Review of Viva Piñata Party Animals - Xbox 360

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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!

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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!

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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.

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We first tried this as a Xbox demo download. I then decided we needed to buy this game, its full of mini games but they're cute. I am a 27 year old mother, and between me and my husband we have children ages 4, 8, and 12 that all like the game, and I play it too! You race at the beginning, and you start collecting points to place you, after each round. Various games to play, some you have to squash ants, some you have to eat apples as fast as you can. There are some where you count how many animals walks behind this "house" and how many come back out, and guess correctly. Almost all of the games you have to collect candy to help you to get the most points. You can select how many games you want to play in a row, I think they range like 1, 3, 5, and so on. You can play up to 4 players. Players can simply press start while someone else is already in the game, and join in the fun. I've never tried other Viva Pinata games, but after buying this we looked into the DS game and found out that one is nothing at all like this one, so that was disappointing. All in all, this is a fun game.

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I have a 4 year old and 8 year old. We can no longer buy one player games as chaos over who gets to play erupts. This game is fabulous as the graphics on a HDTV are awesome, the sounds are lively and it does not cause any frustration because someone is not able to get to another higher level like some games. My kids LOVE this game. It is light-hearted and simple. It's like watching a cartoon for those who can't play when friends come over to play. While I love the mental challenge of Lego Indiana, etc. for the kids, they are laughing out loud while they play this. And that is equally fabulous.