Reviewed: November 10, 2004
Reviewed by: Megan Dyer
Publisher
Enlight Interactive
Developer
Enlight Interactive
Released: August 6, 2004
Genre: Simulation
Players: 1
ESRB: Everyone
5
5
4
7
5.0
System Requirements
Recommended System
Sim games are curious little oddities, once very much a niche genre. Ever since the Sims came out for the PC, though, the genre has enjoyed a huge surge in popularity. Sims are games that many people, gamers and non-gamers alike seem to enjoy. It seems that there is something in the human psyche that enjoys the ability to create, rather than just work with what we have already been given. We like creating worlds the way we want them to be, since that privilege is simply not a part of reality. So you can imagine my disappointment when I discovered that Zoo Empire does not, under any circumstances, allow free roaming animals in your zoo to eat the guests. I have one question for the developers of this PC game: What the hell?
Still, I tried to put this aside for the sake of the review, and to be honest with you, Zoo Empire can be pretty fun - if you have a lot of patience for extreme micro-management. With painstaking attention to detail and huge amount of game to explore, Zoo Empire is definitely on the old school side of sims, and an acquired taste.
Zoo Empire is exactly what it sounds like: you create zoos. Sounds simple enough, right? Well, it's anything but. In this game, you play a zookeeper (duh) who can create any sort of zoo under the sun. You are given a budget, somewhat variable, and with this money, you buy animals, fencing, terrain modifications according to the unique needs of each animal, toys, flora, environment simulators, (i.e. fog machines, snow makers) snack stands, garbage cans, first aid buildings, employee offices, education centers, benches, phone booths, rest rooms, and, (deep breath)...wait, where was I? Anyway, there are a lot of items that you are going to want put in your zoo if you want it to be successful. And the game doesn't do any of it for you - not even the short guardrails along pedestrian footpaths. Sheesh.
If that wasn't enough, you also have to pay attention to what each animal needs in their cages in order to simulate their natural habitats. This, like everything else in Zoo Empire, is done in the greatest of detail. Everything from the composition of ground cover (Such as, 34% rainforest, 31% savannah, 6% grass, 20% Deciduous, 9% coniferous, slightly hilly, slightly flat, or else your leopards ain't gonna be too happy) to the degree of privacy they prefer must be attended to. If you do not keep up with the needs of your animals, they will become unhappy, sick, or dangerous. You will also have to keep up with your staff, by making sure that they are doing their jobs, and know how to do them.
And then there are the guests. If these chubby morons get hungry, tired, thirsty, need to pee, or want to waste their money at a gift shop, and you did not provide the proper means for them to do so, your visitor satisfaction rating will go down. People will stop coming to your zoo, you lose money, your favorite monkey stops grunting at you affectionately, and your zoo falls into shambles.
Now, I am aware that Zoo Empire is a sim game, and all of these things and more are going to play an important role in how realistic the game is. But there’s more…lots more. So much more in fact, I think that the makers of this game forgot that their target audience, 8-13 year olds, are not going to have much patience with a game this demanding in micro-management. I'm 18, and it was a bit too much for even me to keep my interest. I thought at first that perhaps I was expecting too much from a kiddie game with this judgment. Adults might want to create their own cutesy little zoo too...I guess.
However, the more I played, the more I realized that this game was supposed to be a children’s' game. For example, you can play what's called a free game, in which you can make and open your own zoo. Or you can play career mode, where the game has already set the zoos up for you and created scenarios to play through. These scenarios are pretty simple, and not all that much fun, to put it gently. In one instance you are asked to take pictures of several animals for a brochure. The game tells you to be quick about it, and by quick they mean nine months.
17 minutes in the game (at the default speed) equals one month. 17 multiplied by nine. That's two hours and 33 minutes to take five pictures. The game doesn't even care about the quality of the pictures. If you wanted to take a picture of a bear's butt, you are rewarded just the same. And the tutorials in career mode are simple, and so...freaking...slow. It is clear that this was intended to be a game for kids. It is safe to conclude that most of the gameplay forgot its audience, so to speak.
Still, given a bit of patience, Zoo Empire can be fun to mess around with, though it does take quite some time to set up a zoo that will not fall apart. Each animal has information on it that you can read while you decide which animals you want in your zoo, and I appreciated the educational aspect of this. I found myself looking through animal information, thinking, "hey, cool, I didn't know elephants did that." If I were eight years younger, I could look through that part of the game until my eyes went sore from staring at a computer screen. There is a lot of potential in this game to grab a child's interest, but unfortunately, not enough keep it.
The graphics of Zoo Empire are an odd mixture of decent and horrible. On one hand, the animals are pretty nicely put together. If you watch the animals for a while, they act as though animals would act in the wild, and rather convincingly so. Gorillas groom each other, zebras buck, and bears sort of wrestle with each other. The animals actually look like what they are supposed to look like. No ridiculously, cutesy cartoon animals here. That's a good thing, and helps if the game is trying to keep its educational merit. It's just, the graphics of the people...
Perhaps I'm just a little cynical here, but what is with cartoons these days with people that have lumpy round heads, large vacant eyes, plastered smiles, and disproportionate bodies? I see them all over Saturday morning cartoons and Nick Jr., and they've weaseled themselves into this game as well. I just don't get it. It isn't a pleasant style of drawing people, and I don't think all kids enjoy disturbingly inhuman humans drawn into something that they might otherwise find neat. Especially given the decently realistic appearance of the animals, the game's cartoony, deformed humans just don't work.
The rest of the objects and backgrounds are bright and vibrant, however, and kids may enjoy this, despite the fact that the entire appearance of the zoo ends up looking like a replica of every over priced amusement park that would have been fun if it weren't for the overly corporate insistence that it IS fun, dammit, whether you like it or not. But like I said, it's bright, it's vibrant, so it'll probably get the kids' stamp of approval.
There is so little to say about the sound of this game. The music is simply...there. It's happy, pleasant and completely boring. Then again, a game such as Zoo Empire is not exactly a game that warrants a rollicking soundtrack or anything, so it's forgivable.
Sound effects aren't bad. Lions roar, gorillas grunt, people suck the last of their sodas noisily through straws. Overall though, I'm sure you'll find yourself forgetting about the sound of this game, which really shouldn’t be the case with any game. That it is a simulation is no excuse.
Where Zoo Empire gets most of it's merits, as with any sim game, is definitely here in value. While I may have some doubts about the attention spans of kids regarding this game, there is no denying that there is a lot to do here. It is, after all, a sim.
There are a lot of scenarios to play through, an enormous amount of things to do when building your own zoo, and even unlockable goodies as well. When you play through a free game, for example, you can hire researchers that are paid to research certain animals. New animals can be unlocked in this way, thus giving a gamer a whole new animal to learn about, build an environment around, and, of course, add to their zoos. New terrain and items are also unlockable, so there are endless possibilities for scenarios to play through... that is, if you have the patience.
Sim games are, in general, a lot of fun, and their popularity continues to rise. With games such as The Sims out there, there is plenty of evidence to support that Zoo Empire falls short of a good game of its type. Adults will want something that feels less childish to play, and kids will want a game that is less demanding in terms of micro-management.
While there were a few things that I appreciated about what this game had to offer, it just doesn't really hold up with other games in the genre. So if you love extreme micro-management, animals, and have always wanted to build your own zoo, look no further. If not, I suggest you leave Zoo Empire on the shelf.