Zoo Tycoon DS

"Feels like a caged animal"

Think back to the last time you visited a zoo. What do you remember? Lions? Kangaroos? Elephants? Polar Bears? or that kid who got whacked over the head by the monkeys? In the face of protests from Thailand against elephants being exported to Dubai and Australia, the only safe way to have a zoo is through Zoo Tycoon DS, the handheld version of the PC game of the same thing.

***** Plot *****

There are objectives, but there is no plot. The objectives differ from scenario to scenario. But they are mostly similar - give the animals a warm shelter, keep the customers coming, and boost the zoo rating. All done within the constraint of time and money. Nothing out of the ordinary for an average sim game.

***** Gameplay *****

There are basically two modes of play. One is scenario, where you must meet the objective within the time limit and the other is free play, where you build your zoo to your heart's content.

There are three simple elements in building a zoo. One, the animal exhibits, of course; two, build a path so that visitors can walk to the exhibits and three, the human needs, benches, restrooms, ice cream shops, food stands, drink stands, etc. As you do more research, more stuff will become available.

Being a zoo, the most you would build is naturally animal exhibits. Whether it is lion, bear, giraffe from Africa, or polar bear or penguin from Antarctica, it follows the same process. First you build the fence. That would determine the size of the enclosure. Then you fill it up with animals. You can choose as many as you like and whichever sex you want. If you have both male and female, there is a chance they will give birth to some offspring. The last is to build a habitat suitable for the animal.

You can get advice from the zoo expert on what kind of terrain, toys, shelter, etc. is suitable for your beast. For example, penguins like a lot of water whereas the lions need lying rocks. Each type of animal might have different needs, and by following the expert's advice, you should easily satisfy the needs of the animal and keep them happy. Each pen requires the care of a zoo keeper who will keep the enclosure clean and the animals fed.

You will need maintenance workers to keep the zoo clean and food and drink stands to keep the visitors fed. In more ways than one, a zoo is just one big animal exhibit.

There is a great selection of animal to choose from, albeit generalised to beasts like lion, tiger, elephant, giraffe, bear, penguin, etc. In other words, nothing that a good zoo won't get. They could do more with a bigger selection of exotic animals.

If your zoo reaches a certain standard, you will be given an award. Some of which offer a once-off monetary rewards.

Revenues mostly come from entrance fees (which you can adjust) and donations made to a specific exhibit. But you can also get money from selling food, drinks and gift shops. Restaurants rank in more money than a hotdog stand but cost more to build and maintain, naturally.

At the start, there are only a limited number of things that you can build. By doing research, you can build more things, adopt more animals, hire better tour guides, etc. The general rule is, the more money you put into research, the less time it takes to complete, and the quicker you can to use them.

You can adjust entrance fees and marketing expenses, but you cannot micro-manage things like the cost of food, wage or gift shop.

In terms of being a simulation game, it is on par with other simulation games like SimCity or Theme Park. You get to control a lot of what's going on in the zoo. Instead of building apartment blocks, you build pizza stands; instead of creating rides, you make exhibits. In a way, it's no difference than other sims games.

The controls, however, are less than perfect. It feels like it comes straight from a PC port. You need to double click on an icon to choose it when one click is enough. Building an enclosure entails aligning a grid on the bottom screen with its corresponding grid in the actual zoo view that appears on the top. You can only clear the whole enclosure if you made a mistake, but not undo a fence section. You cannot expand the enclosure once you've created it, and if you want a pen bigger than the grid, too bad. No can do. Building terrain is the same as using the same grid that you must aligned before applying the turf.

However, building road, placing buildings, animals, etc. can be done directing onto the zoo view via the top screen. Building fences and turf are fully capable of being done in zoo view, why the grid?

There are three levels of zooms, and moving around the zoo is as simple as moving the cursor to the desired direction. However, don't try to move when in the full zoom out. Things are just too small at full zoom out. It is not very useful except to look at the overall view of the zoo.

Not a unique problem to this game, the 45 degrees isometric landscape do present some challenge when building road behind buildings, which might require the player to turn the camera angle several times before find the right path.

There have been reports of games hanging in scenario mode, but I have no problems (touch wood).

***** Graphics *****

Graphics is as close as any sim could get. Don't expect to see the faces of visitors and/or animals. They are represented only by a handful of pixels. That said, they are distinguishable, to a degree. You can tell apart a tiger from a leopard, but can hardly tell the difference between a leopard and a cheetah. You can see them move about, or lie down on a rock. And it shows when there is a distinguishable feature between the male and female. Unfortunately, the animals are so small that you can't really tell what they are just by looking at them.

***** Sound *****

Nothing much could be said about the sound, given that there is only a handful of sound effects in the game. The lions roar and the leopards purr when you pick them up, so I guess it is adequate as far as animal is concern. You do hear some human chattering as well. BGM is none, except for the main menu.

***** Replay Value *****

It really depends on personal taste. If you like simulation games like Theme Park, you would like this. But on closer look, the scenarios all boil down to making the animals and visitors happy, and the zoo ratings high and even though you can have different terrain to build your zoo in free play mode, you can change the landscape so easily that they are all essentially the same. The only difference is the size of the zoo.

One way to keep yourself entertain is to set yourself a target. For example, build an African themed zoo or an Antarctica themed zoo.

***** Overall *****

Truth be told, this game is no different than any other simulation games out there. There is no major breakthrough with Zoo Tycoon. The controls are sometimes awkward, the sound is somewhat lacking, and the playground is essentially the same. Having only one save game prevents you from maintaining multiple zoo, which is somewhat disappointing.

What drive this game are the lush environment, the vast amount of animals, and the general lack of these titles on the DS. Go for it if you crave for some caged animals. Otherwise, it's nothing more than an hour or two of enjoyment.

Good:

* Colourful
* Vast amount of animals

Bad:

* Sluggish control
* Lack of sound effect / music
* All zoos are essentially the same
* Tiny graphics

Score (out of 10)

Gameplay: 7
Graphics: 6
Sound: 3
Replay: 5

Overall: 6

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 10/30/07

Game Release: Zoo Tycoon DS (EU, 11/11/05)