A more comprehensive zoo builder, now including aquariums, Planet Zoo 2 glows with its increased focus on conservation. The Finger Guns review.
For the longest time, for as long as this Elephant can remember anyway, the Zoo tycoon and building genre focused primarily on its titular entity. The zoo. You’d build a Zoo and its enclosures, move in some animals and invite paying guests. You’d then use that funding to expand, house new animals, increase the number of visitors; rinse and repeat. Success was measured on how much money you can make and how many guests you can pack into the Zoo.
Over the past few years however, there’s been a noticeable shift towards focusing on preservation and animal wellbeing. The original Planet Zoo was one of the pioneers, including Conservation Credits for releasing wildlife, which was weirdly followed by the latter Jurassic World Evolution titles with conservation and breading of dinosaurs. Now Planet Zoo 2 dials it up a notch, putting the idea of conservation and wildlife preserves at the core of what the game is attempting to achieve.
Planet Zoo 2 does this by introducing customisable wildlife reserves. Using your Zoo’s as feeder areas, the aim is to create the correct living conditions with the appropriate flora and water, and then build ‘release groups’ from your zoo fauna to live there. By doing so, you’re rewarded with increased Conservation Credits (you can still quick release, but for a reduced reward) which can then be used to obtain more exotic and endangered animals for your Zoo.
These wildlife reserves are fully explorable, with the game enabling you to drive or walk around the area to observe the animals and even photograph them doing their everyday activities, in a similar way to Jurassic World Evolution. There’s a weirdly powerful sense of satisfaction to see a digital animal that was born in your digital zoo, grow up, get released into one of these digital nature reserves and to be living their best lives in the wild. It’s on of the strongest ways Planet Zoo 2 differentiates itself from the competition.
Water You Waiting For
Planet Zoo 2 features the most comprehensive set of Zoo design and customisation tools in the genre, with enhancements across the board. Pathing is improved, fixing a lot of the little irritations from the original game, meaning you can give your guests the views you want to, rather than what you’re limited to. Paths can now line up directly to barriers of enclosures, reducing wasted space. Enclosure and exhibitions are improved too, allowing snapping between barrier types and even include null barriers; essentially invisible walls, these barriers allow you to create the aesthetic you want without having to work around walls you don’t want to see.
The biggest content update to Planet Zoo 2 over its predecessors is the inclusion of Aquariums. Functionally similar to enclosures, you’ll draw up your big glass houses, add an entry for staff and voila, you’ll have a water filled home fit for a King Crag, or Shark, or turtle. What’s more interesting is the ability to combine the standard enclosure walls with that of an aquarium. Building enclosures for semi-aquatic animals like otters or penguins becomes an absolute joy, as you’re able to be very creative with what you can do with both the water filled areas as well as the above ground areas. These aquariums also need to be linked to a water filtration network, a system identical to that in Planet Coaster 2 and the aqua park content.
Of course, having Aquariums to build wouldn’t be much good without animals to put in them. A whole host of new aquatic animals have been added to the plethora of beauties and beasts (136 in total) you can adopt and house within your Zoo. Each comes with its own welfare requirements; the type of water it likes – salt, fresh or brackish – and the temperature of water it thrives in. Overcoming the balancing act of finding the right size tank, the right temperature and type of water and the optimum amount of plant life to create an aquarium teaming with diverse life without something going wrong will give you a new appreciation for the work of the Sea Life centres.
A Buggy Life
The only drawback of the increased complexity of the tools and additional options available in Planet Zoo 2, at least on console, is the increased number of options and button presses required to do almost everything. These types of games have always been best with a mouse and keyboard, and developer Frontier have done a reasonable job of making this as accessible on console as possible, but I couldn’t help but wish for more. There are button shortcuts that
For example, say you’d placed down something that you want to duplicate. You direct the centre screen cursor over the object and click X. Next, you have to press down on the d-pad several times to scroll past the object details and tags until you reach the selection at the bottom of the item’s menu. Then you need to tap right on the d-pad a few times to get to the duplicate button to click it. With a mouse, this would have taken less than a second. On PS5, it can take more than 5 seconds if the item has a lot of tags. When you’re doing this regularly, it can start to grate. When selective multiple items at once, like trying to create a group of items, it’ll really test your patience.
The controls aren’t my only issue with Planet Zoo 2. There are some rare but irritating bugs in the game too. One example was when the aquatic animals in one of my Aquariums kept getting boxed (usually what happens when they’re moving between locations in the Zoo) and unboxed repeatedly and quickly. These animals just kept floating in the crate above the aquarium until their welfare was very poor, which drew the attention of some protestors. I wish I could have done something about it, but because of the pace at which the animals were being boxed and unboxed, I couldn’t get the opportunity.
Here’s to Zoo 2, Kid
Having mentioned these issues, you might think that I’d be feeling negative about Planet Zoo 2. In reality however, these are tiny blemishes on what is otherwise an enjoyable, beautiful and deeply fulfilling game.
The animals themselves are incredible. Visually, almost all of them are near photo-realistic. They’re stunning to look at, and it’s easy to lose a little time in the game simply clicking on an animal and zooming in to just take in the details. The visuals are only matched by the incredible animations. Whether it’s sleeping, playing, eating or even pooping, the digital creatures move and behave realistically, how you might have seen them in real Zoos or on nature documentaries.
The game play loop is also very satisfying, no matter the mode you’re playing on. Building a zoo, or expanding on one, to see more guests arrive, securing the welfare of the animals as the number increases, while maintaining guest comfort might sound like a lot of plates to spin, but it’s always accessible. Things will go wrong – your wild boars will breed like rabbits and outgrow your habitat, or your bear will manage to get out of the enclosure – but a quick pause and you’ll be able to reassess and fix things without too much of a penalty.
The Diverse (& Maybe Divisive) Planet Zoo 2
Talking of modes, Planet Zoo 2 comes with 3 main modes all of which offer something a little different and cater to different types of player. The campaign mode initially acts as a tutorial, guiding the player through the absolute basics as you expand and improve some pre-built Zoos, feeding into a nature reserve. To give this mode some credit, it lets go of your hand quite early on and leaves you with certain objectives to accomplish rather than forcing you to build how the game thinks you should. While these objectives aren’t challenging, they will warm you up for the other two modes.
Where I can see most players spending their time is in the Franchise mode. Here, you start with one Zoo from anywhere in the world that you choose. As you progress, you can unlock access to a variety of nature reserves to send your adult animals to live out their lives. In this mode, money and Conservation Credits can grow tight as you start with a completely blank canvas, and expanding can take time. Even when progress is slow in your Zoo however, you’re still progressing because of individual and community objectives which you’ll be contributing towards.
Finally, there’s the sandbox mode. This comes with sub-modes that can challenge you to create under constraints or take off the limitations entirely and just allow your creativity to run wild. While you can already see some incredible creations being made in this mode with total freedom online, for me, this removes a lot of the impetus from the core gameplay loop. It’s worth playing around with the modes to find the once that works for you.
The last point I wanted to discuss about Planet Zoo 2 is the almost cartoonish elements that have become synonymous with the Frontier Planet games. The human guests that will be visiting your Zoo have an art style that I will kindly describe as divisive. These humans, looking a bit goofy, offer a strong juxtaposition to the realism on display with the wildlife. This might not bother some players, but it feels at odds with the other detailed elements of the game to me. I know it’s almost a staple of the Planet series to have these funky looking people walking around your creations, speaking a version of Simlish, but if there’s one element I’d like to see changed for a Planet Zoo 3, it’d be this.
Planet Zoo 2 is out now for PlayStation 5 (review platform), Xbox Series X, Nintendo Switch and PC via Steam.
Developers: Frontier
Publisher: Frontier
Disclaimer: In order to complete this review, we were provided with a promotional copy of the game. For our full review policy, please go here.
If you enjoyed this article or any more of our content, please consider our Patreon.
Make sure to follow Finger Guns on our social channels. Twitter, Facebook, Twitch, Spotify or Apple Podcasts – to keep up to date on our news, reviews and features.