The boys have been forcing me to watch the "Viva Pinata: Party Animals" trailer (downloaded on the 360 -- I love the whole Bringing It Home thing).  That reminded me that I was having fun with Viva Pinata, but never really finished it.

So I broke down today and decided to just cheat (ie, look on the intertubes) and power through the remaining Achievements (at 720 / 1000 currently).  Some kind souls at QT3 turned me on to PinataIsland.info, which has a nice wiki for the game.

As it turns out, there's a ton of cool stuff that I could have figured out if only the game had reached out to me a little, met me halfway. 

For example...

-- (minor spoiler warning)

...  you can learn which fertilizer goes with which plant by seeing what fertilizer type you get when you use a Taffly on that plant's fruit (which generates fertilizer).  That's cool stuff, and seems internally consistent.  But because the game gave me so little opportunity to see that consistency (much less happen on finding out the whole Taffly-fertilizer thing aside from pure chance) I never had a chance to feel like that sort of exploration would be reasonably rewarded.

Don't get me wrong, I still love the game and it's one of my favorite quirky titles.  But it is very clear to me there is a lot further they could take it for VP2.  It's one of the few games that really everyone in the house enjoys when I play, and the core "run a crazy fantasy garden" is a very compelling experience with a lot of room for further expansion.