Zoo Tycoon Review

Even though some 14 Tycoon titles appeared over the last year and a half, few of them managed to achieve any success (Rollercoaster Tycoon was definitely my favorite here). Basically, all these games let you create an autarchic mini-empire, where you, as a "tycoon-to-be", had to insure fun for the people who visit it. Microsoft decided to join the party and create the Zoo Tycoon, a rather specific simulation, in which you have to take care of the needs of your animals, as well as the needs of the visitors.

Building your own Zoo is a very unrewarding job. Thanks to the way the game is made, you will see how people can get demanding nowadays. And if I add that you have to treat your animals even better by spending huge amounts of time and money to design their boxes so that they resemble their natural surroundings, Zoo Tycoon is somewhere on the verge of turning from nice fun for long winter nights into arduous work that would make your eyes, hand and brain hurt.

The game features two basic modes - Scenario and Freeform. The Scenario mode is a campaign containing thirteen scenarios. Playing in this mode is difficult and requires a lot of precision, good timing, and huge amounts of scrolling and clicking, especially in later phases. The upside of the game here is that it will allow you to replay completed scenarios (this is very good as goals can be accomplished in more than one ways), but if you are in the mood to play something a bit refreshing, I guess the Freeform mode (with no time limits, set goals or small initial funds), would always be a good choice. Freeform mode contains 28 maps.

You will, however, not be able to start playing properly before you finish the three Tutorial missions, which are crucial for realizing how the interface and the AI work. The interface bears a strong mark of typical Microsoft intuitiveness (I can already hear the angry mob coming to beat me up), with (Aha! - the author tries to save his hide!) a certain number of illogical inconsistencies which thwart the gameplay. The interface highly resembles what we've seen in The Sims, with its clear icons and efficient tool tips. Clicking on one of the four basic group icons, you enter menus for constructing exhibits' living space, purchasing animals, building ornamental and useful structures, and hiring staff.

The problems begin at the very start, when you have to receive a couple of new animals and design a home for them. If you like to watch TV shows about animals, you are likely to have less trouble at managing your animals. The animals have to feel comfortable in the Zoo (which is the basic perquisite for attracting visitors), and to achieve that you have to create for them a habitat that best suits their needs and habits. Now, you may assume that a lion needs a lot of space and that it feels comfortable with small bushes; but which bushes in particular? And does it like rocks and what rocks? And should you plant a tree there, and where would it like to sleep? This and another couple of dozen dilemmas will turn the game into a tiresome trial and error experiment, until you reach a satisfactory solution.

If you then multiply the trouble you had with one animal and the number of animals you have to provide for, you get a living nightmare, where all your "tycoon ambitions" get transformed into reading boring statistics on the state of your exhibits, and the advice you get from the zoo keeper, who will never ever be pleased with what you do regardless of how happy the animals are. The game immediately turns into an obvious collection of technical data, that anything you wish to do turns into an impossible mission of balancing hundreds of parameters that would eventually piss off a finance minister, let alone a player who just wants some fun.

You can zoom the picture in, but even when you zoomed in as much as you can, all the objects are still relatively small, which somehow makes you feel faraway from the action. The animals, are practically impossible to please, but are otherwise quite uninteresting - they simply tend to roam from one wall too another and rarely do anything else. The visitors are even worse - they come down to uninteresting collections of statistics. And even though you can select any of them at any time, and get an overly extensive report on his psycho-physical state, they are and remain simple numbers, which will make you feel even more detached from the game. As for your attitude towards their hard-earned money - we've seen that in Tycoon games a hundred times - give them to eat, drink and provide them with some fun, and watch the cash flow in.

The Tycoon titles were always notorious for poor 2D graphics and Zoo Tycoon is not MUCH of an exception here. Overall, I must admit the graphics are not too bad though - the icons, menus and pasted 3D objects look quite decent to say the least. The terrains look somehow cartoonish. The worst aspect of the graphics is that it limits you to rotating the map in steps of 90 degrees only. So OK, graphics are far from brilliant, but still good enough, but the sounds are definitely disappointing. The music is lively and dynamic, but the sounds are completely sterile and unimaginative, and add nothing to the game.

The best things in the game are the unforeseen mishaps, like monkeys breaking loose, or scared visitors running away from a raging lion, which is still far from enough to leave a too good overall impression. Another upside of the game would be the fact that the game includes an encyclopedia on all the animals appearing in the game; well it would be if this was supposed to be an educational and not a fun title...