I was a big fan of the first Zoo Tycoon game. I loved to keep all my little people happy. Not only could I keep the little people happy, I was able to keep the little animals happy, too, so it was double the fun! Detailing the animal exhibits and crafting that perfect balance to get things just right were satisfying. When I saw Zoo Tycoon 2, I was curious but didn’t immediately jump on the chance to play &mash; not until a package with some expansions became available.

Zoo Tycoon 2: Zookeeper Collection contains the original game plus the African animals and endangered animals expansions. I found this very odd. What was in the first game if these two categories weren’t originally included? Both seem extremely basic for any zoo, let alone a zoo game. I can’t remember any game designed to be a cash cow that turned out to be good, and this one follows suit.

The basic idea of Zoo Tycoon 2 is to expand your zoo by offering viewings of a diverse number of animals and by keeping your guests entertained, fed and serviced while they view the animals. To create an exhibit for animals, you first choose a type of fence so the animals don’t escape. There are a few notes about the fence durability, privacy and height, but in practice, just picking the cheapest thing results in no problems at all for almost any animal; pretty pathetic.

The next task in creating your exhibit is to create the terrain type your animals need. While I usually don’t compare games, the first Zoo Tycoon was very rigid in what an animal required, and it seems as if the developers have done a complete 180 with this game; it is so easy, even a child can accidentally get it right.

In real zoos, terrain upkeep and creation is very costly, but in Zoo Tycoon 2, you just paint it on, free of charge. All animals that live in that biome class are happy with the exact same type of terrain as any other animal in that class. For example, caribou are fine with a 90 percent ocean terrain. I don’t know the point of dumbing it down so much, but it really takes any and all satisfaction out of the animal care part of the game. You can also place trees and plants, but it doesn’t matter. And elevation? Not present. Mountain lions love the plains; in fact, mountains can create major problems. Zoo Tycoon 2 offers a world where penguins, musk ox, caribou and polar bears coexist in peace. It is also a world where no inbreeding can exist, but if two females and one male are in the same pen, it will form a self-sustaining healthy population.

The developers completely destroyed the animal part of Zoo Tycoon 2. It is boring, repetitive and not at all educational (and outright incorrect in many, many cases), and the only improved glimmer is that animals have more actions and playful animations now. There are also some real glitchy things that don’t make sense — like gazelles refusing to drink water from a metal trough but are fine using a wooden one. Another major issue that kills the gameplay is the predator/prey relationships of animals. Putting two predators together just doesn’t work, and something stupid will happen like having Nile monitors killing lions (I know that they shouldn’t live together, but the game doesn’t notice) because it doesn’t want to walk a couple extra feet for its food. The whole predator and prey system in Zoo Tycoon 2 is horrible.

Guests that come into your zoo need to be entertained, view animals, and have food ,drink, bathrooms and more. Guests pay a very small fee to enter your zoo and are then harassed with constant donation boxes until they are guilted out of their money and donate almost everything they have. They will then quickly complain there aren’t enough ATMs. (And since when did banks charge companies to shove their high service fee ATMs inside?) For that small entrance fee, they demand quite a bit of entertainment and are very quick to complain about anything they can’t find immediately, including rides ... in a zoo ... yeah. Maybe I’m out of touch with the latest zoo trends, but it doesn’t work that way here. You can add décor items or theme an area, but most of it doesn’t really pay off. It takes a lot of effort and money to theme an area that almost no guests will notice.

All zoos start rated at half a star, and they are limited in the animals they can adopt and attractions they can build. I understand the animals, but really it doesn’t make sense about the other attractions. If you have money, you should be able to build them. As you get more guests, those guests get happier, you increase the number and diversity of the animals, and free some of the animals to the wild. And your zoo rating will get higher. The higher the rating, the pushier your guests will get and the more they’ll start to donate. Each half-star increase will give you access to more animals, food types, toys, fences and buildings — all that stuff I said was largely useless.

If you play the game in career mode, you’ll constantly be starting the game the same way, over and over and over because there are very few ideal paths to take to success. Each scenario, no matter the objective, you beat the same way over and over because you always need to increase your rating and cash flow. The free form and custom scenarios are slightly different, though, and you can start without those restrictions. One of the most annoying parts of the game has to be the number of “slots” you are allowed to have to adopt animals, it results in a boring roulette of you constantly rejecting and waiting for new animals to pop up.

Zoo Tycoon 2 isn’t a game about animals, or little people; it is a game about managing money. The problem is they have made money such a limiting factor (instead of a gameplay challenge) that you have to play the same way to minimize the excessive amount of waiting to reach whatever star rating you require. Zoo finances make very little sense: Entry fees are nothing, donations by guests are huge and there are no corporate donations. Fences and animal adoptions are your major expenses for exhibits, and since animals are so costly (they don’t get enough donations to keep buying them when they die way too quickly), you must have a breeding program in place for almost all of them. Some buildings have ongoing costs to keep them up, but most of the maintenance fees are from zookeepers who make a fortune and work very, very slowly, leaving exhibits and animals in poor condition. Fortunately, you are capable of heading to the ground, cleaning up animal poo, refilling food (which is all free) and tending all your animals. Tour guides (who seem to do nothing) and park maintenance staff members make a lot less money and work far better. I’m not sure who really planned out the financial mess that is this game, but they should never be allowed to do so ever again.

The only real decent feature in Zoo Tycoon 2 is the building of sky trams and jeep trails through some of the exhibits. The trails must be very carefully laid out, but for minimal expense, they can make a lot of guests very happy and willing to deal out good money in donations.

I didn’t have any crashing or other problems with Zoo Tycoon 2. The game ran smoothly, but then again the graphics, while a step up from the first 2-D original game, are a very crude 3-D and can hardly take too much power to run. The sound effects made by animals are just ... not accurate — much like the rest of the game — and the music repeats enough to make you want to turn it off.

Zoo Tycoon 2 was a waste of my money. I don’t recommend anyone purchasing this game. It has very little to do with animals and the people visiting them and isn’t much of a tycoon anything. The game fails on just about every level. Every animal is completely generic, inaccurate and boring. The novel feature of having animals rendered very poorly in 3-D wears off quickly, and all that is left is a poorly planned and developed game.