Zoo Empire review

Pleased to meet you.

The world of the management simulation is a strange one to say the least. It is in this world that we get our thrills not from shooting zombies’ heads with shotguns or hijacking a train but from dispatching a minion to clean up a pile of vomit from a hospital ward or build the tracks for the aforementioned train.

So, brimming with cheery graphics, and a notably kid-friendly logo, arrives Zoo Empire onto the (surprisingly crowded) zoo management scene.

Monkeying around

Staff are essential to your zoo’s well being.

As you’d expect, Zoo Empire sees you attempting to build a successful zoos. The primary way of doing this is by following the Career mode, which sees you progress through a series of mission type challenges. These often have to be achieved within a certain time limit.

Mission tasks tend to be relatively simple and initially you are required to fulfil criteria such as adopting a certain number of animals, creating a certain number of animal attractions or hiring a certain amount of staff – all of this needs to be done whilst maintaining the zoo and keeping the animals fed and entertained (they can, and do, die).

The early stages of the game are blessed with a tutorial system to get you acquainted with the interface and controls. This is, of course, frustrating and relatively slow, but is genuinely useful and the game is all the better for it.

Old McBoomtown had a… zoo

Choo choo!

Visually, Zoo Empire is far from demanding on your graphics hardware. A GeForce 2 or equivalent is the minimum beef required for the job. Unfortunately, this is all too apparent within the game itself. Character models are not unlike those youd find in Theme Park, Inc. or games of a similar age and things are rather angular.

Bizarrely though, you’ll be needing one whole gigabyte of hard disk space to accommodate all these low polygon graphics. That’s the kind of space that graphics heavy games such as Far Cry consume. A little detective work revealed that the texture folder consumes approximately half of this.

This is suspect, as the textures are definitely not particularly high resolution – confirmed to us via the first person view of various employees within the game. Which is an interesting feature, even if you will spend a great deal of the time looking at one wall or another.

Join me on the dark side…

Don’t make eye contact… seriously.

As with most other things, it didn’t take much Zoo Empire before my mind turned to evil. What good is an empire, when all that lies in your dominion is a zoo? A world empire is, of course, far more desirable. The plan of action? To lure innocent civilians into a zoo without much in the way of entertainment… and with even less in the way of cages.

Disappointing would be an accurate word with which to describe the result of the planned global domination. Sure enough, on opening the wonder zoo, the masses flocked in, unaware of the dangers that lurked within but did the half starved leopards, bears and cheetahs take notice? Not even a little. One old lady did, but one old lady running away, terrified, from a disinterested rhinoceros just doesn’t cut the mustard.

All of this leads us nicely onto another point: the 3+ symbol proudly sported on the Zoo Empire box. 3- would almost be more suitable. In fairness, this is a more youth orientated management sim than many others out there, so perhaps it was for the best that the old lady escaped a close encounter of the hungry predator kind. This more youthful outlook does, however, take its toll on some other gameplay elements.

Better than a day at the zoo?

Elephants aren’t great fans of sharing.

Zoo Empire isn’t a revolution in management sims. To be brutally honest it sits slap bang in the middle of the field. There’s little to differentiate it from most other variations on the same theme out there, despite its occasional graces.

Despite its flaws, for they do exist, is the fact that you will still get the opportunity to build a zoo you feel strangely proud of. This is, of course what games like this are really all about. The interface also manages to be well assembled and, in places, actually more pleasant on the eyes than much of the scenery.

Yes, I’m still disappointed by the lack of opportunities for the creation of chaos, and yes, the graphics do reek of things from ye olden times of management sims. However, if you’re looking for a little mild zoo management with some 3+ charm to boot, it might be worth packing a few ham sandwiches and heading down to the Zoo Empire.