Recent reviews by icarly

I am VERY TENTATIVELY recommending this game in its current state. I have played hours upon hours of Zoo Tycoon 2 in my youth and I am basing a lot of my review on that experience versus this one. This isn't going to be a review on the visuals, which are lovely, and I applaud the modelers and animators and artists behind it all.

TL;DR, there are plenty of quality-of-life tweaks that could be made, in addition to optimization changes, that would make this game a smash-hit and even better than its predecessors.

Planet Zoo offers a wonderful array of customization and building options. That, I cannot fault it for at any length. The ability to make each zoo completely unique and make dynamic, interact-able exhibits is very intuitive. However...

This game does NOT allow for enjoyable management on large-scale zoos. The inability to hide staff buildings and generators from guests makes the planning of said large zoos a complete chore. Having even WORKED in a zoo in real life myself makes it seem asinine that guests would be perturbed at the sight of zookeeper facilities. And on top of this, because of all the wonderful, hi-definition detail, the poor optimization makes the game run AWFULLY slowly once you begin expanding further and further. My experience with the Aquatic expansion has been an absolute speed-bump in terms of gameplay and framerate and is poorly optimized to render water in large depths in general.

One of my main gripes is the "Coverage" limit that animals have in their needs tab. Putting a limit on the amount of foliage and trees one can decorate a habitat with seems counter-intuitive to the level of customization the game touts. If I want to give these animals a beautiful paradise, even larger and more lush than even real-life zoos can provide, why place such a low threshold for what the animals can tolerate plant-wise? Furthermore, does an animal REALLY care that much if ONE pine tree in its enclosure is from Europe and not North America? Should that REALLY be a penalizing factor if the biome it's from is the same? The animal's stress levels are incredibly volatile in this game, and will tank at the slightest change, resulting in lots of frustration on the player's part.

There are LOTS and LOTS of problems I could prattle on about, but my point ultimately is this: This is a great spiritual successor to Zoo Tycoon, Wildlife Zoo, World of Zoo, et cetera. But it needs so many mechanic fixes to make it stand above the rest.