Game reviews: Viva Pi̱ata Party Animals РIssue 69

Following on from last year’s highly successful (and kids’ cartoon-spawning) Viva Pià±ata comes this new game from Microsoft. But where the earlier title was a Sims-style effort that saw you building and maintaining a garden your stuffed toys could call home, Party Animals comprises a series of mini games reminiscent of Nintendo’s Super Mario franchise.

These range from exotic racetracks that show off Pià±ata Island (which you didn’t see much of in the first game) and challenge events like ‘Rhythm’ that have your pià±ata drinking, shaking it up and burping a little sail boat across the finish line, to ‘Smash and Collect,’ where you run around, um, smashing stuff and collecting goodies. Extra mini games unlock the longer you play and the better you do, and there are more than 50 challenge events and races in total.

The graphics and scenery are as bright and colourful as you’d expect from a cartoon, while the running commentary from your hosts, Pecky Pudgeon and Pierre Parrybo, is delightful and entertaining. And even if comments like “the action keeps hotting up like a French croissant!” don’t exactly keep you on the edge of your seat, Microsoft is to be commended for perhaps the first ever use of the pastry-as-metaphor-for-life trope in a video game.

Single player is fun but multiplayer is best, especially when your overconfident, Halo-playing significant other reveals himself to be rubbish. Too much Master Chief-related RSI he reckons. It is good to see Microsoft release a multiplayer party game that everyone of all ages – and all skill levels – can enjoy.

Alina Vaughn