Katie, my college roommate -- no, not the roommate who smoked like a chimney, not the one whose mother said I was fat, not the girl who shed profusely, and not the one who didn't speak English... the other one -- introduced me to Zoo Tycoon. Back in the day, we would play a lot of computer games together... mostly The Sims. I taught her how to do the "move_object on" command so that we could make our Sims do crazy things. We'd then screencap these oddities and make posters and websites. But eventually this got boring and we turned to other forms of entertainment. One of these forms was Zoo Tycoon. I don't really care for zoos. I feel sorry for the animals in those cages, especially the elephants. But I do love animals. And Zoo Tycoon isn't really about the zoo at all. Because while in Rollercoaster Tycoon it's all about making the guests happy, in this game, it's like -- hey, screw the guests, the animals rule. And, whereas in RCT, you start out with only $10,000 and you sort of have sit there waiting for the money to roll in before you can build more than a merry-go-round and a funnel cake shop, in ZT you get $500,000 -- so by the time you run out of money in this game, your zoo is pretty much done anyway and you're bored and you're hardly a "tycoon" but who the hell cares anyway? You've got yourself a collection of bear cubs, what more could you want? The point of ZT is to build a zoo with many different types of animals. You have to make sure they're fed and cared for, and you must make their exhibits worthy of the animals. They must have the right kind(s) of terrain, foliage, rocks, and toys, and if you fail to provide them, you'll get a constant barrage of messages such as: Lion #2 is ill, Penguin #14 is unhappy, and Walrus #6 hates you and wants to sink his tusks into your flesh. And so on. So it's best to do all you can to please the animals. And if you take down the fences, it's tiger vs. the guests, in an all-out battle to the death! Freakin amusing, I've gotta say. Grizzly bears lay down the law! Hey, I'm all about making the animals happy. And if a tiger's idea of happiness is eating a few zoo visitors, then more power to her! But in all seriousness, Zoo Tycoon isn't all about mayhem and murder. Sometimes I don't set the animals loose. Sometimes I just let them be. Just like I sometimes don't send a tornado to pulverize my Sim Cities and sometimes I don't take away my Sims' pool ladders or put Persian rugs too close to their fireplaces and WHOOPS forget to install smoke detectors and stuff. I can be good. Really! ZT offers many different animal choices. I have a special edition of the game, which includes several expansion packs. So I can house whales and raise dinosaurs and stuff. But I don't like dinosaurs because they chew through their fences and stomp on the guests, and stomping on guests isn't nearly as funny as chasing them -- and besides, it's only funny when you set the animals free on purpose. When they take down their own fences, that's just annoying. My favorite is the giraffes. Ma & Pa Giraffe usually just have one baby, and they live for a long time. They aren't like those crazy penguins that reproduce at alarming rates, or those chimps that are constantly complaining about the number of shelters in their exhibit. Oops, a chimp died, there are too many shelters! I take it away and two seconds later, a new baby chimp enters the world and suddenly the chimps are bitching about the lack of shelters. DO YOU KNOW WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU PISS ME OFF, CHIMPS?! DO YOU!?! I SELL YOU TO OTHER ZOOS, THAT'S WHAT!! Pandas are the best because they attract a lot of visitors. But like I said, the guests don't matter, so who cares? Pandas win the cuteness award. And they don't multiply rapidly. Screw you, chimps, I'm replacing you with a panda family. Santa visits all the animals who've been nice this year Besides animal exhibits, you also must build restaurants and restrooms and all that. Plus there are "building" attractions available, such as a primate house, an aquarium, an aviary. With enough time and effort, you can create a really amazing zoo. Then you can proceed to watch your 256MB-of-RAM computer freak out. Ahoy, mateys! I've got me a marine land! Of course, this game does have its flaws. I can't figure out how to turn the alert system off, so every time an animal bites the dust from old age, I get notified. Hello, I have twenty ostriches, if one dies, I reeeallly don't care. It will also give me messages when a zookeeper can't get to an animal's "poo" to clean it up. When I check out the situation, I find a zookeeper standing 10 feet away from said pile, essentially scratching his head. And is there a reason why you can't reach said poo? Are you incompetent? Should I feed you to the lions? If you have a fondness for cute little animals and if you like to build parks with stuff in them, and since my brother the small-shot video game designer refuses to make Playground Tycoon (thanks for nothing!), this will have to suffice. Or I mean ZOO TYCOON IS REALLY AWESOME. Yeah, that's right! 12/10/2005 While you're at it, check out my review of Rollercoaster Tycoon! Back to Games Back to Main Leave a message in the blog or the guestbook to comment on this article. :) (c)2005 AlligatorJuice.com.