BLUE MAG

originally printed in The Davis Enterprise

(X360; $49.99; Rated E; vivapinata.com)

(four stars)

The Xbox 360 is home to the hardcore - a place where blood, guts, bullets, and testosterone is more common than Starbucks on a street corner. So how does Microsoft shape the “adult” system for family use?

Crank out a psychedelic gardening simulator and while producing its Saturday morning cartoon tie-in.

¡Muy Bueno Microsoft!

“Viva Piñata” substitutes the automatic rifles and rocket launchers for shovels and watering cans, as you lay claim to a little parcel on Piñata Island- a magical land where animals made from colorful paper and sweet candy roam, mate, and hopefully call your little garden “home.”

The object of the never-ending game is to cultivate your land to attract the various piñata animals to your garden, get them to stay, reproduce, and raise enough money to expand your garden.

And this is where “Piñata’s” deceptively simple “child’s game” becomes a time-absorbing challenge for all of the burgeoning economists, zoologists, agriculturalists, and entrepreneurs in the audience.

Sure the simplicity of the controls and the bright colors are enough to keep a younger audience entertained for hours, but the resource management aspect of the game is as intricate as any “SimCity” game you’ve played. Raising certain crops will attract certain types of species during certain hours of the day. Once the animal is attracted to your garden, certain requirements are needed to cause the animal to become a resident. Sometimes, it’s a matter of having enough water and fruit to eat; for larger animals, however, it means having a particular species in your garden to feast on.

So if you want to keep the fox-like Pretztails around, you’ll have to make sure to have enough squirrel-like Squazzils for them to nibble on, but attracting the Squazziles requires having hazlenut trees, getting the Squazzils to romance and reproduce means having blackberry bushes for them to eat; but my blackberry bush just died of dehydration, because I was busy attending the to medical needs of my Fudgehog and stopping a fight between the warring Raisants and Buzzlegums, and… dang it! Where did the evil, piñata-infecting Sours come from, and how come my Cinnamonkeys won’t mate!?

Yep, it’s a little like that sometimes.

Thankfully fences, trees, and buildings can be purchased to wrangle the eventual zoo you’ll be running. Currency is earned by selling crops or piñatas- which bring up interesting situations like being able to breed animals for profit, or breeding animals for food to keep other, rarer piñatas happy.

There are multiple levels of complexity that can be enjoyed by players of all ages, but “Viva Piñata’s” real charm is that the game begins and ends with adorable-looking piñata animals that, like Pokemon, makes you want to “catch ‘em all.” Pick it up to play with the kids.

Or as satisfying reprieve from gun battles.