I traded in the very disappointing Kinect Sports Rivals for this game looking for a nice relaxing management sim. I thought to myself; "I love animals, and I love amusement park games, so this should be an easy win" Unfortunately however problems arose immediately.
First off, and I don't know if this was a disk or xbox issue, but the game had serious troubles installing. I've never had this problem with any other game on my xbox. After trying multiple times I was finally able to get it installed and started.
The game has excellent presentation and really gives you that warm fuzzy feeling you get every time you go to a zoo in real life. The problems for me however arose in two different areas. One being the lack of animals. It feels like there are 100 different types of bears, but obvious real life zoo goers favorites (including mine) are suspiciously absent. Cheetahs, Otters, Wolves, and Sea Life don't exist in the game as well as many others.
The second issue I had was the lack of a true free play mode. The only thing close is the sandbox mode, but then everything is free and takes the pleasure out of running a successful zoo. My only alternative was to build a zoo while being told what objectives to accomplish and that was no fun for me.
Its truly not a bad game which is why I gave it a 6. its just missing important keys for me. If you can look past these flaws then you should love this game.