Researching can take anywhere from five seconds to two minutes, but you never know how long until after you select it, and you can only ever research one thing at a time.

In Campaign and Challenge, you have to research just about everything, including animals, concessions, facilities, decorations, scenery, exhibits, all the way down to how you advertise your Zoo, before you can build or do it. Yet it's research, which is undoubtedly important for real-life animal conservation efforts, that's the worst part of Zoo Tycoon. There’s no option to build multiple instances of the same item either, so if you place one tree (or anything) and want to place a second, you’re forced to go back through the menus every time. That nostalgic process is made harder than it needs to be by the cumbersome menu design, which makes it aggravating to move from one build option to another. There are nice page-turning sound effects and some extra educational information, but that's where the praise ends.įor example, to keep your animals happy you’re required to place animal-care options like a feeder and bathing station in every exhibit, along with some enrichment options for them to play with. While menus are a consistent and important part of every sim, especially the older Zoo Tycoon games on PC, they’re poorly designed for the Xbox One. It’s also the first time you get a taste of the inefficient menus you must consistently flip through to conduct zoo business, no matter which of the three modes you’re playing. This is where you learn to swap between the neat third-person exploration mode and the top-down Tycoon mode. You learn how to become a zookeeper through 10 in-depth training missions that clearly explain the most important aspects of the job – building exhibits and managing the layout – while not overwhelming you with details.

Original zoo tycoon for pc