If you've never played a Zoo Tycoon title before, the premise is pretty basic. You're given a set amount of cash (or other objectives depending on the mode), and from there you build your dream zoo. You'll buy animals, hire workers, set up paths and grazing areas, place refreshments, bathrooms, and a quite a few other structures, all in the quest to bring more and more revenue to your growing animal attraction. You'll also need to perform various up-keeping tasks, mostly on the animal pens and the animals themselves, all of which is done thru a series of small minigames that don't actually require much effort or skill.

After you've done all this though, there isn't much to see. The idea is that you'll sit back and watch how things play out, until you either complete whatever goal is set out before you, or you just simply get so bored you decide to turn the whole thing off. On the PC, at least, things are enjoyable to watch. However, the transition to the tiny DS screen doesn't hold up nearly as well, and every model used in the game is incredibly ugly, with most coming off as nothing more than a multicolored blob unless you opt to view them up close. Even then, they're a mish mash of pixels, and because of these less than appealing visuals it makes completing more than a few tasks in Zoo Tycoon 2 feel like more of a chore than anything else.

The basic mechanics involved with building up the zoo work well enough though. Each animal has an affinity to a certain type of land, so you can't just be placing items or building up your park however you want. There is actual strategy involved in keeping your animals content, and the better off your animals are, the better off your entire zoo will be. Ideally people would play around a bit with this to find out what works well for each creature, but the game lays everything out for you all at once, so there's no real sense of discovery involved. Instead, you simply read the animal bio, place the appropriate land type and structures, and move on to the next. The whole process only takes a few minutes at best, and doing it over and over again tends to get old pretty quick. So while the basic gameplay definitely works as intended, it's just boring to play.

There's not much substance to the title other than building up your park either. The game has a scenario mode, where it will give you a set number of goals to achieve. Think of this as your core single player experience. Most players will find the tasks pretty easy, and the whole game doesn't last very long, which is probably a good thing. There is a multiplayer mode that you can play with one other person (requiring them to have their own copy), which puts you in a zoo-building race, with the winner having the highest revenue at the end. This is easily the most fun you'll have with the title, but finding someone else around you that would own the game might not be the easiest thing. Some type of online play would have made things a bit better, and if they bring out a third (which I suspect they will), it'd be nice to see it included.

So while Zoo Tycoon 2 might cure an itch or two for people looking for some sim titles on the DS, it won't do it for very long, and it doesn't make an ideal title for people that might want to try the genre out. Check out the PC title if the idea of building your own zoo seems intriguing, but I definitely suggest avoiding this watered down port.