![]() I used cheats to have infinite money, and I never had to worry about guest satisfaction. But the reason many latched onto the game is because they could play it however they pleased. There is, of course, a technical way to win: engage in the capitalistic practice of increasing profits. Players could pick and choose how to play. Zoo Tycoon was popular for plenty of reasons, among them the ability to curate your own experience. I tested out scenarios, adding gazelles and other animals to the enclosures. I spent hours constructing the perfect environment from them: all the right trees for shade, lots of dirt, and plenty of food. In particular, I remember building a single enclosure the size of the lot for a pride of lions, my favorite animal at the time. I was enamored by Zoo Tycoon and the freedom it gave me to create something in a way I’d only ever dream about. I wanted to be a veterinarian - someone who helped injured animals, the wilder the better. Many wild animals won’t thrive in captivity - there are many for-profit zoos that are, frankly, inhumane - and being a zookeeper certainly didn’t mean we’d be petting wild animals day-by-day. For many of us, we realized the unlikeliness of these dreams becoming reality. We lived out these fantasies in books and by playing pretend, dreaming up the research centers we’d fund, the animals we’d rehabilitate, and the fur we’d snuggle up to at night. This is a normal day at work in Blue Fang’s Zoo Tycoon, the management simulation game published by Microsoft in 2001.Īs a kid, I wanted nothing more than to be in the presence of all the animals I loved, whether that was scooping their poop or studying their movement. Maybe you can’t keep up with the animal poop, and now the zoo’s patrons are throwing up, too. Sometimes, it’s because the wrong food has been placed in their habitat. You can tell because of the tiny, red frowning faces that have popped up above their heads. They both have their pros and cons (my opinions of course).The orangutans are unhappy. The general barriers between the player and the animals are want annoy me the most, though. The lack of an egg stage is a also a weird thing to not be a priority for something with such an emphasis on realism and breeding. As mentioned previously, not being able to directly move animals is a problem for me. I think the current terrain paint could be fun to mess with, but in a requirement? So long as it is the right biome and what not, it feels overly fickle. I have hated the terrain block requirements of ZT1 since the beginning, just as I hate them now as terrain paint. That is fine when all you want is a business simulation, but I play PZ for the animals.įurther, there are some base choices I do not like. All in all, it really limits what I can do to a "zoo within the lines" and it really divorces me from the animals through layers of keeper AI. That is not only discouraged but impossible now, and you are at the mercy of the keeper AI to transport animals again instead of being able to move them yourself. I used to make something more akin to wildlife refuges all the time in ZT2 or even just let animals roam on the map sometimes. The exhibit focus also really constrains how I build and makes building them really tedious for me. However in PZ and ZT1, you are at the complete mercy of the keeper AI. They could also swim to the animals, and if they malfunctioned you could take care of it. In ZT2, I used to plop a keeper in an exhibit and they would would live there with no way out in a number of zoos. I like the building, sure, but your customization boils down to playing the game the "right way." You need only remove a habitat gate for a moment to see that. You cannot walk around the zoo and do things or interact with animals in PZ either. ![]() However, things like an egg stage for birds and reptiles that were in Zoo Tycoon 2 are not in PZ. (Some aquatic animals from the beginning, for example.) I do hope PZ gets some meatier expansions later, so I cannot judge it too harshly on what has not happened. Although PZ had more animals, technically, I would argue Zoo Tycoon 2 did have more diverse offerings for base game and DLC. However, I wanted something more akin to Zoo Tycoon 2. Zoo Tycoon won several awards for such back in its day. In my initial review I went over the same thing, but PZ feels like the original Zoo Tycoon for the modern era with so much emphasis on habitats and its connections to education. ![]() I would argue it fits very well as a remade Zoo Tycoon.
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