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Great game! Great Value!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 11 / 14
Date: November 10, 2004
Author: Amazon User

If you like Zoo Tycoon, you will love Zoo Empire! This game is way more in depth than zoo tycoon and more realistic in almost every way. I bought this game a few days ago and can't stop playing it. The animals are not just pixels on screen, they are actually alive with emotions and many realistic reactions. The first time I see an escaped gorilla enjoying a ride on the touring train I was simply amazed and blown away by the varieties and details of these "eye candy" that the game designer put into the game!

Managing a successful zoo in zoo empire is both a challenging and rewarding experience. The difficulty level will gradually increase from scenario to scenario. The game also allows you to bring your well trained animals from scenario to scenario, making it a bit easier to play (As the players will be more willing to see a famous animal than a regular one). As the Zoo Keeper, the player will also need to hone in their different skills in order to successfully run the zoo.

I especially like zoo empire in that it show that not all customers coming in the gate have touring in their mind. Just yesterday night, I caught sight of a kid stealing money from the pizza stand!

The music and the sound effects are good, but what really make this game a gem is the graphics. It is quite a treat to the eye. The art director of the game did a great job in making every structure easily recognizedable yet maintain the overall cute cartoonish style.

Some of my friends complained about the slowness of the game but it run perfectly smooth on my 2 year old computer (AMD Athlon and GeForce Ti4200) so I don't think it would be a problem for anyone of you out there.

The installation went smoothly and painlessly on my WinXP Pro.

Overall, I have to give it a 5 stars - Zoo Empire is absolutely the best simulation game for your buck in the market! This game is a guranteed fun for everyone of your family, don't miss it!

A few tips and hints after only playing the demo.....

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: July 03, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I usually play demos of games before I consider buying them, to know if I can even understand the game enough to enjoy it. I play alot of games that are like this, and I enjoy simulation games as well. And here is some of what I noticed:

I was reading another persons review and they said that the camera moved too fast. They were probally clicking then going right to the edge of the screen to move, and the games camera is not meant to function that way. The farther you move your mouse from the point where you clicked makes it move faster, it works best if you just move a centimeter or two from the point you clicked, trust me. I've encountered this type of camera control in games before and your first time using it is usually very confusing and frustrating.

Another person also said the zookeeper would immediatly cage their animals. I also had that happen the first time I attempted an exhibit. But after looking around the menus a bit, I discovered why this happens: the first fence you find is for DECORATION ONLY. It is not meant to contain animals, so to the zookeeper, an animal surronded by decorative fence might as well have no fence whatsoever around it, and puts the animal in a crate. I don't quite remember what menu it's under, it might be Animal Enrichment Objects, but there is EXHIBIT FENCES for containing animals.

Someone also said that they were having problems placing fences. Yet again, I have encountered the way fences are to be placed in this game in other games. The way it works is that you have to click and the move your mouse to where you want it. But if you go to the left or right of being in a straight line from your starting point, it will make and L. You cannot make squares without 2 starting points, and there is no(to my knowledge in this game at least) diagonal walls.

Otherwise I thoroughly enjoyed playing the demo and plan to purchase the full game. I was espescially impressed with the quality of the graphics in this game. Though I did notice that the black bears rear is quite skinny compared to his front!!!

Better than zoo tycoon!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 9 / 13
Date: February 17, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This is the BEST zoo game ever! Its really fun, but takes up alot of memory and can be hard to controll when you make fencing. I would't recomend this game for younger kids though, as there's alot of finatial stuff. you also should assingen zoo keepers to different exibits (It will show you how to do this in the third or fourth tutorial) or your animals will die. (I've experianced this) Don't be afraid to sell animals if your cage looks crowded, or you have more than 10 animals in a cage. But Especially pay attention to your animal and vistor satisfaction. Remember,happy animals meen happy visitors!:)

Great Fun!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: October 30, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Zoo empire is not rollercoaster tycoon, and comparing the two is like comparing apples and oranges. There are many wonderful things included in the game. First of all, the engine that zoo empire running on, that allows the user controls is great! It is so fabulous to be able to right click to move up down all around and see the park from any view. (I was playing wildlife park prior to purchasing this game, and can never go back to it, simply for this fact- manuvering in your game is simple and flawless!) The colors, details, graphics, and wide range of animal interactions are all stunning!

AI-wise, the visitor complaints really need to be looked in: the second I open my park, people immediately begin complaining about broken items. However, this is a minor point and does not really detract from the pleasure of building wild-and-wacky exhibits.

Overall, a really fun game and much better than wildlife park.

Awesome!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: October 14, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Zoo Empire is a fabulous game! Actually, it has the potential to be the best zoo game ever! There are glitches with the animal feeding and drinking, but they are fixed by installing the patch. Now, my zookeepers seem to be feeding the animals slightly better. Although the tutorials do a good job of getting you up and running, the manual is a must-read, or else you'll miss out one some of the more complex features of the game. I just never read the manuals, just jump into a free game and figure it all out, so many of my problems were due to not reading the manual! Great, colorfull graphics, cool animations, and a great way to learn more about animals!

Hopefully the guys responsible for zoo empire will come out with version 2 of the game, and fixing the minor glitches in the game. I'll be looking forward to that.

Crash, starve, and other minor glitches UPDATE!!!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 4
Date: January 31, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Hi. I am an adult that enjoys creating these parks for my kids to run as my youngest just turned 9 and it can be difficult for her to do anything extravegant although she has picked things up pretty quickly! We have had no problems navigating through everything and have learnt alot by trial and error. We also found the instruction book unhelpful and unfortunately we haven't found much help online.

I have downloaded two patches for the software and found they didn't really help. Perhaps I need to reboot my system after installing them. I too have my pc reboot automatically during the game, but not as often as others I have read about on here. I think the ones that have more problems with this don't have a strong enough pc. I don't recall looking at the box requirements other than you need windows XP and the speed.
Those of you having problems with making fences and parts of animals disappearing may need a better machine. One occuring problem I even have is one piece of sidewalk will disappear and sometimes if I scroll around the park and then come back it will appear again.

One terrible problem I have is when I hire a zookeeper they immediately capture the animals in the exhibit! And I can't do anything with them. No instructions to the zookeeper will work, he'll just stand around after doing nothing with these captured animals. I can't move them to another exhibit or tell him to release them. Weird. Any input on this would be welcome!

Otherwise I rated this game 5*'s, but 4*'s overall because of all the problems. The coolest part for my kids are when babies are made and they appear in a cloud of hearts and smoke.

If you have any help on these problems please post replies! Thanks!

I found this on the Enlight site for ZE.exe problems:

Generally this problem will occur when the game has been copied to a corrupted area of the hard drive and conflicts with other applications that are running in the RAM.

To solve this problem you can follow these steps;

1.) Clear your Hard Drive space with the assistance of some defragmenter software.

You can defrag your system by following these steps;

(NOTE; Mac operators will have to purchase a separate software tool to complete this, Norton Utilities offer such a service)

Window Operators;
- Click the START button.
- Go to Accessories
- System Tools
- Disk Defragmenter

Once this has been completed please uninstall, then reinstall Zoo Empire.

2.) Make sure all unnecessary applications are closed before running the game. You can also clear up the memory by rebooting and running the game again.

As a last resort you can reinstall your whole system as well as the game. Of course in most cases this is unnecessary, however once this is completed and your system hardware has been configured appropriately you will experience optimum performance with your software.

Fun, with a dash of frustration

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: March 31, 2008
Author: Amazon User

For people that are looking for a game which will take longer than an hour or so to beat and love animals, this is your game.

The tutorial levels can be quite tedious until you get a handle on the camera controls and terrain editor. However, they are good preparation for the levels ahead, and I would suggest completing them to optimize your zoo in the free play mode.

I found that when you become very adept at creating a happy environment for the animals they are VERY quick to procreate, and before you know it you have a small exhibit with a large quantity of animals.

When using the terrain editor to create hills/mountains or valleys/bodies of water, it is difficult to tell how much you are affecting the selected land.

Once you become confident in your skills, you can really have fun with it without frustration. All-in-all, a good game.

Frustrating...

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 9 / 11
Date: August 09, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Though I would never compare this game to RollerCoaster Tycoon, because that is far and away the best game of this type out there, Zoo Empire certainly doesn't stand on its own. The learning curve is HUGE! I had to pick up the manual constantly even though I patiently went through all the tutorials. This game gave me no joy and a lot of headaches. The animals were hungry within 15 seconds of having fed them. Vending machines were vandalized, but heck if you could figure out which ones. The objectives were very demanding, to say the least.

The upside of this game were the graphics, which were awesome. Plus, you could view your zoo from just about any camera angle you desire. It's obvious that this is a quality-made game. Unfortunately, the gameplay is not the least bit relaxing or fun. I really wanted to like this game!

Good-looking, but hard to get into

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 9 / 10
Date: December 21, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Although the graphics were stunning, the animations amazing, and the overall level of detail just incredible, the control system was very difficult for me. The menus line both top and bottom of the screen, and the buttons are very small. Once in a menu, you have at least 20 more buttons to choose from, all very small as well, and all the menus look basically the same once opened, so it's hard to tell at a glance which one you're looking at. If, however, you're accustomed to navigating similar game menus, you may enjoy this product very much.

The gamer is also given a lot of choice regarding camera angle. I found the camera very difficult to manage because it moves very quickly and it is easy to completely change your orientation by accident and lose sight of what you're doing just long enough to mess it up. However, again, if you're accustomed to working with a real 3-d camera control, this may be the game for you.

My favorite part of this game is the variety in building options for your zoo and the amazing life-likeness of the animals. I believe there's already another review that talks more about this, so I'll leave it to them.

Hope this review was helpful to you in making your decision.

No comparison to Roller Coaster/Zoo tycoon games

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 13 / 16
Date: August 01, 2004
Author: Amazon User

If you have played the Roller Coaster and Zoo typcoon games I feel you will be quite disappointed with Zoo Empire by Enlight. Not only is it totally different but you better study your instruction booklet before playing and be prepared to refer to it constantly.
I found it frustrating trying to manuver through the toolbar which is far from simple just to get to the sections sections needed to make the game run smoothly.. The layout is (for lack of a better word) strange!!

Well, maybe the youngsters will have an easier time of it, but I doubt it. Its simply a frustration to play..

Personally disappointed.

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