Zoo Tycoon 2 Review

Overall Rating

It's great to see a zoo you've built from scratch prosper before your eyes.

The scenarios are annoying at best.

Zoo Tycoon succeeds in creating a PC game experience that brings you back to the game over and over again.

The sense of well-being you get from watching the zoo you've crafted from the ground up, grow into a massive complex that houses a gargantuan number of exotic animals, from the humble peacock to the distinguished Giant Panda. And I can tell you that that is a great feeling.

Nevertheless, the joys of the game are also balanced out by the wealth of misery's. The scenarios seem like something a five-year old has put together, and you could spend hours trying to complete the troublesome ones, but spend literally minutes completing the easier of them. All of them however, have little or no reward.

The animal feedback is also poor. It is often hard to tell whether there exhibits are too small, or whether there are too many trees, rocks or various other objects. You could often spend much of the time you are playing the game re-building your finished enclosures because it keeps telling you it is too small. It truly is a pain in the neck.

Reverting back to the positive elements; you no longer have to pay for terrain changes. Perhaps the most expensive part of the original Zoo Tycoon was having to pay to change grass into dirt and so on. I once spent $21,000 changing some of the terrain in one of my enclosures. Now this pain has been removed and makes the game so much more enjoyable than before.

Also, a larger sense of realism comes with Zoo Tycoon 2. In the previous games you could adopt such animals as Unicorns and Triceratops's. No such animals in this game, as the species are firmly stuck down to Earth, and this makes the game so much more believable. Furthermore, the way you can construct your fences has changed dramatically since it's predecessor. In the first game you could build your fences strictly along a fixed grid.
A massive improvement has been made to this game as you can lay down your fences on diagonals and round curves, and all over the place. It really does make all the difference, and it makes the zoo you've strived to create look all the more beautiful.

The graphics have been greatly improved since the original venture, and there are no more 2 dimensional isometrics. The flowing 3D graphics allow you to get right up close with all the animals you have adopted (you can even explore your zoo as a guest). It is the greatest improvement over the original.

The game keeps you coming back for more as well, as the open-ended gameplay allows you to build whatever you want. You could simply wake up one day and think "I want to build a zoo only with animals that have tails", and you can do that. And well, the more you play the better it gets, the better you become, and the better you can design your zoos.

So, if you're looking for a game that can keep you coming back and just gets better, Zoo Tycoon is the one for you. But if you take my advice, stay to the Freeform and Challenge modes, and stay far away form the scenarios.