Zoo Tycoon

Building exhibits and interacting with animals in Zoo Tycoon isn't much fun when you're fighting with this menu system.

Zoo Tycoon's animals are adorable, but a clunky interface prevents this management sim from reaching its potential.

There's huge satisfaction to be had from building your zoo, observing the animals and watching all the graphs go up. It's just a shame that over time, as the novelties wear off, the lack of depth makes it hard to keep coming back. But who knows? Perhaps a future update will introduce monkey butlers.

Zoo Tycoon overcomes some small issues with charm and a good heart

Zoos are special and Zoo Tycoon captures that nicely. The sometimes disappointing limitations and even the dreadful menus don't take away enough from the overall package to prevent it from earning a recommendation, particularly for animal lovers and families.

Building your zoo offers fun moments, but doesn't have any depth or reasons to try different approaches

The game struggles a little over the mid-to-long term: the difficulty doesn't fluctuate much and, soon enough, you're merely turning the cogs rather than responding to thrilling challenges, but Zoo Tycoon is pleasant and engaging, even in its absence of spectacle.

Zoo Tycoon has a distinct lack of depth, but if you're capable of sitting down with this simplistic simulator, you'll smile more times than you can count. The simulator fan in me was a bit disappointed by the ease of it all, but the child in me couldn't help but enjoy myself.

Lots of things are done very well in Zoo Tycoon. The animals have real character and the educational elements are delivered in perfect, bite size chunks. You can lose hours just walking around the zoo, taking photographs and enjoying the animal interactions. Initially there is genuine delight when a new species or enclosure type is unlocked but unfortunately, this wonder wears off all too quickly.

Frontier Developments caught my attention with a game that promised "Tycoon" style sim management and, yes, the ability to play with adorable animals. What I didn't expect was how deep and satisfying the sim would be.