Zoo Tycoon: Dinosaur Digs (PC)

GameSpot editors' review

• CNET editors' rating: 3.0 stars Good
  Detailed editors' rating
  Overall score: 6.4 (3.0 stars)

• Reviewed by:
  Tom Chick
• Reviewed on: 06/04/2002
• Released on: 05/19/2002
• Originally published on GameSpot: Zoo Tycoon: Dinosaur Digs (PC) Review

Dinosaur Digs is a great idea for an expansion pack. What better way to make your zoo bigger, more fantastical, and more dramatic than to give it a Jurassic-sized infusion of new life? What could be more exotic than a fern-choked exhibit with a pack of crafty velociraptors behind electrified fences? What could be more disastrous than a tyrannosaurus rex on the loose, chowing down on screaming guests? There are almost two dozen new creatures (including some Ice Age mammals thrown in among the dinosaurs), a new set of buildings, and a few new staff members to handle it all. And while these are all well and good, they unfortunately don't breathe enough new life into Zoo Tycoon to appeal to anyone but die-hard fans.

With so many new additions, Dinosaur Digs' graphics are certainly different, but they aren't any better. Zoo Tycoon still looks atrocious at the closest zoom level. With 2D artwork for only eight directions, the bigger dinosaurs look all the more conspicuous snapping from one direction to another instead of smoothly turning. And unfortunately, Dinosaur Digs barely changes the way Zoo Tycoon is played. In the absence of any sort of hard numbers, building your zoo still calls for a lot of guesswork. You have no way of knowing whether your guests will like the dinosaur cinema better than the pteranodon house. Will they be happier with a lava archway or a triceratops skeleton? This is particularly true with the exhibits, which required a lot of trial and error in the original game in order to figure out how to make your animals happy. But with the expansion's new prehistoric foliage, new kinds of rocks and shelters, and a menagerie of creatures with bewildering Latin names, piecing together the right combinations seems more arbitrary than ever.

One nice change that Dinosaur Digs makes is how dinosaurs are raised rather than merely adopted as fully-grown adults. You buy an egg, which has to be tended by a scientist. The egg hatches into a juvenile dinosaur that eventually grows up. This gives Zoo Tycoon's creatures a sense of being nurtured that you didn't get in the original Zoo Tycoon until your animals started breeding. Instead of zookeepers, dinosaurs are fed and tended by scientists. The dinosaurs themselves are a bit different from regular animals in that many of them require the more-imposing fences included in the expansion pack. The reinforced concrete and especially the electrified iron bars provide a nice visual sense that there's something very powerful on the other side. Some dinosaurs will trample trees and bushes in their exhibits, so you have to arrange foliage behind rocks and water. However, these details are minor. In the end, the dinosaurs don't play differently enough from the conventional animals.

Continue reading

Compare prices for Zoo Tycoon: Dinosaur Digs

This product is currently not in stock at any of our online merchants.

Email me when this product is available