Zoo Tycoon seems fated to fly under the radar for most adult Xbox One buyers, whose eyes will likely be drawn to flashier and more mature wares. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. She also enjoyed cleaning the animals with a hose, watching them playing with the toy-like enrichment stations (unlike real animals in zoos, these virtual creatures are almost always active and interested exploring their environment), and using a voice command to open the zoopedia, a trove of information on animal desires and needs of specific species. These motion controls will likely prove a one-time kind of thrill for adults, who will likely switch over to button controls after the first couple of times feeding their virtual critters, but my daughter never grew tired of interacting with the animals this way when prompted. It’s a fine demonstration of next-generation Kinect’s ability to detect fine movements and facial expressions. You can’t quite do that, of course, but you can do the next best thing via Kinect and reach out to pretend you’re feeding bananas to the giraffes, or look through glass windows and try to get the gorillas to copy your facial expressions by blinking, smiling, and opening your mouth. I wanted to reach out and fluff the downy fur of young bears, feel the weathered and cracked leathery ears of adult elephants. Lions, tigers, bears, gorillas, hippopotami, and more – in both baby and adult form – are here, and they look and animate so much like their real world counterparts that I found myself talking and cooing to them. Speaking of entertainment, I’m pretty sure I’ve never enjoyed myself as much running around as an avatar at ground level in a park sim as I have in Zoo Tycoon.

Indeed, the game does a great job overall of keeping you in the park, where the entertainment is.

They’re fast – perhaps quicker even than a keyboard and mouse (the usual means by which people play sim and management games) – and beat the heck out of opening and drilling down through text-heavy menus. Voice commands are optional, but I suspect most will elect to use them.

Lets play zoo tycoon 3