Planet Zoo is a game about. Well. Managing a zoo. Rescue animals, provide them with appropriate enclosures, get people to see them, and then maybe get some profits off them.
Before we get further however I want to make two things clear: first, this is not a bad game. If you're the kinda lad who likes to customize every inch of your theme park and spends hours planning the architechture of your sims houses, you will be balling. Unfortunately I find that boring as fuck so that leads to point two: I have unspeakable amount of beef with this game. This post will thus mostly be me complaining about shit. This is my blog I can do whatever the fuck I want here.
But anyways. You boot up the game and it asks you for your location. This is stupid and I hate it. I already give my data to way too many people I don't want to give it to a tycoon game too. Jumping the gun real quick, but one of the creative modes requires you to be connected to the internet to play it, because they apparently thought a multiplayer mode was what a tycoon game needed. I absolutely hate this trend of modern videogames asking you for an internet connection to play them and I doubly hate it for this genre where a multiplayer option adds fuckin nothing. You play it it's like playing on your own but the game gives you a few more perks that could work just as well on single player. I'm going to kill someone.
Anyways. If you're like me, you're gonna boot up the campaign first, cuz that's where the tutorials are. The tutorial is... okay. Personally I find it a tad too slow, and it's one of these "spends five hours explaining you how to move the camera and then refuses to give you actual info on key mechanics of the game" tutorial, but whatever man these are a dime a dozen. I've seen so many bad tutorials I'll take it.
The tutorial lasts for 3-4 missions or so, which is a bit long, but afterwards? I actually really like the campaign! They do a really good job providing you with various challenges with each new missions. Sometimes you get to build a zoo from scratch. Sometimes the environment acts against you. Sometimes you've got mandatory animals to shelter. Sometimes you can't hire new employees, or the electricity's all wonky, or you're given the worst zoo known to man and you've got to fix this shit. It's cool! My favorite map is the one in the desert, where you are absolutely required to have water animals here, so you have to plan your zoo around the few waterholes. It's fun! I wish you could have similar challenge outside of the campaign. Unfortunately, the only other modes are the full creative with no limitations, or the online one that gives you some sidequests sometimes. And god I hate being online.
The actual management part is okay. The gameplay loop of Planet Zoo is always the same. You build an enclosure, you adapt it to the animal, you set your employees to take care of it, and you're good. You have a research tree of sorts, but it's kinda bullshit. All animals are available from the start. Once you've researched 3-4 of them, you'll probably have unlocked all the enrichment items in the game. It's a bit of an issue for me; the game boasts of having hundreds of animals to take care of, but in practice you get maybe 4-5 separate kind of behaviors? You've got animals who need to climb, animals who need water, animals that can cohabit with each other, animals who are shy, and normies. If you've got a monkey, a crocodile, and a small savannah with wildebeests and nala, you're done. You've explored all the animal-related mechanics of the games. All the other enclosures will look the same.
There's also a separate research tree unrelated to animals, and it's... a mess. You've got extremely valuable tech improvement right next to what I think are only cosmetic changes. I say "I think" because Planet Zoo is a game that is committed to being realistic (the animal AI is one of their selling points) which means they don't give you jack shit on the stats of any item you unlock. Does this burger joint provide anything different from the pizza joint you just unlocked? No idea! Is this more expensive bench more restful to your guests than a cheaper one? Fuck if I know! I've seen a steam wiki claim that trash bins and recyclalbe bins affect different things in the game. I thought these were just a palette swap for aesthetic purposes. I have no way to verify this information. It sucks it fucking suuucks. In general Planet Zoo is really bad at explaining you some fine-tunes mechanics, meaning I got stuck in the campaign a couple times cuz I just... couldn't figure out how to do this shit. There's an in-game encyclopedia, but it's vague as hell. I had to look up how the train rides work online. Maybe I should just git gud, but I feel like if I can't figure it out on my own AND the in-game encyclopedia made specifically to elaborate on shit the tutorial didn't tell you doesn't help either, then perhaps your game design is bad.
Anyways. Again if your hobby is to customize everything to have the one perfect zoo, good on you. I recommend this game. You'll like it. Sadly, I like some sense of progression in my tycoons. I like to think "ok so I'm planning on doing x so then I can do y and then z." I need to collect silex so I can move to the copper age so I can get started on algriculture. But I can't do it in this game. So every single time, without fail, I play an hour or so and then think "and then what? What's the point? I already have access to everything I could ever need. I'm done." and then I uninstall the game.