- Terrain modification failed planet zoo serial#
- Terrain modification failed planet zoo full#
- Terrain modification failed planet zoo professional#
Nevertheless, there are still plenty of moments of faint jank, and the potential for serious weirdness - at one point, I had to abandon a zoo because a lemur had escaped thirty feet into the air and was hovering, shrieking at the guests, beyond the reach of any mortal vet, and tanking my framerate in the process. The beta’s issues with monstrous keepers who refused to feed animals are fixed, and the game was patched significantly even during the review period. Of course, just because there aren’t many creepy crawlies in the game, it doesn’t mean you won’t find any bugs in your zoos. Pretend I am a cute seal if you need to just get them in my life. Still, given Frontier’s approach to DLC, I’ve got a private hope they’ll be willing to sell me aviaries, aquariums and proper reptile house capability at a later date. There are 23 smaller animals in the game, including nine more reptiles, three amphibians and eleven invertebrates, but these are housed in one-size-fits-all, barely customisable prefabricated “exhibits”, which I found pretty, but completely underwhelming. Enclosures for flying creatures aren't a thing, and there's not a single fish in the game. Of the seventy-odd "habitat" animals in the game (that is, the ones you can design enclosures for) just six are reptiles, and there are a measly three birds. The game is also ruthlessly marketed at the aIndeed, the game’s bestiary focuses almost entirely on large mammals - or charismatic megafauna, as they’re known in the business. If you don't treat the animals like lords, you’ll fail catastrophically, and even if you don’t want to do anything horrible, there’s still often a sense that you’re being strongarmed into playing according to pre-assigned values. Planet Zoo, entirely reasonably, didn't take the hands-off, Prison Architect approach of letting you damn yourself with your own decisions. The sad fact is, there are still zoos where suicidal tigers sit collecting mould in chainlink horror pens, and they still make a lot of money. The game’s relentlessly positive messaging also means you can't make a shit zoo. What do you mean by "you can't feed it cigarettes"?
Terrain modification failed planet zoo serial#
The swaying, misery-eyed elephant in the room here is the debate over the ethics of zoos, and while I'm not having it here (go talk to Edwin), Planet Zoo plasters over the whole issue with the desperate, sweaty smile of a serial killer showing the cops their collection of Babylon 5 memorabilia to stop them finding the Torture Room. It’s so bright and wholesome and world-music-section-cheery in its insistence on portraying zoos as a force for good, you can’t help but get the sense it’s protesting too much. But as when anyone comes to make a definitive statement about the thing you love, I was also bristling to be underwhelmed. I had the keys to the lizards and everything. I even worked in a zoo for a while, looking after the animals for the education department at London Zoo. I studied the history of zoos and aquariums in my final year at uni. Hell, as I type this, I’m watching an orchid mantis molt in a tank on my desk.
Terrain modification failed planet zoo full#
Their inhabitants - a nearly full set of the legendary Britains’ zoo animals - became so worn from use that the noses and ears came off the elephants, and the giraffes were bleached into gangly, albino nightmares.Īs I grew older, the wooden blocks were replaced with graph paper, as I planned out yet more hypothetical beast accommodation, and eventually by real glass tanks, as I built a teenage menagerie of frogs, lizards, scorpions and beetles. I was obsessed with Noah’s Ark as a toddler, and went on to spend whole weekends filling the living room floor with zoos made of wooden blocks, ice cream tubs and plastic fencing. My first memory is of elephants in a zoo. Like a grinning divorce lawyer, setting up a stall in a Scarborough caravan park as the rain descends for half-term week, Planet Zoo saw me coming.
Terrain modification failed planet zoo professional#
But here, for the sake of professional responsibility, is wot I think. This time, my instinct is just to nod distractedly, tell you it’s good, and get back to playing. Usually, by the time I review a game - especially one as savagely time-guzzling as this one - I’m burned out on packing so many hours of play into a few days, and I’m ready to say my piece and move on. And by thunder, it delivers on that promise. Because here’s the thing: it’s a game where you can build your own zoo.
It’s buggy, intermittently opaque, frequently saccharine, and - barring an eleventh hour miracle - it’s my undisputed game of the year. Planet Zoo is a game where you can build your own zoo.
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