Viva Piñata 2 demo on Live

By Robert Purchese Published 3 October, 2008

Rare hoping it will grow on you.

Microsoft has planted a Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise demo on Xbox Live Marketplace.

We had, once upon a time, expected this around 5th September, when the gardening sequel launched in Europe. Still, better late than never.

The sampler consists of around 25 minutes of gameplay, and includes some Live features and the Just For Fun mode. There's no multiplayer, but just enough content to sow the seeds and entice the curious into buying the full game.

We hope so anyway, because once again quite a lot of people didn't bother, resulting in a debut chart entry for Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise at 23, despite critical acclaim. Again.

Head over to our Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise review for plenty of flowery reasons to pick this up.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (23) Latest comment 3 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • chrisjm #1 3 years ago

    buy it you fools

  • crwoody #2 3 years ago

    Bought it for my daughter, but she say's its not as good as the first :s

    Maybe i should give it a go myself

  • Tzetrik #3 3 years ago

    I returned this game because its so uninspired compared to the original. Its just a few extra features tacked on for a full £30.

  • Darren #4 3 years ago

    I bought this game a month ago, played it for 15 minutes and haven't returned to it since. Now I loved the original but after only a few minutes play it was obvious that this game is just more of the same. Only with more screen tearing. Ahem! I get the impression that the new features could easily have been added as DLC for the original game.

  • CapnCloudchaser #5 3 years ago

    I just started playing the original and become insanely addicted to it, I really don't want this demo anywhere near me :o

  • xexuxjy #6 3 years ago

    It's a lot easier to play then the original , the interface has been improved quite a lot and I'm finding myself much more addicted to this one then the first. The pinartic and desert desert are a litte tacked on but the pinatas from them are great . Seems very quick swapping betwen them all as well.

  • miiiguel #7 3 years ago

    I love the challenges, and the "scan a piñata" is very cool. The "ultra-piñata" creation (dinosaur) is crazy complex to do. Lovely.

    edit: piñartic and desert are very under-developed though. Don't realy understand why, it is a great idea, and their piñatas are the cooler (and hotter). Anyway, after +30 game hours I'm still finding new stuff.
    Edited by 1 at 03/10/08 @ 17:29

  • crwoody #8 3 years ago

    ok as per my last comment. I've tried to play the full game but just can't get my head round it :a

    I will wait for my 8 year old to come round next week and teach me how to play LOl

    (is of just me or Is it hard to learn?)

    Or maybe it's just all the beer???

  • assache #9 3 years ago

    Can you kill shit? Well can you? CAN YOU KILL SHIT?

  • Iceman_GB #10 3 years ago

    I was enjoying it , till pester kept running in and wrecking my hard work. After a quick look on the internet revealed that there is no way to keep him out permanently I stopped playing and haven't been on it since. I loved the first game, but it was all about making the perfect garden for my favored pinata. No chance of that having happening with pester running in all the time (and the decoy pinata is ugly as hell, which is just as bad as having pester around).

  • Psychotext #11 3 years ago

    Excellent game. Well worth a blast.

  • mazzl #12 3 years ago

    so why again, not a big marketing push from ms for VP.
    stupid!

  • the_dudefather #13 3 years ago

    can you run over animals in jeeps and break their legs?

  • Garwoofoo #14 3 years ago

    Iceman_GB: it's quite easy to keep Pester out permanently with a few fences. He always enters the garden from the same point, so just prevent him from getting to any of your animals.

  • Stoatboy #15 3 years ago

    @Iceman_GB: Also having a Limeoceros or Dragonache in your garden will keep Pester away.

  • CreepinJesus #16 3 years ago

    It's not as good as the first, simply because it's a sequel. Nothing's as good as the first of something...

  • WinterSnowblind #17 3 years ago

    The Rhino or Dragon Pinata keep Pester out. Not sure if any of the others have the same affect.

  • Der_tolle_Emil #18 3 years ago

    Hopefully the demo will increase sales. Both Viva Pinata games are fantastic and should sell a lot more. Too bad they both got released on the wrong platform.

  • George-Roper #19 3 years ago

    @CreepinJesus

    Tell that to Aliens.

  • christourlord #20 3 years ago

    I made the mistake of buying this and now my girlfriend won't stop playing it.

  • Frosty840 #21 3 years ago

    VP just felt so limited to me.
    Yes, the graphical loveliness abounds, but the entire gameworld is, what, ten metres square?
    Give me an acre or two, and for god's sake, put it on the PC where I don't have to press twelve buttons and take nearly a minute of loading to get to ANY screen in the game, and I'll play it for weeks.
    As it is, the interface (bad controls, bad camera, bad menus, bad navigation of the bad menus and NO MOUSE CONTROL) made doing anything at all so unforgivingly tiresome that I had to give up.

    I know it's aimed at kids, but there has to be scope for any gamer to become expert at a game and to then not need all the hand-holding they have at the beginning.

    I'm not talking about a difficulty level, here (Difficulty is obviously not the point of VP), I'm talking about being able to do things with some efficiency. VP's interface just doesn't do it for me, and I imagine VP2's interface will be more of the horrible, horrible same.

  • miiiguel #22 3 years ago

    iceman: there's a way to keep Prof. Pester away, jusr bribe him! Give him 500 coins and he'll go away.

    And VP was released on PC and on a DS. Is that whine just for the sake of it? I mean, it's like 360 owners shouldn't be allowed to play VP. Europe is indeed very norrow minded.

    Everything in it's right place...
    Edited by 1 at 04/10/08 @ 22:32

  • muscleblade #23 3 years ago

    Iceman_GB :

    The Dragon fights Proffessor Pester and wins every time so the proffessor cant do any harm if you have the Dragon. The Dragon is quite cool btw.