Finally, a family game for Xbox360 console

Finally, a game has been released that proves that advanced technology does not have to be used for destruction.

The Xbox360 console, which started selling in Korea early this year, boasts enhanced graphics and game interfaces that gaming fans raved over, but the titles that have been released for the console during the past year have all been pretty much hard-core.
From a marketing perspective, it was an understandable move to an extent ― what would be a better way of showing off the functions of the console than through action scenes that involved much slashing, bashing, and swarms of enemies rendered in perfect detail?
Last Friday, however, Microsoft Korea decided that it was time to show its soft side, by releasing its first family-targeted game, Viva Pinata.
The simulation game was developed by the video game developer Rare Ltd. and Microsoft Game studios and is similar to The Sims or Sim City, only you are dealing with cute animals instead of people.
These fictional wild animals are called pinata, like the Mexican papier mache dolls filled with candy and beaten open at parties by blind-folded players wielding a stick.
There are about 60 different types of pinata, with funny names such as Horstachios, Fizzlybears and Fudgehogs. You start out the game with a smoky, littered lot, and try to clean up the area and attract various pinata to live in the environment you create.

The creatures each need certain conditions to live happily, and also interact with the others, which can create harmony or trouble within your growing community, since each individual pinata has its own personality.
The cute simulation game is a huge contrast from the previous titles that have been released for Xbox360 in Korea, but whether it will succeed is yet to be determined. The most recent release, for instance, was Gears of War, which sold out only minutes after it went on pre-release online sale.
A day after it hit offline stores, Microsoft Korea had to put in new orders. That game is a third-person tactical horror-action game based on a story of mankind’s efforts to survive attack from weird creatures.
In addition, other upcoming Xbox360 titles are also targeted at the “big boys.” Dead or Alive Xtreme 2 is a volleyball game featuring girls in teeny bikinis and Halo 3, available in a couple of months, is yet another sequel to a classic first-person alien-shooting number.

by Wohn Dong-hee