It's all good clean fun, and a few fun incidents occur along the way to add a little variety to the build, perfect and maintain routine. For example, monkey's are often liable to use the branches of trees in their enclosures to escape and cause mischief, whilst giving your zoo keeper hell in trying to catch them. The expansion of enclosures is also a delicate art, as I discovered when one of my Hippos legged-it causing no end of chaos. Needless to say my guests were not amused.

Is it any good then? Well, the gameplay, albeit original in setting is a very standard blend of the usual elements, though it is quite engaging however and educational as to keep your animals happy you will first have to have researched them. It only gets repetitive very occasionally when dealing with annoyances like the very fine and frustrating balance between keeping certain animals happy. The guests can also be a decidedly fickle lot, who seem to change their opinion on your zoo rather too quickly either way; though this is a minor point.

The graphics are attractive too, if not dazzling, being of the isometric 2-D kind, though the level of detail and animation of the animals was nice, as was the richness of their various environments. Not bad. The sound was passable too, and the tiger roars especially brought a smile to my face, again nothing too immersive but it all seemed appropriate.

To conclude then, Zoo Tycoon is a good 'all-rounder' which all the should enjoy a good few hours playing. Kids that like animals will love the plethora of species available and parents will be pleased to see the level of detail in the educational text, which is cleverly essential in building a successful zoo. Not perfect, but very entertaining.

81%

By Luke Guttridge