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I got this as a gift for two 7 and 11 year old boys. It was well received and they played it alot initially, but tailed off rapidly. It just doesn't seem to ever come back out of the box into their top ten rotation. Not an indictment of the game by any means, just an observation.
These games are so much fun. My children love them, and I love them because they're great for all children. good, clean fun.
and mind you that those two hours were not very fun for me. i had such high expectations for this game but I just don't get it.I am 28 years old, and play other simulation games (the Sims, for example) but i just couldn't get into this game. it's kind of complicated to keep track of things, and even harder to orient yourself.i played this game only once for about an hour or two before i gave up. i was just trying to give this game (which got such great reviews) a second shot at impressing me. it never did.
I've spent way too many "work nights" up until 12am. I decided to give it a try.You probably understand the premise of this game by now from other reviews - you have a garden, which you can easily reduce to a flat piece of dirt if you'd like, or turn it into a lush environment with trees and flowers and rivers, all while little pinata animals run amuck. My garden has a pond at one corner, with a river that stems from it and runs "west to east." I have a few trees, two small areas for planting soil-only seeds, a patch of sand to attract crustaceans, and then a general fenced area where I pen up the pinatas I'm trying to "romance," protect, or hide so as not to scare off other pinatas. So for the first few hours, I zipped around aimlessly, trying to figure things out.
But I often end up having to sell EVERY structure (homes and fences) just so that the game will let me build ONE house. I'm still unsure on a lot of things, such as how to become a "Master Romancer" of a certain species of Pinata.But the game is very colorful, it's "cute," though doesn't make me laugh quite like Nuts & Bolts does. It's challenging, and it does certainly whittle away the REAL hours of your life. I'm entirely new to the Pinata "universe." I've seen the colorful boxes on store shelves, and kept thinking, "That game looks way too girlish for a 30-year-old man such as myself." But last week I picked up Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, loved it, and learned that this title was from the same developer. So bad in fact that it lost a star simply based on this issue. (The final frontier.).
I have MAYBE 14 pinatas total - most of which are two-of-one-species. I keep trying to manage my space - selling off one pinata home so that I can build another.
The Xbox could easily handle twice as much space with twice as much going on - look at those humongous sandbox games like Grand Theft Auto.VP:TIP is a deep and engaging game that quickly punishes it's players with an unnecessary build cap. The instruction manual tells you how to handle the major chores, like getting pinatas to live in your garden, or getting them to mate, but it never really tells you WHY, or how to get started.
It's ridiculous. There's always "one more thing I gotta do," or something else suddenly pops up that you have to tend to - I can admit it has a LOT more value off the shelf than games like Animal Crossing, which can quickly get repetitive.But I have one, significant pet-pinata-peeve with VP:TIP.
SPACE. There's no way that a baker's dozen of animals and a few stationary trees can tax the computing power of the Xbox 360 to the point that the game decides I can't fit any more "stuff." It becomes so frustrating because you end up having to sell off pinatas that you NEED to continue your food chain just so that you can build a house to romance a different species (of which you've been trying to meet the romance requirements for over an hour.).This quickly - and I mean QUICKLY - spins VP:TIP into an "almost good" category.
In an industry that could really use some creative insight, VP:TIP builds us up just to let us down.
Rare Inc. is one of the most creative, unique game-makers of this generation, and they prove themselves yet again with this one. My girlfriend loves it, I love it, and quite frankly LOOK AT THAT PRICE. Go check out Banjo: Nuts & Bolts while you're at it, as well.
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