You can assign several cages to each keeper, but for some reason, they don't always seem to want to perform their duties. These guys are in charge of feeding, cleaning up after, and administering medical aide to the animals. Now you'll need to make sure they're healthy and all of that jazz by assigning a keeper to them. Eventually, 'cause its really only a matter of time, you'll have the ideal habitat for your animals. You'll see if they like what you've done by a happy or frowny face that pops up above their furry little heads. At this point, you can start adding the necessary adjustments to make your creatures happy. After finishing an enclosure, by creating an enclosed (go figure) space out of the different walls and fences, you can name the thing and then stick some animals in it. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any hotkeys for removing people or trees from the field so designing enclosures could be easier. The view is isometric and can be rotated so you can see the field from four angles. The general gameplay isn't going to be unfamiliar to any of the tycoon gamers out there. Even things like the petting zoo, which might have been fun to put together was taken and replaced by a big blocky building that people just disappear into and you never see what actually happens inside. There is very little to make the parks more interesting for the people coming to visit it in terms of looking into the enclosures. This means all of your designs are going to be blocky and generally uninteresting for the most part. How am I supposed to get it more perfect than perfect?Įven if you do veer from the tried and true square cage and go a little wacky with your design, there are no curved pieces for caging.
Which would actually be understandable if these creatures were just pulled from the wild in real life, but this is a damn game. They will escape and harass the public (and even attack them if a predator gets loose).Īnd then on top of that, even when your little help from the zoo keeper screen tells you that an enclosure is perfectly suited to the stupid animal inhabiting it, the animal might be totally pissed off to be there. The only real planning you need to have in terms of foliage placement is to make sure that you don't stick trees near the walls in enclosures with creatures that can climb trees. it's all the same in the end even if the graphics for each are a little different. They want certain terrain in their enclosures, certain plants, maybe some rocks. Sure, the animals are different and have different needs, but not different enough to make a difference. A little jungle floor tile here, a few trees and bushes there, a play set for the chimps to play on, and a shelter. Consequently all of the enclosures I ended up creating tended to be pretty much the same thing each time around. Unfortunately, what could have been an opportunity for some creative enclosure designs gets mired down in the strict rules for what the animals will consider suitable for their tastes. Each of those roller coasters built were different from the others and there was some serious planning going into them to make sure they fit and were exciting. Unlike a game such as Roller Coaster Tycoon, which is comparable in looks and general gameplay, there just isn't enough room for serious creativity, which is what made that other game so successful. It's not like this is the worst game in the world or anything, but there really isn't much exciting to keep you occupied here after playing for a certain amount of time.
So if I have to do this in the game, isn't it reasonable to ask that they keep me happy and entertained? So here we have Zoo Tycoon where you, much surprise here, are challenged to create and run a successful zoo in all aspects including keeping the animals happy and healthy as well as keeping the people happy. So when Microsoft announced that they would be publishing a tycoon game of their own, we had hope as they probably wouldn't pick up "just another tycoon" game. Most of these titles were done by smaller developers and publishers however and many were actually packaged as bargain titles. There were so many games that stuck a tycoon after their freaking names after Roller Coaster Tycoon and Railroad Tycoon did so well that it could make your head spin.