Viva Pinata Party Animals preview for Xbox 360

It's party time this Christmas with Viva Pinata: Party Animals, the new party game follow-up to the hit cartoon garden game. While in the original, you created your garden and nurtured a population of pinatas, in Party Animals you have a series of party games to play using your pinatas, with races and minigames. We have a full preview of Viva Pinata: Party Animals in this issue of 360Zine - will it be an A-list party this Christmas? Read our preview to find out more!
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Viva Pinata Party Animals preview for Xbox 360
The Xbox 360 is a very successful games console - it's neck-andneck with the phenomenon that is Nintendo's Wii in hardware sales, and streets ahead in terms of software. With Halo 3 selling well in excess of three million copies in just a week on sale in the US, MS is surely satisfied at the progress it has made this console generation. Yet, as those hardware figures prove, a console that's been on the market for a year less is shifting as many units. Nintendo has firmly grasped the need to appeal outside the traditional gamer demographic.

There's no doubting that the casual and non-gamer market has clasped Wii to its bosom - and Microsoft can only look on enviously. This year, the company has decided to do something about that - Christmas sees the release of a videogame version of popular movie quiz boardgame Scene It, but the game which should appeal to both enthusiasts and less regular players is the one you see here.

The original Pinata was a critical smash - its relaxing gameplay and fabulous graphics made it a hit with reviewers, though its commercial showing was moderate at best. Somehow it didn't quite appeal as much to the casual gamer as MS had predicted. From our playtest of Party Animals, we get the feeling that this time, the Viva Pinata brand will finally have the success it deserves.

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