Zoo Tycoon Dinosaur Digs (Microsoft, PC, G8+)

By PETER ELEY

(Herald rating: * * * * )

One of the minor classics of the past year was Zoo Tycoon. It's not the sort of game that makes you stay up all night, but one that you find yourself playing on wet weekends.

Just the thing for Auckland, then.

Sim games such as this are the PC equivalent of a telly soap opera.

Neither has a real beginning or end, just an evolving and increasingly complicated structure.

And both need that occasional change of pace to sustain interest.

Shortland St might do it with a sex scandal; Zoo Tycoon has done it by adding dinosaurs to the lions and tigers.

It's Jurassic Park all over again as you send out your research scientists and dinosaur recovery team to unexplored regions to capture creatures such as T-rex, stegosaurus and velociraptors.

Once back, you need to build special structures to house them and keep visitors safe.

Mind you, it would be hard to contain a real T-rex. These 15m-long killing machines used to consume their prey in 200kg mouthfuls.

The fences you can build in Zoo Tycoon look woefully inadequate.

Dinosaur Digs lets you capture 20 or so dinosaurs as well as the woolly mammoth, which lived several million years later.

Never mind, they look nice next to the lions.

The aim of the game is still the same, and that is to run your zoo at a profit, using revenue to buy bigger animals and build better attractions.

Keep everything ticking over and even T-rex will be content.

And it can be strangely
satisfying to raise these beasts from eggs to 10-tonne killing machines.

petereley@nzherald.co.nz