Game review 05 November 2019, 10:00

author: Martin Strzyzewski

Planet Zoo Review – Is This Even a Game?

An excellent, fascinating and satisfying... job. Playing Planet Zoo is like going to work. You try not to get tired, then you get tired, and in the end you're happy with what you accomplished anyway.

The review is based on the PC version.

We've been waiting for this moment for a long time. The first visitors come to our zoo. It's seems to be ok – they go from cage to cage, watching the animals. Now, why are they carrying banners? Why are they screaming in front of the red panda runway? She's beautiful! Look how cute she looks, lying on the hay.

That was the end of my first zoo in Planet Zoo. It's existence counted maybe 10 minutes, before I had to yield to the protesters and start anew. The next time, a bear escaped. People were a little scared... I tried to create a moat around his podium, but it cost too much, so I took a loan. The bear still found a way out. The cost of catching it, the interest on the loan, and the price of safety equipment emptied my budget.

The third zoo went bankrupt. I confess, I bought a panda. The giant panda, it was beautiful. I set up a catwalk for her. Bamboo, feeders, climbing racks, and all that. It wasn't until she ran away that I realized I should have used glass around the podium, rather than iron bars (never use glass with elephants, I checked it for you). Either way, the panda was too expensive.

I turned to the sandbox for a while. Here, I finally learned something about building fences and created another park.

This time, I started modestly. One giant tortoise and one African warthog. A big bucket for donations and a room for employees. Surrounded by cypresses, of course. Visitors aren't interested in seeing a sewage treatment plants or veterinary clinics.

I slowly developed the zoo. Instead of bears and giraffes, I bought a rhino cockroach and put an educational board and a bench next to it. People enjoyed watching it, so I gave him company – a spider.

My zoo developed slowly, there were new enclosures and new animals in it. I kept an eye on the guests' opinions and matched the admission prices with their expectations. In addition, I traded animals. Not bison or warthogs. They were inexpensive, and raising them took ages. I first made serious dough thanks to the... cockroaches. They breed like rabbits, and for a single specimen with good genes, I could easily buy a new ATM. The scolopendra were even better a deal.

This zoo also went bankrupt, and I have no idea why. When I gave up, I was $50k in arrears, and I had no idea how to mend that. Yet I already had buffaloes, bears, and macaques. To be honest, after a whole weekend with Planet Zoo, I'm talking about more than 20 hours of play without a success. That's interesting, considering that the studio's previous games were often scolded for lack of economic depth.

A game or a simulator?

The entertainment provided by Planet Zoo doesn't resemble what we've grown to expect from games. It's more like something between a sim and an architectural visualization software. Just like in Planet Coaster, the design capabilities are absolute. You can create real wonders in the game using the build-in tools. I can't even imagine how to set about doing it, but Planet Zoo allows you to create some amazing things. I bet Steam Workshop will totally explode with the creations of the community once the game's out.

The fun's quite... boring. Or rather: ponderous. You need to give a thought to every catwalk. Animals have their own requirements. It's not just the size of the podium or the presence of a pond. A lemur will be sad if there are not enough places for climbing, an elephant wants to have short grass and some soil, and the macaques need snow (on most maps this means the need to air-con the podium). Some animals like to have company, and others don't. Some species will fight to lead the herd, and we will have to be careful not to confine, for example, two adult male wolves in the same podium. And don't even get me started on selecting types of vegetation…

Then, we have to think about safety – as I wrote earlier, animals like to run away – as well as visibility. So what that an animal is happy on the podium, if the people can't see it well? On the other hand, an animal with no place to hide from the sight of visitors won't be particularly happy.

Usually when I play games, I simply enjoy it. I like it. Planet Zoo doesn't feel like that. It's more like doing a job. Most of the process is complicated and only remotely "fun." The game requires a lot of jumping between windows, stacking individual items by the hundreds. You continuously solve problems, hire people, and make sure the animals are not bored or stressed, and that they have good living conditions. It's tedious, especially because the game doesn't run very fast nor smoothly. Theoretically, my Ryzen 5 1600 should have coped, but it wasn't all that perfect. I was kicked to the desktop a few times, too.

Ultimately, however, just like at work, I could look at the effects, and feel satisfied. Watching people climb in front of a tiger runway, an elephant playing with a ball, a panda climbing a pole, just gives a lot of joy. And that's pretty much all this game is about.

Is this a game or an expansion?

It may seem a bit controversial – Planet Zoo is, essentially, Planet Coaster from 2016. If you would only be building pathways, embellishments, and stores in both these games, you could hardly tell them apart. You may even think the new game is really an expansion. Like the Rollercoaster Tycoon 3, which got a DLC that added the ability to build a zoo.

I find it hard to call it a disadvantage, though. There's enough new stuff to make anyone happy, but I wondered if you couldn't combine both games so that it would be possible to ride rollercoasters among elephants. After all, Planet Zoo offers similar, albeit much slower, attractions.

The zoo director's concerns

I already mentioned that the gameplay in Planet Zoo is painstaking, and this is where the biggest drawback becomes glaring – the interface, where several features are missing. For example, options for quick and easy closing of windows. There are a lot of them, and only some can be closed quickly by hitting the Esc key.

Some of the actions could be much more efficient: I sold cockroaches, could move them in bulk to the mall (that's what it's called, but it's not what you think), but had to sell each one separately. There are many such things, and they can be irksome. In addition, some of the features, such as searching for animals sold by species, are simply hidden, and thus inconvenient to use.

The problem becomes even more acute when we see how much micromanagement there is in this game. We even have to do little things, like replacing broken benches. In the modes with the economy turned on, where we have to take care of all aspects of the business so as not to go bankrupt, there is simply not enough time to admire the animals.

Probably the best zoo game in the world

Is it worth playing? Obviously, yes. There's no other such game on the market. Of course, this is not the first zoo simulator, but so far – the best one. It has flaws, sure – after 12 hours of binging (yes, reviewing games requires sacrifices) I was bored. The interface clearly requires improvements, and the game can be too difficult. However, if you look for competition, it will turn out that Planet Zoo is the best, most powerful, most interesting proposition this niche offers.

It's a great tycoon, at a time when nobody makes tycoons, and simultaneously, arguably the best game on the market for animal lovers. I can't recommend it to everyone. The more patient and creative types will be able to spend untold hours creating evermore amazing parks, getting loads of satisfaction. The rest – i.e. the majority of people – will become bored after a few hours. For the former group, this will be a 9/10 game; for the former, a total flop. With some questionable maths, we end up with the final score around 8/10. Just remember – this game is very specific.