They’ll constantly demand more shops, complain about litter and bemoan the lack of educational content. Keeping your guests content is a far more taxing task. The most difficult aspect of maintaining high animal welfare standards is ensuring exhibits remain clean and disease-free, but that’s just a case of having enough keepers and vets on duty. Otherwise, creating exhibits to fulfil the needs of your animals is very easy, simply requiring you to implement the correct terrain, plants and shelters until all the slidebars lock into the green zone. This comes in handy to avoid accidentally creating a gender imbalance in a habitat, which can lead to injury-inducing brawls. Frontier Developments has even created a zoopedia, which thoroughly details each animal’s social needs and habitat requirements. Red pandas scramble up trees, wolves form social hierarchies and hippos tread ground underwater. It’s not just the visuals where Planet Zoo excels – each animal also shows impressively realistic behaviour. It’s hard to be too critical about this, however, considering the number of critters included – plus Frontier Development has already started introducing expansions to plug in the gaps, with polar bears and reindeer introduced by the Arctic Pack. There are some notable animal omissions, though – penguins, kangaroos and sea lions are all missing. Zoom up close and you’ll be able to see the single strands of fur on a grizzly bear, while a greater flamingo will be born with grey feathers and only turn fluorescent pink in adulthood – Frontier Developments has certainly done its homework. There are over 50 beasties available, and all have photo-realistic models with breathtaking attention to detail. The stunning animal animations are a big contributing factor to my Planet Zoo obsession. This is a slow-paced experience with few challenging difficulty spikes, but seeing your zoo expand from a small park to a sprawling animal wonderland is so rewarding that it’s difficult to quit the addiction – I’ve played over 50 hours so far, and I’m still coming back for more. Soothing music plays in the background, swelling to a motivating crescendo when you start to shape out a creature’s enclosure. Remaining true to its roots, Planet Zoo has the same therapeutic charm as its Tycoon predecessors. It’s certainly in safe hands though, as it was developed by Frontier Developments – the team responsible for bringing RollerCoaster Tycoon’s spiritual successor to the modern masses with Planet Coaster. Planet Zoo is everything you could wish for from a Zoo Tycoon successor, even if it isn’t strictly a sequel. Despite the many ports to modern consoles and handhelds, a true successor sadly never arrived to propel the series forward and satisfy my nostalgic itch. I’ve been waiting for Zoo Tycoon 3 for 16 years.
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