Freeform Mode is the only place where Zoo Tycoon spreads its wings and refreshingly lets go of the confines of money and research. But if you’ve ever balanced a checkbook, the difficulty here doesn’t live up to the mode’s name. Challenge Mode tests your ability to make the most of your resources by plopping you in a location with a set budget, along with periodic objectives. Their rewards are just as thin, with only a couple of decorations and a location to unlock for use in the other two modes. I expected Campaign Mode to roar louder than the other two, but its 20 levels all feel too similar to one another – and to the tutorial – and boredom sets in quickly. Having to sit there and wait for a lion exhibit I want to finish researching so that I can research the lion, as well as all of the individual enrichments, one at a time, is a major frustration. Researching can take anywhere from five seconds to two minutes, but you never know how long until after you select it, and you can only ever research one thing at a time. In Campaign and Challenge, you have to research just about everything, including animals, concessions, facilities, decorations, scenery, exhibits, all the way down to how you advertise your Zoo, before you can build or do it. Yet it's research, which is undoubtedly important for real-life animal conservation efforts, that's the worst part of Zoo Tycoon. There’s no option to build multiple instances of the same item either, so if you place one tree (or anything) and want to place a second, you’re forced to go back through the menus every time. That nostalgic process is made harder than it needs to be by the cumbersome menu design, which makes it aggravating to move from one build option to another. There are nice page-turning sound effects and some extra educational information, but that's where the praise ends.įor example, to keep your animals happy you’re required to place animal-care options like a feeder and bathing station in every exhibit, along with some enrichment options for them to play with. While menus are a consistent and important part of every sim, especially the older Zoo Tycoon games on PC, they’re poorly designed for the Xbox One.
It’s also the first time you get a taste of the inefficient menus you must consistently flip through to conduct zoo business, no matter which of the three modes you’re playing.
This is where you learn to swap between the neat third-person exploration mode and the top-down Tycoon mode.
You learn how to become a zookeeper through 10 in-depth training missions that clearly explain the most important aspects of the job – building exhibits and managing the layout – while not overwhelming you with details.