Viva Pinata: Party Animals

TGS '07: Viva Pinata: Party Animals Hands-On

Despite Microsoft's much-publicised inability to truly crack the Japanese game market, Microsoft's large Xbox 360 booth at TGS was quite the hotbed of activity. One of the games we had to line up for was Viva Pinata: Party Animals, the upcoming party game compilation from Australian dev house Krome Studios.

As you've probably read from our previous coverage, this game takes the characters and world created by Rare in the original Viva Pinata and puts them in pure party game territory. The four-player title will let players take the role of either Fergy Fudgehog, Paulie Pretztail, Franklin Fizzlybear, and Hudson Horstachio in a series of more than 50 challenges.

We've seen a few of the games the final title will ship with, such as Pinata racing and a hot potato-style bomb passing game--all of which featured extremely simple controls which befits Viva Pinata: Party Animals' family demographic. A new mini-game we saw at TGS proved to just as simple--a Pinata dancing game which saw our four competitors line up and perform dance moves. These moves were essentially timed button presses on the Xbox 360 controller, the indicator of which appeared above each individual Pinata's head. Nail the moves and your Pinata will bust out in dance--miss them and it'll stumble while trying to disco. It was a quick and fun affair, although we were disappointed to note that each Pinata only had one set dance animation.

Viva Pinata: Party Animals is set for release on the Xbox 360 at the end of October.

Gamespot