Take Messy Mayhem and Ruffian Tumble - both involve Ruffians, both involve whacking things to collect candy, and both are rubbish - or Raisant Stomp and Red Raisant Blast - both about stamping on ants, except one of them has red ants as well. Annoying, wasn't it? In which case you will probably also find it annoying that you can't create custom playlists of mini-games, and so encounter the same ones over and over again, not to mention encountering the same elements in multiple games because they're all much of a muchness. Notice how I used the same words twice in a row to make the paragraph seem longer. You can play as four of the better-known characters from the TV show.

There are two things you can do with Party Animals: you can play a selection of randomised mini-games interspersed between foot-races with people sat in your lounge, and you can play a selection of randomised mini-games interspersed between foot-races with people sat in other lounges around the world. And so Party Animals, thrown together by Krome Studios using familiar assets from VP and the (surprisingly watchable) TV show, goes in completely the opposite direction, delivering a mixture of dull foot-races and dull mini-games and handing out Gamerpoints like candy. Some of the Rare folks blamed the marketing budget going to Gears of War, but VP was a bit complicated anyway - not that it bothered its seemingly unintended beneficiaries, us. That said, we shouldn't be surprised: Viva Pinata was originally conceived as a way of helping the Xbox 360 appeal to kids and families (so much so that poor old Rare had to avoid using the hard disk in case people bought Core Systems), and seems to have failed to do that. As the true nature of Party Animals became apparent, my jaw undropped itself and clenched, the smile disappearing from my face in a cascade of furrows and despairing creases.

What the camera failed to capture, however, was what happened next. It was one of the best games of 2006 and I have many happy memories of playing it on cold winter evenings, the warming sights and sounds of a flourishing garden coaxing me further into the night.

There's footage of me (in one of those Eurogamer TV Shows Johnny makes when he's not hob-knobbing with Jo Wiley) positively agape with delight at the sight of all my old Viva Piñata friends dancing merrily across Microsoft's E3 mega-screen.

Party animals initial release date