Once your paths are down – or while you’re still working out where you want to put them – it’s time to place some staff facilities and hire some staff. There’s even a nature trail option with no paving material so you can make scenic woodland walks. The lack of a fill tool is bemusing, but the paths – split into guest paths, queues and staff paths – at least serve their purpose. Building winding paths all over the place and raising walkways works like a dream (more so if you remember some hotkeys), but creating a plaza that’s anything other than rectangular is… well, it’s impossible to do without leaving gaps. Anyone who’s played Planet Coaster will no doubt be instantly familiar with the pathing system, which isn’t necessarily a good thing as it apparently hasn’t undergone any ease-of-use improvements since its last appearance. Let’s start with the basics – laying the groundwork for your zoo in the first place.
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Paths and I had a bit of a falling out before I worked out how to do square plazas, but I managed to turn it into a happy accident with some foliage. It’s in this mode that I get stuck into Planet Zoo’s guts and really learn my way around the system and from this mode that I can draw the most conclusions on how it feels to play. I soon completed the first career mission and all its objectives, then abandoned it in favour of diving into Franchise Mode. Even in a somewhat buggy beta state, Planet Zoo is a good experience and one that’s been worth waiting for. Hopefully the filtering system is something that will be refined after the beta, as making the process faster would be a great quality improvement. What’s more, you can’t filter Nature objects by animal, so you have to go back and check their environmental preferences before continuing. You have to switch through different tabs and scroll down a big list of available animals. While Planet Zoo does have a filtering system in place that lets you filter by animal, biome etc., it’s more of a pain to use.
It gave you one convenient place to see, select and purchase every item that animal could use. In Zoo Tycoon 2, there was a Zookeeper Recommendations button available on animals’ information panels when you clicked on them. You get used to the options, but my biggest gripe with the menus so far is that it’s a bit of a pain to get all the items you need for one animal. Planet Zoo is pretty easy to get to grips with, even if there’s a whole lot more going on in its menus than players of (yes, I’ll mention it) Zoo Tycoon might be familiar with. The warthog enclosure I had to improve as part of the tutorial. Each step feels natural, with mechanical learning objectives and the tutorial’s narrative meshing together seamlessly to form a cohesive whole. She takes me on a tour of the zoo, letting me get familiar with the controls before putting me to work on the warthog enclosure. I do love it when the voiceovers (of which there are plenty, in career mode!) sound like actual people. Nancy leads me through the tutorial – a lovely Welsh lady who jokes about thingamajigs and wotsits being left undone. Especially as it’s my job to renovate it. I’ve never been one for building beautiful things in games – I usually just plonk things down as and when I need them – and the gorgeous zoo Bernard’s created, as he explains in the jovial voiceover, gives me a lot to live up to. It’s with a little trepidation that I watch the opening sequence. I… did not make anything this nice during the beta. Out of the top options available in the beta (the other is franchise mode), it seems the sensible place to start. I figure it’s time to jump into career mode. The customisation options seem limited for now, but I could care less – it’s the animals I’m really here for. The first thing Planet Zoo lets me do is create an avatar and drop it onto the globe for others to find. The elephant’s trumpet on Planet Zoo’s logo screen feels suitably triumphant as I boot it up, the soundtrack perfectly joyful.
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Now, the day has finally come.Ĭonveniently, the download of Planet Zoo finishes just as I clock off work. For weeks, my husband and I have been barely able to contain our gleeful anticipation for the Planet Zoo beta from Frontier Developments.
My eyes drift over to my left-hand screen as I wait for a work document to save, eager for the sight of a beautiful blue ‘install’ button.