Pros: I LOVE ANIMALS! And I was so ready for the park management sim genre to tackle zoos! And Blue Fang Games and Microsoft nailed it here with Zoo Tycoon! Borrowing great gameplay elements from games in the genre like Rollercoaster Tycoon, and applying them to zoo management made for a very natural fit. Managing and customizing a zoo to your liking is first of all, incredibly fun, but in this game, the primary goal is keeping your animals happy and healthy by building them exhibits that match their ecosystems in nature. Terrain, foliage, rocks, enrichment, shelters, the amount of animals, the variety of different species in a single exhibit, height, water, etc etc, you are creating worlds for each and every little creature, and if done well, these little fenced in ecosystems can turn up quite beautiful as well!

The animals are very well designed here, they have delightful animations, and look generally realistic with their pre-rendered models, nothing too garish or cartoonishly exaggerated, but just enough leeway where the developers can still have some fun with them (dancing penguins do show up after all, hehe). When looking at the isometric park that you've created, you can really picture these animals living out their lives as happy little dudes in their natural habitats! The more you build, and the more successful your park, the more animals and attractions you unlock, to continuously add to your zoo. But, if you're unsuccessful, just like in Rollercoaster Tycoon, disaster can strike! But disaster is also incredibly entertaining! If you fail to build proper exhibits, your animals may escape! Animals escaping their enclosures and going on a rampage is so fun to watch, especially those crazy carnivores! The chaotic frenzy that erupts when a meat eater escapes, where all of the guests start running and screaming, is hilarious! Watching a lion pounce on a park guest and then proceeding to flip them into the air, is... Well, haha, you wouldn't think they'd have gone that far!! It's so much fun, win or lose! But of course, There's more satisfaction in making everybody happy, animals and guests!

My favorite exhibits to build were the African savanna animals. Placing water buffalo with zebra with ostriches and gazelles all in one exhibit, and giving them a watering hole in the center to congregate at, is extremely satisfying as you attempt to balance all of their wants and desires as they are distinct species sharing one environment! Watching all of these animals cohabitate together as if they were residing on the plains of Africa brings joy to my heart every time I see them, a perfect ecosystem. Some exhibits are fun to create simply for how beautiful they can look too, with a mixture of plants and ground material, with different elevations of terrain, it's a fun challenge to get the animals to be happy with just the right amount of environment elements mixed with your own creative layouts! It's a little bit of puzzle solving in the game. My favorite animal to make these types of exhibits for are the Siberian tigers, which has you mixing so many environment types together that aren't commonly mixed for other animals, but if you do it right it's incredibly gratifying. Top it all off with a lovely waterfall in the enclosure, and then BAM, you've got a tiny work of art for those big cats to roam around in! Once you've gotten far enough to afford and create large enough exhibits for elephants to join in is always a moment of excitement for my zoo building journey, and man, elephants are just the best, beautiful animals, getting them in the park is when you know you've made it! Endangered species too! Pandas are especially fun to create exhibits for, and for the guests as well. I'd always give the guests fun paths to travel across with plenty of sights on their way to see the animals themselves, with decorations to match the setting of the animals' home country. There's even a bit of an educational element to this game, learning about biology, ecosystems, horticulture, the names and places of so many locations throughout the world, and what plants and animals reside in them. It's really a fulfilling experience!

And when I've built my zoo to its fullest, just like with Rollercoaster Tycoon before it, I can sit back, scroll through the land, and take in the satisfaction of the successful park I've just created, but in this case, I can do this for hours upon hours, just watching my animals, seeing them doing their animal shenanigan things all day every day.

Cons: Once again, not being able to go into first person and have an "on grounds" view of the park to explore for yourself, is somewhat disappointing, just as it was for Rollercoaster Tycoon, not being able to ride the coasters. But here, the goal is to watch the animals, and you can still do that from the isometric perspective, in fact, looking at a map of a zoo, at least for me, is highly enjoyable, the way it's constructed from a birds eye view is just as lovely to me as on the ground, so... I can't find as much fault in the fixed perspective here as I could in RCT. But same deal again, the sequels would eventually give us these first person features anyhow.

What it means to me: This game was made for me, I'm a zoo-fanatic, I've always loved animals and have always loved going to the zoo, these places were my personal Disneyland. And I loved sim games like SimCity and Rollercoaster Tycoon as well as games about taking care of animals and critters like in Harvest Moon and Tamagotchi. The planets aligned for me with this game, it came out at the perfect time, a time right after experiencing games that addressed these interests of mine, but none of those games addressed the interest as strongly as Zoo Tycoon did for me. I played this game so much, and I can confidently say it's my most played PC game ever. Creating my own zoos, and crafting my own animal exhibits and attempting to create biomes and attractions for the guests, to feel like they're entering a jungle, a savannah, a tundra, whatever it may be! It clicked on every level for me, and the act of creation with animals at the center point, honed in on what I loved most as a person, and here I was able to fulfill that innermost desire in a video game. So when I finally got this game for Christmas in 2001, that was it, I had my game. I could create my zoo, the way I always wanted! And I still go back to this game here and there, reliving that childlike joy. Then when it's time to go back to my current life as an adult, well, heh, I'm heading out to my local zoo, where I volunteer weekly, where I'm still in love with the place, and with the same energy of that little kid that poured thousands of hours into Zoo Tycoon.

things to do in this game:
- channel your incapabilities of managing a zoo
- trap people in a zoo with carnivorous animals
- cause chaos by letting the chimpanzees go

great game