The first game in the Viva Pinata franchise received warm reviews from the press, thanks to the way it allowed players to experiment, create their own goals, and share their creatures with one another online. The second Viva Piñata game -- a poorly executed collection of short and uninspired party games -- was a write-off.

However, the series has returned to form in its recently released third instalment, Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise, which brings players back to the garden and offers a wide range of new activities and objectives. Spend a few hours with it and you'll likely feel highly satisfied with the experience.

You begin by planting flowers to attract a couple of basic piñatas to your own private eden, venture to a desert area to trap an exotic, sand-loving piñata and bring it back to make it a garden resident. You play matchmaker by fattening up a couple of bug-like piñatas with fruit and contracting a builder to erect a special home into which they could mosey to do a romance dance (which involves playing a simple maze-like mini-game), after which a character called Storkos appears in the sky to deliver a Piñata-bearing egg.

Between these official objectives, you have the opportunity to tinker in the garden; shop for new landscaping paraphernalia in the form of fences, pavement, and plants, snap pictures of your piñatas and uploaded them to the game's official web site, and so on.

Occasionally, you defend weaker piñatas from fiercer ones by spraying the latter with water or bonking them on their noodles with a shovel. In short, you're never wont for things to do.

What's more, the one serious failing of the original Viva Piñata -- its simulation-style, real-time management challenges were a little too complex for younger players -- has been more or less remedied in Trouble in Paradise. A two-player co-operative mode allows siblings, friends, or parents join in; ideal for kids who need a little help now and then.

Plus, a simplified "Just for Fun" mode removes piñatas intent on causing trouble and provides infinite money with which to build a dream garden lets rookies do pretty much whatever they want without the worry of resource limitations or predators.

Microsoft still has a long way to go if they want to carve out a reputation for the Xbox 360 as a truly family-friendly platform, but if they can create and cultivate two or three more exclusive children's properties that are of the same caliber as two-thirds of the Viva Piñata games -- and sell them at this totally-doable "value" price point of a scant $30 --, they might have a shot.