Zoo Hospital (Wii)

GameSpot editors' review

• CNET editors' rating: 2.0 stars Mediocre
  Detailed editors' rating
  Overall score: 4.5 (2.0 stars)

• Reviewed by:
  Shiva Stella
• Reviewed on: 10/27/2008
• Released on: 09/22/2008
• Originally published on GameSpot: Zoo Hospital (Wii) Review

Zoo Hospital for the Wii is a cuddly medical-themed puzzler in the style of Atlus' popular Trauma Center franchise. Unfortunately, it has none of the puzzle variation, intensity, or replayability of the Trauma Center games and presents very little challenge or depth. Its puzzles never increase in difficulty, and you're often forced to repeatedly endure the same operation type, compounding your sense of boredom. The sad reality of Zoo Hospital is that it boasts little more than cute animals.

The game opens with you receiving a call from Aunt Lucy, who operates a floundering zoo that's about to be bought out by a sinister businessman determined to replace it with a minigolf course. Your objective, as a licensed veterinarian fresh out of school, is to treat the zoo's animals as Lucy works to secure funding. The plot is rather uninteresting and disjointed, providing little backdrop for the operations you'll perform, though occasionally you'll treat an animal that advances the story.

The bulk of the gameplay is extremely straightforward and easy to master; a map of the zoo is displayed, conveniently marked with icons that let you know when an animal's health is in jeopardy. You merely click on an icon to send a distressed animal to the hospital wing, where you examine it by keeping the cursor inside the middle of a circle representing a magnifying glass. You're usually given five minutes to complete the appropriate operation, which may involve suturing wounds, laser-zapping viruses, applying antibacterial gel to rashes, or even pulling teeth. Each puzzle type requires simple movements of the Wii Remote, such as when you smack giant lice by making a brief, slashing motion, but sometimes, you'll have to shake the controller a little more forcibly to get it to register your movements. You'll encounter a similar control problem in a puzzle in which you guide a Tetris-like object through an animal's intestines because you'll find it difficult for the game to register that you've grabbed the object whenever it has been pushed too close to an obstruction.

Though the operation types are initially varied, you'll soon find yourself performing the same operation several times in a row or tackling the same infection with the same solution, which is irksome because the procedures don't evolve. The operation puzzles are very simplistic; they require almost no strategy and so quickly becoming tedious. For example, in the virus-zapping operation, the goal is to kill the infected cells before they damage the healthy ones, but the infected cells merely float around in no discernable pattern, encountering the healthy cells almost randomly.

Furthermore, most operations have very few stages and are purely external procedures, such as the syringe "operation" that requires you to do nothing more than inject an animal with a vaccine to successfully complete it. The game also fails to intensify with progression. The time element that is supposed to apply constant pressure to the gameplay is practically useless because many operations are completed in as little as 30 seconds; you shouldn't even breach the minute mark until you're more than halfway through. Even if you should run out of time or have an animal wake in the middle of an operation, there is no penalty for failure, which makes the gameplay even easier.

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