At a New York City event this past spring, the team of Microsoft and Rare successfully convinced journalists that its latest creation, Viva Piñata, would capture the hearts of millions of children, and for whatever reason, most of these writers (early adopters, really) bought the pitch. They seemed to be wearing beer goggles, because the concept of tempting living piñatas to visit a garden seemed ridiculous. Yet despite its bizarre concept, Viva Piñata stands out as one of the freshest and most gorgeous games to hit the Xbox 360.

Much like Nintendo's Animal Crossing series, Viva Piñata features a few very well communicated goals and no conclusion. Players never see Game Over, nor do you achieve high scores. All they do is tend to a garden in the hopes of attracting over 60 different species of animals, or rather, colorful piñatas with candy-inspired names such as Buzzlegum, Fudgehog and Horstachio. Each species has a set number of requirements that must be met in order for them to take up residence in your garden. These include simple things such as patting down the soil with a shovel (which attracts wormy Whirlms) to sticking a torch in your garden (which attracts Flutterscotch moths). A handy manual keeps track of the criteria that must be met in order to make your new friends happy, but the game never offers hints as to what must be done to attract new types of creatures. As a result, Viva Piñata always provides a freshly original experience because it encourages experimentation. The more you customize a garden, the more creatures will visit.

To help things along, Rare designed several strange looking but mostly helpful characters. The young girl Leafos, for example, offers hints and encouragement, while the portly woman Storkos delivers piñata eggs after two of the same species have mated (achieved through careful prodding and/or enhanced by feeding them special Romance candy). You can even hire helpers, weird looking people who weed, water plants, kill pests and dig for buried treasure. Actually, the only person to watch out for is Dastardos, a wicked and creepy looking dude who revels in killing piñatas.

Easy to learn controls almost guarantee that anyone will be able to create their dream garden with just a few button presses. Players use the analog sticks to move around, and access the main menu as well as a series of submenus by pressing X and then cycling around with the left analog stick.

Despite all of this help, players still need to do lots of micromanaging and note taking. Fortunately, the game keeps track of everything and places it into a handy journal. Furthermore, it loves to celebrate accomplishment. The game is littered with scores of achievements, though Viva does contain personal awards of its own. Seeing as how most of them are pretty easy to collect (planting grass, attracting a piñatas) a sense of always winning as well as being in control keeps spirits high.

Unfortunately, gardens are anything but peaceful. Some piñatas get into fights (the loser dies), evil Sour piñatas wreck havoc and creatures grow sick for whatever reason. Fights cannot be broken up, a sad fact that results in the deaths of many cute and cuddly looking creatures. On the other hand, Doc Patchingo can be called on to cure all of the sick piñatas, and a few quick whacks with a trusty shovel kills Sour critters.