she requests money to remove weeds) immediately to save yourself the troubles of having to destroy multiple plants that will cost more to sell after they spread.
 * 4) Make sure you do not get a Hemlock plant in the same garden as your treasured Piñatas as Piñatas will eat its flower and start farting out three sour candies. If just one is in the garden, it can spread and cause a snowball effect that ends with your most of your Piñatas broken by Dastardos or a sour Crowla. If you spot any Hemlock seeds or plants in your garden with valued Piñatas then Immediately sell the Hemlock seeds or plants to Costolot (you need to pay her coins to do this) so it doesn't result in a problem. If you can't afford to sell them then pack your most treasured Piñatas in crates so you can either move them to a different garden or reinstall them to the same garden after you fix the problem.
 * 5) Purchase a Halo of Hardness accessory for a Piñata to make that Piñata quickly cure itself without having to call Patch.