Zoo Tycoon 2 DS is the latest in a long time of simulation games from the “Tycoon” family. Instead of building your own theme park or the like, you’re given the opportunity to run a zoo. This can be done through a series of different modes. You can take a hands-on approach and design the zoo to precise personal specifications, or you can step back a bit and handle such behind the scenes activities as determining prices of food sold at the restaurant or how much money should be budgeted towards advertising and R&D. There’s also a zoo keeper mode that lets you take specific care of the animals in question (i.e. feeding and brushing them, Harvest Moon style).
“Campaign Game mode” is where you should putatively start off in the game. It provides a tutorial on how to create and care for your animals. Be forewarned that if you’re like me and quickly skim through the goals or forget what they are after a bit, you’ll never be reminded on what to do, and could easily fail the tutorial in question. There’s no real way to go back and review your objective(s) – you pretty much have to restart the tutorial in question from scratch. This becomes a particular hassle as there are several tutorials, each containing three smaller “sub-goals”. Now you can start to see the big picture - it could take you quite a while to get through the damn tutorials before you’re even allowed to play the game per se.
The only alternate option for impatient types like myself is to bypass the whole tutorial route and jump into the “Freeform Game”. Here you can just set your starting cash and go from there. This is a much better option, at least once you get a hang for the basics.
The background music is nothing to write home about, but it’s pleasant enough for a handheld. I did get a kick out of hearing the short sound clips of each animal as you add them to their particular exhibit. I would have preferred to hear the animal noises more often, or perhaps the happy chatter of people enjoying the zoo I created.
Since Zoo Tycoon 2 DS is a port of a PC game you’d assume the graphics would be a bit better. Sadly, several of the animals look like…well, pretty much a blob of mushed up pixels as they move from side to side in their exhibits. You have to look really hard (and have something of a creative imagination) to figure out which animal you are looking at, at any given time.
“Zoo Keeper mode” is particularly lame. Here you are given the task of taking care of any animal you tap your stylus on - you can feed it, brush it, clean it, clean the exhibit, or nurse it. First, both the cleaning of the animal and the cleaning of the exhibit are the exact same thing. You just rub the stylus back and forth over the screen as dirt piles up on it. The other mini-games require you to drag food to the animal’s mouth or tap the screen a given number to pet the animal. I can not find words to express how tedious and disappointing this series of mini-games is. I don’t know how accurate an actual zoo keeper would find this, but there was no fun whatsoever involved in the proceedings here.
Bottom Line:
Despite the aforementioned design flaws, after putting in some time, I did enjoy Zoo Tycoon 2 DS. I found it hard to put down the DS, and discovered that I really did want to build the perfect zoo (ha ha). That said, unless your expectations are distinctly limited, the game’s many restrictions make it all but impossible to build the zoo of your dreams.
| Pros: | Cons: | Final Score: |
|---|---|---|
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| 7.5 |
Posted: 2008-08-01 08:17:00 PST