Theme Hospital - Full Review (PC and PS1 game)

Theme Hospital is a comical and witty game that is quite arguably one of the best simulation games of all time and most certainly the best hospital simulator ever created. A successor to the deeply enjoyable ‘Theme Park’, Theme Hospital takes the boring job of hospital management and turns it into something incredibly addictive and with bucket loads of playability.

Developer: Bullfrog Productions (PC) and Krisalis Software (PS)
Genre: Hospital management
Release date: February 4, 1997 (PC), February 1998 (PS1)
Platforms: PS1 and PC (MS-DOS and Windows)
ESRB: E - Everyone

The game was released for the PC and PlayStation 1 though aside from some minor differences like graphical quality and no background music for the PS1 version they are exactly the same game. You’ll play across twelve different hospitals with the task of designing and managing them to success whilst fending off patients with all sorts of strange illnesses and complaints. Theme Hospital is by no means a serious game and in fact it’s a highly original game that doesn’t take itself too seriously. To get you started, here’s the intro to the game.

 

Gameplay and game content

There are twelve hospitals that you will take charge of where you are given nothing but an empty floor plan and the money to start building rooms and hiring staff. You’re given a short amount of time to build the basics of your hospital such as a reception desk and diagnosis rooms like a GPs office and a hospital ward before the time runs out, the hospital opens and patients start visiting. The staff you need to hire consist of doctors, nurses, caretakers and one or two receptionists all of whom will have a short bio such as ‘heckles poor comedians, smells faintly of cabbage, possible liability’ along with their level of skill represented by a green bar. Doctors can have specializations and as you progress through the game you’ll need additional rooms and the doctors with the skill to work in those rooms such as surgeons, researchers and psychiatrists. Consultant doctors can also train their junior counterparts to have their specializations as well as increasing their overall level of skill. Depending on how good they are, their personality and the quality of their room including its size and contents staff may move faster or slower and perform worse and better than their colleagues. 

The game starts out simple and you won’t need many different clinics or rooms as the patients that will be visiting you will only have one of a handful of illnesses though it’s when the patients start showing up that you notice the humour of the game. ‘King Complex’ patients dressed as Elvis are in desperate need of a psychiatrist, patients ailing from ‘The Squits’ from eating pizza found under the oven are sent hurrying over to the pharmacy whilst patients with elongated tongues drooping comically from their mouths are pointed in the direction of a Slack Tongue Clinic; a glorified guillotine crossed with a clothes press. Each new condition or illness you encounter will pop up at the bottom of the screen, along with any other alerts, containing a description of the cause of the illness, the symptoms and the cure and these fact sheets always make me genuinely laugh. The conditions get more and more ludicrous and obscure as time goes by and soon you’ll have patients suffering from hair all over their bodies, radiating a garish and toxic looking green glow and aliens who were once humans and who need a trip to the ‘DNA converter’. 

Your success in this game largely depends a lot on how well you can design your hospital and micro-manage your staff as in later levels you will be absolutely flooded with patients who all require immediate attention. At first the game is quite simplistic and to win the level you simply need to meet certain criteria including number of patients cured, the overall worth of the hospital, a certain bank balance, reputation of the hospital and having to treat a variable percentage of the number of visitors to your hospital. You’ll frequently encounter ‘emergencies’ where a lot of patients with the same condition will all be flown via a helicopter to your hospital and if you don’t cure them by the time the time limit runs out, they all die. This can be fairly simple to manage if it’s something like a quick visit to a pharmacy but when you’ve got eight or nine patients all requiring major surgery you’re going to have a tough time squeezing them all in before their time runs out. Then there’s epidemics to contend with where you can either admit your hospital is infected, pay a fine and take a reputation hit or try to cover it up and cure them all before anybody discovers what’s happened. If you manage to cure them all and cover up the epidemic you’ll get a comfortable compensation bonus for the ‘wrongful’ accusations. There’s always this underlying sense that the hospitals you’re running aren’t exactly trustworthy as there are many unusual methods at dealing with patients and, even more disturbing, an ‘auto-autopsy’ machine in the research department where you can send patients whose condition you don’t understand due to lack of research. The thing is, once the patient is slid into the machine, CAT scan style, don’t ever seem to come back out again, hmm… 

For every new level there’s new challenges and new problems to deal with from earthquakes to vomit waves and the constant changing up of what’s going on in the hospital adds for some really interesting gameplay. A problem with the game is the unpredictable AI of your staff who sometimes struggle to go where they’re supposed to be going, leaving handymen ignoring overflowing bins and puddles of vomit and doctors wandering the corridors whilst a queue of sick patients stacks up outside the GPs office. You really do need to keep an eye on everybody at all times by dragging your doctors, nurses and handymen to where they need to be. Fail to keep on top of things and alongside a dirty hospital you’ll have your patients deteriorating health to worry about. A face above each patient’s head as they get more and more unhappy gradually deteriorates into a ghastly skull which means they’re about to drop dead on the hospital floor only to then float to heaven or be ushered into Hell by Mr Death himself. Thankfully the AI is not always frustrating and usually staff will be on their way to where they’re needed before the announcement woman calls out that a doctor or nurse is required in whichever room. 

Your ability to manage your hospital is fine-tuned to the smallest details and you can place everything where you want to be including radiators, plants, drinks machines and benches in the corridors as well as items and machinary in the hospital rooms themselves such as the desks, bookcases and bins. You can manage your bank account by taking out a loan, paying interest of course, and even decide how much to spend on the heating of your hospital and whether or not to give your staff a raise or a monetary bonus. Not only this, you can decide how much patients pay for each treatment or diagnosis attempt such as a stay in the hospital ward or a visit to the ‘Hair Restoration’ clinic. Despite this fine-tuned managing of the books everything is very simple to use and easy to understand and it won’t take much clicking around and reading of the in-game material to figure out how to do everything. As one of those people who doesn’t like reading a whole load of facts, figures and percentages I tend to bypass the many charts in the game and still can get through it quite happily. 

Graphics and audio

Graphically the PC edition of this game is superior to the PlayStation 1 port but that’s not to say either game looks bad. The screenshots used here are from the PC version but below you can see a screenshot of the PS1 edition, just for comparison's sake. Overall the graphics are really quite decent and very clear cut. Everything is colourful, very well detailed and a bit quirky with its own sense of identity in the whole design of the game. It’s a huge step up from the slightly blurry, fuzzy graphical appearance of ‘Theme Park’ and for a 90s game it really is impressive. The voice acting mostly consisting of a female announcement voice which is both funny and good quality as she apologizes to the patients about the amount of litter and chides ‘mad patients’ for being too loud in the corridors. Staff and patients don’t ever talk and tend to communicate with you through alerts at the bottom of the screen and symbols above their head, for example if they’re confused or if they’ve just discovered a new illness or researched/improved a new piece of equipment. Everything is very clearly communicated to you via the graphics however and the camera is very flexible and not at all awkward to use.

For the PC version the music is fantastic; nostalgic and catchy it has upbeat tunes that change track as you play the game so it doesn’t become irritating after a long period of time. Whenever a patient is cured you’ll hear a cheer from an unseen crowd and boo’ing when a patient dies, leaves the hospital or is sent home which adds to the light-hearted and interactive feel of the whole game. 

Overall

This is one of my childhood games that is still so addictive, challenging and fun to play now and, even after completing it, there’s still great satisfaction in starting all over again and pouring hours upon hours of my time into it. It’s just the right level of challenging and even if you find it too easy there’s three levels of difficulty so you can always crank it up a notch and struggle with the demands of the hardest ‘Consultant’ difficulty level. I love the humour in this game and it’s not an overpowering attempt to be funny, it’s just witty here and there from the diseases, to the announcements to the weird things you find becoming commonplace like excessively decorated staff rooms and questionable healthcare practices. The customization options are brilliant, it looks and sounds fantastic and overall it’s just so playable and so memorable that I can’t help but rank this as one of my favourite PC games.

The Good:

• Witty, intelligent humour that also borders on the silly
• Hours upon hours of gameplay
• Addictive, almost worryingly fun
• Nice level of difficulty and can be very challenging
• Lots of different rooms and illnesses keeps things interesting
• Very defined appearance makes it instantly recognizeable
• Memorable music that's really upbeat and not at all annoying

The Bad:

• Patients are always freezing.
• Staff AI can be a little dodgy
• More hospitals would have been good, but only because I want to continue playing

The Score: 9/10 

Last thoughts: "So addictive, even now in 2014 this is so much fun to play and is one of the few micro-management games I play religiously."
Note: If you’re interested I have a list of cheats and codes that will allow you to do extra things like play whichever level you want to play, for both PS1 and PC editions, and some extra bits for the PC edition such as unlocking all research and getting extra money. You can find my cheat guide here.

Playing Theme Hospital on new OS systems:

The PlayStation 1 version of the game is very easily obtained on sites such as Ebay and Amazon but the PC version will give you more trouble on newer systems, that said, it’s not impossible. By using an emulator such as DOSbox you can happily play the game as intended or, alternatively, you can use an open source ‘clone of the game called CorsixTH. This clone still requires you to purchase the original disk but it allows you to play the game on OS’s such as Vista and Windows 7. You can download CorsixTH here. 

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Zeus, Master of Olympus - Full Review (PC game)

As city building games go ‘Zeus, Master of Olympus’ is an extremely enjoyable game with hours of good quality content and a fairly robust series of campaigns plus some sandbox maps. This game has great playability due to the dozens of different maps, continually challenging and enjoyable scenarios and the ability to play in sandbox mode. The liberal amounts of humour such as overly dramatic voice acting and amusing plotlines further enhances it making this game the master of city building games. It can be quite difficult to get the hang of due to all the different elements and conditions that need to be met but, once you’ve got the hang of it, it’s an extremely enjoyable experience with lots of opportunity for perfectionists to build the ultimate city.

Gameplay

The game is all set in Ancient Greece and has a strong emphasis on the worship of the Greek Gods, Heroes and mythological monsters. You’re unable to actually directly control any of those as it’s not an ‘Age of Empires’ type game but instead they’ll lend you a hand if you meet some specific requirements. The campaigns take place across different maps that vary in size and efficiency. Sometimes you’re stuck in a tiny little rocky map with barely any shoreline for fisheries and no farmland. Other time you’ll find yourself in a huge expanse of flat land with rivers, ocean, ore covered mountains and plenty of wildlife and farming areas to use to your heart’s content. There are essentially two types of city you’ll be building; a parent city and a colony. The colonies are built partway through a campaign and are used to support your parent city through trading in resources you couldn’t get before. After you’ve built it up from scratch and you go back to your parent city you’ll be able to continue trading with it, though you can’t flip back and forth between cities as you wish. If you’re not in the mood for a campaign with specific missions and a storyline then you can also play in the open play maps which come in three different modes; open play military, open play economic and open play sandbox that allow you to build up a huge city with all the buildings relevant to which mode you’re playing in. After you’ve picked what it is you’re doing you’ll be plonked into an empty map that will have particular resources, allies and rivals, depending on the map. Sometimes you’ll have a bountiful access to farmlands and rivers overflowing with fish, or sometimes you’ll get barely any means of getting food but instead a rich supply of copper ore and marble quarries, leaving you to figure out how to sustain your population. 

There are 7 campaigns which vary in difficulty and length. Some have only a handful of episodes whereas some have up to 8 episodes and which are generally tougher with more complex challenges. Challenges may include things like having a certain population in a certain type of house, collecting materials to start up a colony city or to send back to the parent city, building a temple to a God or slaying a mythological creature. The objectives of a mission will relate strongly to what the storyline is for that campaign and the reasoning behind the missions will be described in the narrated beginning of each one. You may have accidentally angered the God Poseidon for instance, who unleashes the mythological creature the Kraken. Your mission may then be to build a Hero Hall and to attract a hero to the city in order to defeat the beast. Heroes may include figures such as Achilles, Perseus, Hercules, Odysseus and so on. These heroes require specific conditions different to each individual, once you have met those conditions you can call for him to come and save your city from the monster. On the flip side, by worshiping particular Gods you will gain access to their specific beast who can aid you in protecting your city or invading other settlements. If you’re able to worship Poseidon then you’ll gain access to his Kraken. Who you’re able toworship or not worship varies from map to map and building a sanctuary for Gods is no easy feat due to the sheer quantity of rare resources that go into them such as marble and bronze statues.

There are a lot of different resources in the game but not every map will give you access to them, for instance when placing a farm you’ll likely only get one of several so either carrots, onions or wheat. You can get other food resources by trading with neighbouring, friendly allies. Other food sources include cheese, obtained from goats which you place individually in a field, urchins and fish which are found in the sea or rivers and pork which is obtained from wild boars that roam the forests. You distribute food and other supplies to your citizens via an ‘agora’ which is a building placed alongside a road where you may place 3 stalls on top of it or, if you build a large one that takes up both sides of the road, 6 stalls. There are two distinct forms of housing the game; regular and elite. Regular housing houses regular citizens who make up your workforce whereas the elite citizens are a mix of noblemen and your military. Whilst regular citizens can form a sort of vigilante rabble who throw rocks at enemies, these elite military guys are fully equipped with weapons, armour and horses if you supply them with such. Regular civilians, who live in a simple 2x2 house, require access to different things in order for them to improve their house which increases the number of people within that house and which generally improves the workforce and appearance of your city. By giving them food, fleece, olive oil, water and access to different ‘arts’ buildings you can have them renovate their house all the way up to a large three story townhouse.

For those who look for lots of military action in a city building game I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed. There’s basically no strategic military action and, with the inclusion of a Hero, mythological creature or divine troops that some Gods may grant you, there’s very little chance of losing your city to the opposition. By bumping the difficulty level up you’ll find a lot more challenge in defending your city but you’ll only be invaded if you’ve really irritated a rival or if it’s pre-set in the mission you’re playing. Invading rivals basically includes building up a large army using the elite housing, not an easy task admittedly, then navigating to the map and selecting which city you want to invade before selecting which troops will be sent there. Then they’ll travel off by themselves whilst you wait to hear how it all went, if you win then you’ll receive goods or money every month from the conquered city and open up a trading route with them. If you lose you’ll just really irritate them and they’ll sometimes retaliate back whilst your troops are still recuperating. Overall, the military side of the game is lacking but it depends on what you’re looking for in a game.

Graphics and audio

For a city building game of the 90s it looks really nice. You can see a lot of detail such as people walking with their unique appearances, crops and grain growing in the fields, stall vendors walking back with a trail of workers ladened with goods following along behind and hunters killing wild boat in the forests. The buildings are highly detailed and lovingly crafted to look as close as possible to traditional Greek architecture whilst the people who inhabit those buildings such as the workers are visibly working or waiting to work. 



The audio is great with some really funny one liner’s on most buildings and people such as, by hovering over a theatre you’ll hear a dramatic actor exclaiming, “Has anybody seen my spear? How can I be a spear carrier without my spear?'' The narrator is a continual source of amusement for me but genuinely the voice acting is really well done and everything has a lovely sound with no irregularities anywhere. The music is very faint, subtle and relaxing and is quickly muffled by the increasing loudness of your bustling city and farmlands but for what it is, it’s certainly pleasant.

Overall

This game is rather like a balancing act between all sorts of elements such as the number of jobs, the population size, how much food you’ve got and how much money is in your coffers. It can be difficult to get used to but the tutorial is very substantial and detailed for new players and, if you’re already a veteran of city building games, you won’t find it difficult. It also helps that there’s a toggle-able difficulty level if you’re finding it too hard or too easy. This is my favourite city building game due to the unique position of it being set in Ancient Greece and without too much emphasis on fighting which, for me, should be reserved for games like ‘Red Alert’ and ‘Age of Empires’. This is the type of game where you can drop in, spend a couple of hours building something absolutely perfect, then drop back out again and leave it alone for a few weeks. It’s a nice, challenging but casual game that’s very easy to fall in love with and which looks and sounds great. If Zeus doesn’t have enough for you still then it also has an expansion pack called Poseidon which basically adds a new game onto it with a more ‘Atlantis’ theme running through it which doesn’t detract from the original game and really only enhances it.

Score: 9/10

To discover more of my old PC game reviews, check out this page here. 

Alternatively, if you're currently playing this game then you might want to check out the list of cheat codes for the game, found here.

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Zoo tycoon Xbox edition - Full Review (Xbox 360 and Xbox one game)

'Zoo tycoon, Xbox Edition' is a park management game where you create a zoo to attract guests, make money and keep your animals generally happy. The game is the first console edition of the Zoo Tycoon series and has been a long running and successful PC game series, until now. I’ll start by saying that this game looks brilliant on the surface, handles well, sounds lovely and would be a perfect game for younger children as there is great interactivity with the animals and it’s easy to pick up. The game has four modes: Tutorial, Campaign, Challenge and Freeform. The Tutorial mode will show you everything you need to know about the game. the Campaign mode has 20 different missions on different zoos where you need to complete objects or meet criteria and the Challenge mode is similar but it is timed. Freeform mode is a big empty area where you have infinite money so you can create your own park. So far, everything looks good.

Xbox one edition vs Xbox 360 edition

So, to get this out of the way the new Xbox Zoo tycoon game has been released for both the 360 console and the new Xbox One console. All in all, they are very similar games with the graphical changes you’d expect from a cross-generation console game. The Xbox One has slightly smoother, more defined and generally prettier graphics but the Xbox 360 version still looks very nice and bang up to date. If you’re wondering which version to get, and you have a choice, then you’ll want to buy the Xbox One version as the Xbox 360 version of the game has several features removed. The Xbox 360 for instance only features 65 out of the 101 animals from the Xbox One version, only features single player mode meaning that the 4 player co-op has been removed and there are limits on sharing. You cannot share or upload any pictures of your zoo or share your zoo with other players. Considering you’ll be paying roughly the same price for both games then you should most certainly opt for the later gen version if you want to have access to any of these features. The decision to almost half the number of animals you have access to is both irritating and disappointing. Realistically, there should be no technical limits that would demand there to be less animal options within the game, if it were a matter of how large you can make the zoo then I’d understand, but more on that later. So, with the differences between the editions out of the way let’s focus on how the game actually plays.

It's so pretty! But that's it.

Gameplay

I have played all the zoo tycoon games, thus far, and was perhaps prematurely excited when I heard it was being released on a console. I am also a big fan of console games and though I wondered about how that would work without a mouse, I was otherwise intrigued. My first impressions of the game was really good, it has lovely smooth gameplay, you can drive a super cool buggy around the zoo and make it skid for minutes of amusement and the animals look and act in a very realistic manner. The ability to interact directly with the animals was featured in Zoo Tycoon 2 on the pc but not quite like this game whereby you can have giraffes looming down over you to eat your proffered fruit. It feels very much like they intended this game to be compatible with the Kinect, sort of Kinectanimals style, but whilst it’s amusing and adorable the first few times the novelty of it soon wears off leaving you looking around for other things to do.  

So you start building your park, after all it’s a tycoon game. If you’re familiar with tycoon games you’ll be used to that money management, guest management type gameplay whereby you need to keep everybody happy by providing enough of this and that. This game doesn’t really provide much of a challenge in this sense and the ability to design the park itself is severely limited. For instance, there is a mechanism literally called ‘zoo limit’ to demonstrate how limited your building ability is going to be, so limited, they warn you about prior to help dissipate the frustration. Zoo limit is a bar at the top of the screen which will gradually fill as you put more items down, the bar will fill faster if you’re putting a lot of large items down. Once this bar is full then you can’t build anything else, not until you remove some things. Now, this is verging on game-breaking for me. Part of the point of being able to build something is to have fairly unlimited creative options, that’s what you look for in a building and designing game, the ability to exercise a little bit of creative perfectionism. Zoo limit automatically slaps you back and denies you the chance to ever build your brand new, beautifully graphiced dream zoo. What’s worse is they made the map fairly large, suggesting you can build in all of the space given to you when it’s utter rubbish. You’ll be able to fill around about a third of the map, tops, and you’ll probably hit the zoo limit after an hour or so of playing. Now, this may be due to a limit on the space or engine or something of that nature but, frankly, make the map smaller and don’t stick under freeform mode the description “allowing you to create a zoo without limits” as though to mock our entrepreneurial dreams. 

Limit aside, the gameplay is simplistic and unchallenging. It’s great for children and a quick blast when you’re truly in need of some animal company because your cat is ignoring you, but not much else. The campaigns can be completed very quickly and the majority of them are extremely easy with only around 5 that offer any real challenge. If you’re the kind of gamer who likes to grab achievements then you’ll get a bit more fun out of attempting to collect them all, if you’re not, then I’m afraid you’ll have a lot less to do. You can name your animals, if you’re into that, and also release them into the wild which is a kind of nice addition but just another means of selling them really. 

Graphics

So with all that negativity out of the way let’s look at something positive. The graphics, yes, they are lovely. The whole game is bright, colourful and cheerful with smooth, slick and modern designs everywhere. You can see the individual hairs on a tiger cub’s fur coat, the wrinkles and lines on an elephant’s trunk and the feathery tips of a peacock’s plumage. It all looks fantastic, water reflections are done perfectly, trees have individual leaves and the people have lovely fashion sense. The guests and staff generally all look quite like Sims 3 people as they are slightly over exaggerated in the eyes but maintain a realistic appearance in that slightly cartoony manner. There’s a good variation in the appearance of the guests; they don’t all look like the same three people basically. So, yes, the graphics score top points and the Xbox One’s graphics are unsurprisingly superior when doing a side by side comparison of the two editions. 

Customisation ability

The ability to personally customize your zoo is, well, limited to non-existent. You don’t have the ability to put down paths and so you’re stuck with the ones that were there from the beginning. When you put down an exhibit it will automatically add new path to connect it up to what exists. Very boring. You’ll basically end up creating several different versions of the same park with different animals and stalls. This problem of not trusting players to put their own paving down crosses into the exhibit customisation as it turns out, the shape of all the exhibits are pre-made. Ignoring how much they are stunting creativity already, by combining pre-made exhibit shapes with not being able to put your own paths down you end up with a very odd looking zoo with lots of gaps. So, that’s annoying. Inside the exhibit you have the ability to put down a different kind of enrichment thing; scratching post or whatever, and you get to choose where it goes. Out of a few specified areas so it ends up going something like this; would you like your trough in areas A, B or C? A, great, so the scratching post? C, alright, and the food? B, fantastic sir, did you enjoy customizing your exhibit? No, I did not, it gets very old, very fast, like the rest of this game. Even if a baby tiger looks adorable when climbing up a scratching post I’d still rather have put that post somewhere I wanted it to go.

The apple is the game, and you're the lemur, do you want the apple? You do? I didn't know where this was going anyway.

Choice of animals

Given this is a game that focuses on bloody animals i'd say it's a fairly important matter to discuss as this is why you're playing the game, surely. The animals that are already in the game are quite nice and cover your basic expectations; tigers, lions, elephants, crocodiles and so on with some that are a little different; peafowl, anacondas, meerkats and parrots. However, though they boast the impression of having over 100 (101) animals available for you to put in your park you’ll quickly notice that they all tend to be the same sort of animal. For instance, we have 3 kinds of snake, 6 kinds of macaw, 10 kinds of antelope, 13 kinds of bear, 7 kinds of lion, 6 kinds of tiger, 8 kinds of rhino… ok you get the idea right? If you wanted a lion sanctuary park then this would be quite good, but it does feel a little misleading that they’re giving the impression of all these wonderous, unique types of animal you can have then saying, oh, 9 different kinds of giraffe is so varied. You add up what I’ve put there, as a sniff of the game, and you’ll see that that’s 62 ‘different’ types of animal. 62, from 8 different ‘animal type’ really guys, 101? I didn’t even mention that you can have 4 different types of lemur! Four kinds of lemur! Everything I wanted from my zoo has been fulfilled. Something I also noticed was a lack of penguins, this sounds unusual I know, but penguins are the cornerstone of every good zoo. There are also no seals, or moose, or kangaroos, or cheetahs. I mean, there are 7 kinds of lion but not one cheetah? Why is this? Well, I imagine, as I’m sure you do that cheetahs and penguins will be saved for future DLC; Downloadable Content. It’s an extraordinarily irritating reality that the developers are fleshing out their animal numbers with repeats of tiger or whatever whilst saving all the unique creatures for a bit of extra cash, especially when charging £50 for the privilege of 13 bears and 4 lemurs.

The likeability factor is all this game has going for it, that, and this really unimpressed monkey.

Overall 

As you may have gathered, I was disappointed in this game. The PC versions of Zoo Tycoon had a degree of challenge and immense customization options that kept it fresh and interesting after several replays. This console edition is a long way off from its predecessors and, though it looks great and the animal interactions are realistic, fun and adorable it’s just not a good enough game to rate highly. Perfect for younger children or if you just want something simple and easy to play. The zoo limit is a ridiculous addition and the inability to change the shape of paths, exhibits and such forth ruin the sense of owning a park. If anything, the game plays more like a day out at the zoo than owning and running the damn thing. It is rather likely that different animals will be added in future DLC but with such a tight limit already on what you can place, why bother? This is the kind of game I’d enjoy for a couple of hours, having only paid about £10 to £15 for it, before it gets pushed to the back of the shelf and forgotten about. 

The Good:

• Beautiful game
• Some great quirky bits
• Good for casual play
• Easy to use controls and camera
• Convenient way of checking on the status of animals
• Animal interactions kind of cute

The Bad:

• Build limit is a huge handicap
• Very few actual animals, too many variations of same type of animal
• No micro-management means it doesn't feel like a tycoon game
• Very little customizability, can choose very little
• You cannot put paths down
• Tedious due to having so many limits

The Score: 4/10 

Last thoughts: "That was such a disappointment... I love park management games so much... I feel genuinely cheated out of what could have been an amazing game."

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