E3 '07: Viva Piñata: Party Animals Hands-On

Earlier today, while visiting Microsoft at the Viceroy Hotel that it's taken over for the duration of E3 2007, we had an opportunity to spend some time with a demo version of Viva Piñata: Party Animals. Announced at last night's Microsoft press conference, Party Animals is a collection of around 50 minigames based on the Viva Piñata animated show. More specifically, it's based on a show that the piñatas in Viva Piñata like to watch.

The 50-plus minigames in Viva Piñata: Party Animals will include around a dozen races and over 40 different minigames, but the E3 demo features only a handful of them. All of the games will support four players simultaneously (in the roles of Fergy Fudgehog, Paulie Pretztail, Franklin Fizzlybear, and Hudson Horstachio) and can be played both offline and online. Furthermore, regardless of whether you're offline or online, additional players can join in at any time without interfering with the action in any way.

Our first minigame was one of the races, which took place on a lengthy course with lots of bridges to fall off, lots of power-ups to collect, and one or two shortcuts that even the Microsoft representatives we were playing with seemed surprised by the first time they saw a CPU-controlled Franklin take them. The controls consisted of accelerate and brake on the triggers, a slide button, a weapon button, and a jump button. There appeared to be a large selection of weapons and other power-ups in the game, and those that we had an opportunity to try out included a drink that made our piñata grow so it could push others around, a rocket that propelled us along the track at great speed for a short time, a beehive that we could use to leave a trail of sticky honey behind us, and a potted sunflower that we never really figured out.

Next up was a bizarre minigame in which the aforementioned piñatas were tasked with beating other piñatas (though not living ones, naturally) repeatedly until they exploded and gave up all of their candy. The game was mostly played using only a single button, and the trick was basically to keep it pressed for a long time to build up power and then to strike the swinging piñata at the right time to do the most damage. A second button could be used to stop your piñata swinging and make it easier to hit, but we honestly never felt the need to use it.

Blown Away was the next minigame on our agenda, and we were delighted when we realized that it was the one involving toy sailboats and belching that was shown briefly during the announcement trailer. Like the previous games, this one was quite simple, and required us to do little more than mash the correct buttons as quickly as possible. You mash the A button to build up a belch and then, when it's ready, you alternately mash the two buttons that appear on screen to release it--providing wind for your toy sailboat in the process. The first boat across the line is the winner, and then it's time for the next game.

The last minigame that we played, titled Short Fuse, was an explosive take on the children's game Hot Potato. The four piñatas all sit in a circle and one of them is given a bomb. While holding the bomb they collect candy that falls from the sky, but if they're still holding it when it explodes they lose everything. You can throw the bomb to whomever you like when you decide that it's time to let go of it, and although some of the piñatas occasionally made comments about thinking that they or their opponents should let go of the bomb, these appeared to be the papier-mache equivalent of trash talking rather than an actual indication that it was going to explode.

Viva Piñata: Party Animals is currently scheduled for release later this year. We look forward to bringing you more information as soon as it becomes available.