I have to be perfectly honest, I've never really been interested in VIva Pinata at all, and was kind of perplexed by why people were so fascinated by it when it first came out.  That being said, I watched Brad's video review of the new game (after reading this) and it actually looks like a much better game than I originally thought.

I still don't know if it is really my kind of game though, because it sort of almost looks like this weird mixture of real-time strategy and civilization building type of games mixed together.  I'm more of a fan of real-time strategy games, and I've never really been into the civilization-type strategy games where you sort of build and manage stuff.

Glad to know you are enjoying it though, if I ever have the opportunity to try it out I can't see myself refusing... but even if I had my own Xbox 360 I couldn't really see myself chomping at the bit to play this, lol.  That being said, it does seem like a good game to play with family/friends as a more casual experience which pretty much seems like what you've gotten out of it, which is a pretty good thing.

It's really hard to put it in a genre, you just have to try it for yourself.  The most important part is that the game is a hell of a lot of fun.  Thanks for commenting!  I was beginning to wonder if I should even bother doing blogs here anymore.  I hate the Gamespot redesign, yet I posted this blog over there and got like 10 comments.  I hope everyone hasn't abandoned GB.

I really can't stand the GS redesign either... I already posted a big rant about that.  It seems really disorganized to me, and I don't really like the colours either.  Even if everyone did go back to GameSpot, I honestly don't see myself ever going back there as my "main" blog.  With everything that has happened, the new site layout, and just my overall lack of enthusiasm for it... I'd rather get a few good comments then hundreds of "COOL" or "I AGREE" comments, not that I have anything against people posting small comments... but it generally makes for more interesting conversation when people put a litle bit of effort into it.

That is actually the reason why I don't comment on some things that I read... because sometimes I don't really have anything to say because I'm not very well educated on the subject, and I'd rather just not post anything than post a generic comment.

I see what you mean about the generic comments.  When I hardly receive comments on my blogs, that tells me that no one is reading them, or that no one cares and makes me wonder if there's even a point anymore.  I completely understand reading peoples blogs and not commenting because you don't have much to say, I do it myself.  Maybe there needs to be a better way to tell whether or not your blog has readers.