The PS3 and Wii have launched! We talked to 360 owners who happily purchased the competitions consoles and guess what, they didn’t put em up on ebay! Our 3 regular gamers, just like you, include HALooVER XP, Cognative and Mik.

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Show Wrap-up Discussion W/ Surprise Third Co-Host

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Well I guess I am due. My 360 finally gave up. Below is an image of my gaming area…

As you can see the 360 logo, on the startup screen, is saturated with white dashes.

So I tried again, to start my system, this time to play Geo Wars. This image below is taken as the game locked up once again.

So I decided to search the web for possible solutions. I tried switching the video inputs, from HD to TV, then I took my Hard Drive off, then I disconnected all periphrials. All this was to no avail.

So I decided to put my 360 in time out…

It worked on my kids.

So I then called up MS. They stated it’s still under warrenty. So I finally get to expierience what all my friends have gone through. The customer service at MS was great. They seemed to be aware of the problem. So I am officially without 360 gaming for the next few days (hopefully).

I do have one question though. If I have movies on my HD I have yet to view, am I out of luck with the time constraints? Also I have several games I have rented from Blockbuster (for the Turkey Day Weekend) that I wont be able to play. So I guess It may have cost me more than just gaming delays. It’s now monetary.

Well I do have one side-note: I picked up a new system last week. Hopefully it’s Wii-liable!

So a couple weeks ago I got my hands on Viva Piñata! You know? One of the handful of “E” rated games for the Xbox 360. In fact, considering all games marketed for young kids this is one of the 2 or 3 depending on how you look at it. So with that in mind, I believe there are no good games for that market. That is, until Viva Piñata came our way. Now this game is obviously marketed to a much younger audience, but I have to say I absolutely love this game.

Now you start off with this beat up small piece of land, with junk all over it. What you have to do is first, beat all the hard dirt, clean up your land and plant grass. When you get points you will already start to bring in piñata’s to your farm. You will get these cool little worm thingys, these are the most basic and easiest type of piñatas to get. Once you have two of them on your farm you can then “romance” them. (Now parents don’t worry because when you “romance” piñatas they go inside their house and dance.) Each piñata has there own special piñata dance that was done pretty creatively and no two piñatas dance alike. Once you have two piñata’s of the same type, you have to meet special requirements to ramance them. All different for each piñata, like for the worms all you have to do is have there type of house built. Once that is done you can let them go at it. Later on it the game however, things get more complicated. You might find yourself having to feed your piñatas other piñatas banana splits or many other things.

Now in this game there are many other things to do than just romancing your piñatas. For instance, they will fight each other. Yes, they fight if their personalities are not compatible. You have to worry about keeping them happy, and protecting them from the “sour” piñatas outside your farm, along with many other things.

Now for the overview of the game.

First, gameplay. Its all pretty simple, you have to meet certain requirements to lure piñatas to your farm, to make them residents, to romance them and to keep them happy. Thats the gist of the game, you do this over and over again. However, in Viva Piñata you don’t always feel like you’re doing the same thing again and again… even though you are! There is a ranking system and here are a few things you need to do to get your rank up. Get piñatas to your farm, plant new and exciting plants and make varients of piñatas or plants. As your rank goes up, you’ll unlock upgradable tools, new items in your store, new piñatas among many other things. Overall on gameplay I will give this game a 7, ya it’s fun but as you get high in rank you start to feel like you’re repeating things that you have already done.

We will go over controls next. Wow, this game is so simple to pick up and play, and while your playing you get hints along the way with a button diagram in the top right of your screen that doesn’t get in the way. Great job on this Rare, so I have to give it a 9 on controls, just because its so easy for everyone to pick up and play.

Now lets move on to sound. While there’s nothing spectacular here, Rare does the job and does it OK. Interesting sounds all around but still nothing special, so I have to give it a 6.

Graphics, this game is a pretty game. While I don’t feel its maxed out to the full capabilities of the 360 they still did a great job with the bright colors, amount of detail put into the piñatas and with the surrounding areas. I absolutely love the colors in this game and how bright everything is, so I am going to give Viva Piñata a 9 in the graphics dept., great job.

Overall, now remember, Viva Piñata was made mostly for the younger audience and to get them to jump-in on the Xbox 360 bandwagon and I think that Microsoft and Rare did an excellent job of making a game with such potential. But what hooked me was that as an adult, I still love playing this game myself. So I am going to give Viva Piñata a 8.6 overall.

Now if you do the math you will notice that things don’t add up but thats because I don’t feel certain things like graphics or sound should count as much as gameplay. I don’t just add all the numbers together and go from there. I go off of what I feel the overall rating should be. If you’re an older gamer I would strongly recommend that you check this out. If you don’t, you’re only cheating yourself because this is so much better then some of the games out there for the 360. If you’re a casual gamer on the other hand or wanna get this for your kids I would ask “Why are you reading my review instead of going to the store right now to get this game?” Viva Piñata is so made for the kids or casual games that you just have to pick it up.

Now if you like my review please feel free to comment here in the blog. If you do not like my review, feel free to send evil piñatas to my farm through the games cool mail system.

Stay tuned to show 32.0 where you will be given a “KIDS PIX” from MrCarpalTunnels kids. It’ll be cool to listen to a review from a kids prospective, which I will be waiting to hear.

If you’re still waiting on that episode of South Park to download from the marketplace (it took me 4 hours to get it completed) the ZUNE is offering a way for you to listen to XBL Radio while you wait.

FEED YOUR ZUNE is an easy way to incorporate RSS into your Zune. One of the features that made the iPod great was its ability to incorporate podcast RSS subscriptions.

On our last show, XBL Radio ver 31, Steve519 discussed all of the Zunes features. One feature not included was the ability to use RSS. So if RSS subscriptions made you not purchase the newest portable entertainment machine, now might be a time to reconsider…