Zoo Tycoon 2 will let you address your animals' needs directly through its Zookeeper Mode. From the animal happiness screen another tap will take you to a close up of the animal and let you attend to it directly by feeding it, cleaning it, cleaning its habitat, or tending to its illness. All of these tasks boil down to a timed mini game that either has you matching icons with taps or rubbing your stylus on the screen. This mode seems particular suited to younger gamers and they'll appreciate the animated movements of the animal in response to their care. Older gamers will find that this mode becomes repetitive pretty quickly and they will soon leave the animal care to hired staff.

The game comes with a full set of scenarios that provide various challenges such as raising the overall star rating of a zoo. There's enough challenge here to hold the interest of most gamers, although the youngest ones may find them a bit too difficult. Playing through the scenarios has its own rewards in the form of unlocking rare and extinct animals for use in your zoos. In addition to the scenarios, the game includes an open-world sandbox mode that leaves you free to design and build your own zoo from the ground up.

Overall, Zoo Tycoon 2's greatest appeal will be to younger gamers or tycoon game fans who don't mind exchanging complexity for the ability to play a tycoon game on the road. Unless you have a strong interest in animals or tycoon games, there's probably not enough challenge here to hold your interest for a long time. If you have a ten year old animal lover at home, then giving him or her a copy of Zoo Tycoon 2 will keep him or her quiet for hours on end.

In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated: 74%. This tycoon game is more for animal lovers than business moguls.

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