Zoo tycoon Xbox edition - Full Review (Xbox 360 and Xbox one game)

'Zoo tycoon, Xbox Edition' is a park management game where you create a zoo to attract guests, make money and keep your animals generally happy. The game is the first console edition of the Zoo Tycoon series and has been a long running and successful PC game series, until now. I’ll start by saying that this game looks brilliant on the surface, handles well, sounds lovely and would be a perfect game for younger children as there is great interactivity with the animals and it’s easy to pick up. The game has four modes: Tutorial, Campaign, Challenge and Freeform. The Tutorial mode will show you everything you need to know about the game. the Campaign mode has 20 different missions on different zoos where you need to complete objects or meet criteria and the Challenge mode is similar but it is timed. Freeform mode is a big empty area where you have infinite money so you can create your own park. So far, everything looks good.

Xbox one edition vs Xbox 360 edition

So, to get this out of the way the new Xbox Zoo tycoon game has been released for both the 360 console and the new Xbox One console. All in all, they are very similar games with the graphical changes you’d expect from a cross-generation console game. The Xbox One has slightly smoother, more defined and generally prettier graphics but the Xbox 360 version still looks very nice and bang up to date. If you’re wondering which version to get, and you have a choice, then you’ll want to buy the Xbox One version as the Xbox 360 version of the game has several features removed. The Xbox 360 for instance only features 65 out of the 101 animals from the Xbox One version, only features single player mode meaning that the 4 player co-op has been removed and there are limits on sharing. You cannot share or upload any pictures of your zoo or share your zoo with other players. Considering you’ll be paying roughly the same price for both games then you should most certainly opt for the later gen version if you want to have access to any of these features. The decision to almost half the number of animals you have access to is both irritating and disappointing. Realistically, there should be no technical limits that would demand there to be less animal options within the game, if it were a matter of how large you can make the zoo then I’d understand, but more on that later. So, with the differences between the editions out of the way let’s focus on how the game actually plays.

It's so pretty! But that's it.

Gameplay

I have played all the zoo tycoon games, thus far, and was perhaps prematurely excited when I heard it was being released on a console. I am also a big fan of console games and though I wondered about how that would work without a mouse, I was otherwise intrigued. My first impressions of the game was really good, it has lovely smooth gameplay, you can drive a super cool buggy around the zoo and make it skid for minutes of amusement and the animals look and act in a very realistic manner. The ability to interact directly with the animals was featured in Zoo Tycoon 2 on the pc but not quite like this game whereby you can have giraffes looming down over you to eat your proffered fruit. It feels very much like they intended this game to be compatible with the Kinect, sort of Kinectanimals style, but whilst it’s amusing and adorable the first few times the novelty of it soon wears off leaving you looking around for other things to do.  

So you start building your park, after all it’s a tycoon game. If you’re familiar with tycoon games you’ll be used to that money management, guest management type gameplay whereby you need to keep everybody happy by providing enough of this and that. This game doesn’t really provide much of a challenge in this sense and the ability to design the park itself is severely limited. For instance, there is a mechanism literally called ‘zoo limit’ to demonstrate how limited your building ability is going to be, so limited, they warn you about prior to help dissipate the frustration. Zoo limit is a bar at the top of the screen which will gradually fill as you put more items down, the bar will fill faster if you’re putting a lot of large items down. Once this bar is full then you can’t build anything else, not until you remove some things. Now, this is verging on game-breaking for me. Part of the point of being able to build something is to have fairly unlimited creative options, that’s what you look for in a building and designing game, the ability to exercise a little bit of creative perfectionism. Zoo limit automatically slaps you back and denies you the chance to ever build your brand new, beautifully graphiced dream zoo. What’s worse is they made the map fairly large, suggesting you can build in all of the space given to you when it’s utter rubbish. You’ll be able to fill around about a third of the map, tops, and you’ll probably hit the zoo limit after an hour or so of playing. Now, this may be due to a limit on the space or engine or something of that nature but, frankly, make the map smaller and don’t stick under freeform mode the description “allowing you to create a zoo without limits” as though to mock our entrepreneurial dreams. 

Limit aside, the gameplay is simplistic and unchallenging. It’s great for children and a quick blast when you’re truly in need of some animal company because your cat is ignoring you, but not much else. The campaigns can be completed very quickly and the majority of them are extremely easy with only around 5 that offer any real challenge. If you’re the kind of gamer who likes to grab achievements then you’ll get a bit more fun out of attempting to collect them all, if you’re not, then I’m afraid you’ll have a lot less to do. You can name your animals, if you’re into that, and also release them into the wild which is a kind of nice addition but just another means of selling them really. 

Graphics

So with all that negativity out of the way let’s look at something positive. The graphics, yes, they are lovely. The whole game is bright, colourful and cheerful with smooth, slick and modern designs everywhere. You can see the individual hairs on a tiger cub’s fur coat, the wrinkles and lines on an elephant’s trunk and the feathery tips of a peacock’s plumage. It all looks fantastic, water reflections are done perfectly, trees have individual leaves and the people have lovely fashion sense. The guests and staff generally all look quite like Sims 3 people as they are slightly over exaggerated in the eyes but maintain a realistic appearance in that slightly cartoony manner. There’s a good variation in the appearance of the guests; they don’t all look like the same three people basically. So, yes, the graphics score top points and the Xbox One’s graphics are unsurprisingly superior when doing a side by side comparison of the two editions. 

Customisation ability

The ability to personally customize your zoo is, well, limited to non-existent. You don’t have the ability to put down paths and so you’re stuck with the ones that were there from the beginning. When you put down an exhibit it will automatically add new path to connect it up to what exists. Very boring. You’ll basically end up creating several different versions of the same park with different animals and stalls. This problem of not trusting players to put their own paving down crosses into the exhibit customisation as it turns out, the shape of all the exhibits are pre-made. Ignoring how much they are stunting creativity already, by combining pre-made exhibit shapes with not being able to put your own paths down you end up with a very odd looking zoo with lots of gaps. So, that’s annoying. Inside the exhibit you have the ability to put down a different kind of enrichment thing; scratching post or whatever, and you get to choose where it goes. Out of a few specified areas so it ends up going something like this; would you like your trough in areas A, B or C? A, great, so the scratching post? C, alright, and the food? B, fantastic sir, did you enjoy customizing your exhibit? No, I did not, it gets very old, very fast, like the rest of this game. Even if a baby tiger looks adorable when climbing up a scratching post I’d still rather have put that post somewhere I wanted it to go.

The apple is the game, and you're the lemur, do you want the apple? You do? I didn't know where this was going anyway.

Choice of animals

Given this is a game that focuses on bloody animals i'd say it's a fairly important matter to discuss as this is why you're playing the game, surely. The animals that are already in the game are quite nice and cover your basic expectations; tigers, lions, elephants, crocodiles and so on with some that are a little different; peafowl, anacondas, meerkats and parrots. However, though they boast the impression of having over 100 (101) animals available for you to put in your park you’ll quickly notice that they all tend to be the same sort of animal. For instance, we have 3 kinds of snake, 6 kinds of macaw, 10 kinds of antelope, 13 kinds of bear, 7 kinds of lion, 6 kinds of tiger, 8 kinds of rhino… ok you get the idea right? If you wanted a lion sanctuary park then this would be quite good, but it does feel a little misleading that they’re giving the impression of all these wonderous, unique types of animal you can have then saying, oh, 9 different kinds of giraffe is so varied. You add up what I’ve put there, as a sniff of the game, and you’ll see that that’s 62 ‘different’ types of animal. 62, from 8 different ‘animal type’ really guys, 101? I didn’t even mention that you can have 4 different types of lemur! Four kinds of lemur! Everything I wanted from my zoo has been fulfilled. Something I also noticed was a lack of penguins, this sounds unusual I know, but penguins are the cornerstone of every good zoo. There are also no seals, or moose, or kangaroos, or cheetahs. I mean, there are 7 kinds of lion but not one cheetah? Why is this? Well, I imagine, as I’m sure you do that cheetahs and penguins will be saved for future DLC; Downloadable Content. It’s an extraordinarily irritating reality that the developers are fleshing out their animal numbers with repeats of tiger or whatever whilst saving all the unique creatures for a bit of extra cash, especially when charging £50 for the privilege of 13 bears and 4 lemurs.

The likeability factor is all this game has going for it, that, and this really unimpressed monkey.

Overall 

As you may have gathered, I was disappointed in this game. The PC versions of Zoo Tycoon had a degree of challenge and immense customization options that kept it fresh and interesting after several replays. This console edition is a long way off from its predecessors and, though it looks great and the animal interactions are realistic, fun and adorable it’s just not a good enough game to rate highly. Perfect for younger children or if you just want something simple and easy to play. The zoo limit is a ridiculous addition and the inability to change the shape of paths, exhibits and such forth ruin the sense of owning a park. If anything, the game plays more like a day out at the zoo than owning and running the damn thing. It is rather likely that different animals will be added in future DLC but with such a tight limit already on what you can place, why bother? This is the kind of game I’d enjoy for a couple of hours, having only paid about £10 to £15 for it, before it gets pushed to the back of the shelf and forgotten about. 

The Good:

• Beautiful game
• Some great quirky bits
• Good for casual play
• Easy to use controls and camera
• Convenient way of checking on the status of animals
• Animal interactions kind of cute

The Bad:

• Build limit is a huge handicap
• Very few actual animals, too many variations of same type of animal
• No micro-management means it doesn't feel like a tycoon game
• Very little customizability, can choose very little
• You cannot put paths down
• Tedious due to having so many limits

The Score: 4/10 

Last thoughts: "That was such a disappointment... I love park management games so much... I feel genuinely cheated out of what could have been an amazing game."