don't have my review copy yet, but my entire EB district had a shipping snafu and got viva instead of the majority of Gears Collector's editions - bad for everyone else, good for me who couldn't wait to play the game ASAP (i just stuck with regular gears). impressions:
first and foremost, downright gorgeous. the framerate is silky most of the time (put your fears away), the only technical quirk is the menus taking a second too long to load, when you're going in and out of them all the time. i'm having a tough time deciding which game looks better - this or gears. sounds like an exaggeration i know, and gears peaks higher (viva is never jaw-dropping, per se), but it's so colourful (that one's for those rare brits, on the house) and the art direction so focused and inventive that it's constantly gorgeous, even at night.
speaking of night, the day/night cycle is a little too quick - 10-15 minutes top, i would guess. while night looks great and gives you a breather while most of your pinatas sleep, it's a little too dark outside of the area right around your cursor to get as much done as during the day.
the structure of the game takes a bit of getting used to - it holds your hand more than any other game i've ever seen for the first 45 minutes - literally everything is explained with about three different menus. so you sit there nodding "uh huh, uh huh" as they tell you, thinking you'll be a master gardener by the time they shut up. not so much. the minute they're done explaining you wonder where the hell to start, and the minute you start you have ten different things going on.
unlike the BCD E3 demo i was witness to, and what most others would assume i think, the pace of the game can be pretty hectic. your tasks are constantly interrupted by pinatas fighting, new ones showing up, mating, new humans appearing to offer their services, etc. and often times the game will just interrupt you with a new task, just to make sure you can get the hang of it before you can go back to doing anything else. i'm sure things level out a bit once your garden's ecosystem stabilizes a bit and you have money to do whatever you need, but otherwise it's more or less constant multitasking.
the game intro is a bit obnoxious since the pinatas talk, just like the show, but thankfully no one talks in-game outside of the human characters who show up (who are very well-acted, have super-cute accents and even some subtle adult humor at times). i also caught a PS3/Genji rip in one of the early instruction menus, keep your eye out ;-)
overall, i'm very much enjoying it, definitely buy-worthy if you were at all excited about the game. i don't think you can really be disappointed with the experience of growing a garden unless you have grossly different expectations than you should. it looks great, and plays like sim city/harvest moon/AC:WW with a small dash of pikmin and what i expect spore to be. a solid 8 right now, even if i wish it were a bit more relaxing (i play it to destress from gears, and end up getting more stressed than killing locust if a whirlm wanders away for no apparent reason), with a lot of potential to get much better the more i play it. any questions?
