Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh my. (Zoo Tycoon (PC))

Member Name: Fiver29

Product:	Zoo Tycoon (PC)
Date:	22/04/09 (60 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Easy to play, educational

Disadvantages: Addictive

This is one of those games that on the face of it sounds incredibly boring. But when you start playing it's ridiculously addictive.

The purpose of the game is to build your own zoo, by adding various cages with different types of animals, shops and restaurants, and generally trying to make sure that all your animals and customers are kept happy.

Sounds simple enough, and it is pretty simple to set it all up. Keeping the animals happy is reasonably easy too, but the customers are a right pain in the backside, and moan about needing the toilet, for example, when they are stood next to a restroom. Pretty much like people in real life lol.

I originally bought the game for the children, and they enjoy in immensely, I like them playing it because it has an educational feel to it as well. This is because in order to keep the animals happy, you have to kit their areas out with the correct types of terrain, plants, water sources, rock formations, terrain elevations etc. So whilst they think they are just playing away, they are actually taking in a lot of information about what animals have in the wild.

When you start the game, you can either follow the 'story' and learn how to play as you go from one level to another. Or you can play in freeplay, the game is so simple that you don't really need the tutorial levels and you can make it up as you go along. Playing in free play means you have the choice of the type of zoo you want (size, area etc), and you can decided how much cash you want to start with. Or in the case of the kids, you can use the PC cheat and add a few million to your total lol. Of course using the cheat defeats the object of trying to make the zoo successful, because you've always got plenty of money.

We ended up with two copies of this game, I had bought the complete collection a couple of years ago where the add on scenarios were incorporation in one package, then my nephew sorted out his old games to give to my children, and he had all three disc separately as you can see on the picture above.

The add on discs allow you to add marine animals to your zoo, and as well as just having the animals on view, you can build show tanks so they do various shows, with different types of tricks.

The second add on has dinosaurs, which to be honest sounds more interesting that it actually is. Both myself and the kids prefer just to add the Marina Mania add on. Unless of course my son fancies hatching a bunch of dinosaurs and then removing all the fences, and watching the customers run from the rampaging animals!!

It's the sort of game where you think, I'll just play 10 minutes, then suddenly you realise it's nearly lunchtime and you've done no studying at all.

So if you have lots of self control, then its well recommended, if you haven't then don't blame me ;o)

Summary: Much better than the sequel