When Blue Fang and Microsoft released Zoo Tycoon three years ago, there didn’t appear
to be all that much to the title to set it apart from the rest of the economic simulation crowd, except for the enjoyable theme of taking care of animals and the family friendly interface and gameplay. The graphics and sound, while adequate for the genre, weren’t anything above average, and the gameplay, while fun, wasn’t as involved as Roller Coaster Tycoon. However, the game soon became very popular and sold a ton of copies, and spawned two expansion disks. My own family has had a lot of fun with this game, especially with the second expansion Marine Mania, a Sea World type of add-on. This just goes to show that graphics and complicated gameplay ain’t everything.
Now, after three years, Microsoft has teamed up again with Blue Fang for Zoo Tycoon 2, which is designed to be pretty much the same game as the original as to basic gameplay, but with several new features, mostly to do with the interface menus and graphical capabilities. This is a quick look at the beta edition of the game, which is due to be released rto etail in October 2004.
The first difference players will notice is the rearranging of the menus. Before, the menus were on the right side of the screen, now they’re on the bottom right. The information is sorted differently, with everything players need to know about the animals from biomes and food to its personal needs of the moment all together in the same window. This is a very welcome change which makes it easy to gather information about the animal instantly; however, one feature has been done away with, and that’s the explicit recommendations on what the animal is thinking at the moment and what the zookeeper thinks it might need at that moment to make it happier.
Graphically, this game looks much better than the first, especially when zoomed in closely. The animals actually appear better in close-up than from far away. All the buildings and accessories look really great in close-up viewpoint, too, but for some reason the people aren’t nearly as detailed and have odd-looking hands. The viewpoint can be toggled to an overhead view, a map view and also a first-person view, which allows players to see the animals from the guests viewpoint. There supposedly is a “Zookeeper” mode which allows the player to assume the role of the zookeeper and do whatever it is that zookeepers do, namely, enter the enclosure, call the animals by name, feed them, clean up after them, well, you get the picture. Unfortunately, I never got to experience this, as for some reason I couldn’t figure out how to do this in the first-person mode.
The gameplay is pretty much the same set-up as before, either take on an existing zoo and improve it or build a specific type of zoo in the challenge and campaign modes, or just have fun in the sandbox mode. The animals, buildings and staff are mostly the same as to behavior. However, I seemed to have some difficulty getting my animals taken care of by the zookeepers, who kept lounging around in the staff building. It didn’t seem to matter if I had them assigned to the enclosures or not; even after assigning, they would immediately leave and take care of another animal’s need in a separate enclosure and never come back. Hopefully this issue will be addressed in the final game.
On the whole, this game looks to be as fun as the first, if the zookeeper issues are resolved. The improved look of the animals and the ability to zoom in for a close-up view are a definite plus, and the animal species are varied and interesting, with a wide range of behaviors and habitats. We look forward to seeing the finalized version!
