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Filled with candy. And fun.

In a sense, Viva Pinata is not your traditional game. With no way to actually win or lose, the game lacks challenge, a clear attainable goal. Instead, Viva Pinata merely instructs players to build a garden, presenting a world in which they are free of arbitrary restrictions and objectives. Much like Animal Crossing and The Sims before it, Viva Pinata then becomes less of a game and more of an experience. Behind its simple premise of garden management, Viva Pinata hides addictive, multi-layered gameplay. Armed with nothing but a shovel, players begin by simply breaking up the lot's hard soil. Yet this is all it takes to attract the first of the game's many pinatas, in this case, a mere worm. Once the worms arrive though, hungry birds soon follow, and after planting enough grass, the snakes show up.

Each type of pinata has their own set of conditions necessary for them to first appear, later join the garden, and eventually, mate. For example, even though snakes will visit a garden once it has enough grass, they won't actually reside within it until they eat a mouse. Getting a mouse into the garden, meanwhile, requires growing a turnip. These carefully staggered conditions reward the player with a sense of accomplishment at every step, making Viva Pinata dangerously addictive.

Breeding represents another one of Viva Pinata's many distractions. Once two of the same pinata reside within a garden, satisfying a number of additional criteria, which like all other criteria can be found in the in-game encyclopedia, will put them in the mood to breed. Players must then direct the pinatas to one another, at which point they are tasked with a simple mini-game to determine whether or not the, uh, 'romance dance' is successful. After hatching, the potential offspring can be raised within the garden, shipped off to other gardeners via Xbox Live, even sold to the local store at a profit.

Only a few minor problems, mostly in regards to pinata intelligence, detract from the experience. Pinatas are often slow to appear after the requisite conditions are met, and it's not uncommon for them to stroll through a garden multiple times before finally noticing that apple seed you set out for them. Also, the first few hours of the game rush players from one objective to the next across a lengthy tutorial, after which the pace of the game becomes far more relaxed.

With a variety of options available to players, none of them forced, Viva Pinata is almost the video game equivalent of playing with a set of Legos. The possibilities practically endless, players are free to tackle whatever aspect of the game they so desire at their own pace, be it landscaping, attracting new pinatas, breeding pinatas, selling pinatas or merely growing produce. And because the options are so diverse and fulfilling, the game never gets redundant like some other open-ended titles. An extremely impressive balance of considerable complexity, Viva Pinata provides an experience unlike any other on the Xbox 360.