Viva Pinata...while you still can

Let me preface this post by stating from the beginning that Viva Pinata is an extremely charming game, possibly enough to cause minor tooth decay and an almost irresistible desire to plaster a shit-eating grin all over your face as you play. There. It's done. But, you see, there is a deliberate rationale behind this upwelling of good feeling generated by the game. Not unlike the narcotics mandated by the totalitarian state in Equilibrium, ones designed to numb the populace and thereby encourage them to miss the sinister underworkings of the hegemony, this charm and goodwill masks a dark--dare I say, nefarious?--system operating just beneath the surface.

Allow me a brief moment to give you the game's fundamental premise. On Pinata Island, where you apparently dwell/are banished, pinata live and roam in edenic bliss. You, as a novice gardener, must cultivate your patch of land to attract various pinata to visit, and ultimately, set up permanent residence. Once there, you can get them to "romance" and thereby bring in another generation of pinata; can cultivate various fruits, flowers, and vegetables; and landscape your garden to match your own peculiar aesthetic, and more (!). Sounds great.

The devil, as they say, is in the details. The pinata are seemingly immortal, or at least, immune to the ravages of old age. Thus so long as they are not destroyed by stronger, more predatory pinata, they will persist indefinitely, like styrofoam in a landfill. What this amounts to, though, is the same progenitors used again and again to propagate the family in a horrible parody of those values Republicans love clinging to. In less flowery language: the same parent can repeatedly "romance" his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, ensuring an increasingly isolated and stagnant gene pool. It's a kid's game, so the subsequent generations don't suddenly emerge with two heads or a dead fetus protruding from a rib, but one can't help but hear the soft twang of a banjo playing the theme from Deliverance. Indeed, those pinatas do have a perty mouth.

Incest, however, is only the tip of the mutated iceberg. "Sour" pinata roam into your garden from time to time, and certain varieties of even tame pinata are also known to cause trouble. One can, at times, bring these ruffians in line with merely a dousing from your water can. But should these recalcitrant beasties prove too stubborn, one's sole recourse is to...savor it....beat them to death with your shovel. And this isn't like killing your rich grandmother, either. One shot won't do it. After a few blows, the target of your righteous fury will crumple to the ground, moaning, while you continue to bludgeon it until candy comes out. And come out it does. The pinata explodes, leaving behind delicious candy innards for your other pinata to feast upon as a celestial light descends from above, drawing the shredded, paper-mache remains of your pinata's flesh and, I imagine, skeletal structure into the sky in a gentle spiral, not unlike the caress of God. Oh, and as the pinata explodes, a chorus of children scream in delight from seemingly everywhere at once.

As any gardener with an acute God-complex would expect, one is free to "engineer" your pinata as well. Often this simply involves feeding them certain food to evoke a change in color or form. However, a few counter-intuitive instances stand out. For instance, if you want your "tadfly" to change from blue to red, you must buy a tiki torch and then consign him to the flames. He will emerge, like a phoenix, rejuvenated and newly crimson. The point I want to make, though, is that if you don't have the strategy guide or read the forums, to discover this you must be of that special temperament that feels randomly incinerating your pets is a good idea. In other words, at least for select moments, the game seems designed for people like Nero as he trussed up Christians and set them afire to light his dinner parties.

Commerce, as everywhere, is generated through the development of a product and its eventual sale. In Viva Pinata, you sell anything you want. Including your pinata. That's right: breed them recklessly with no concern for the retardation such rampant incest is likely to create, beat them into submission or simply burn them alive, and then sell the manicured survivors off to be beaten to death by children, who too will gorge upon the pinata's candied innards. No wonder these poor bastards long for the sweet embrace of death and can dream only of finally making it to a child's party (or WWE inspired quinceanera, I suppose) so that their misery might end. Viva pinata, indeed.