Zoo Tycoon 2 Features

Here are some details for stuff that will appear in Zoo Tycoon 2.

Fully 3D Environment
This time around the whole zoo and the animals will be created in fully 3d graphics. That means saying goodbye to rotating the view between four different angles. You will be able to rotate 360 degrees as well as zoom in and out. You can even take a first person perspective and get right down to the zoo floor. This will all be made possible by the Gamebryo real-time 3D graphics engine.

30 Animals
The official press release claims that there will be 30 animals featured in Zoo Tycoon 2. This might seem a little wimpy compared to the 40+ animals from the original Zoo Tycoon, but this time around they are completely 3D. They are also going to have many more actions and more detail than before. This hasn't been confirmed, but I think it's likely that there will be a couple secret animals in the game too, and possibly some extra animals to download off the Microsoft website. It's also likely that there will be expansion packs in the future.

Guest Mode
This mode, as the title suggests, allows you to act as a zoo guest. You can walk around the Zoo in first person perspective and look at your exhibits, scenery, and a attractions. Whether or not you can interact with the animals, rides, and buildings is unknown at this point.

Zookeeper Mode
Zookeeeper mode puts the task of upkeeping your zoo in your hands. You are responsible for feeding animals, cleaning up after then, and doing other staff duties. By the sounds of it, this option is available as well as hiring staff to do work for you. So in smaller zoos you might be able to handle everything yourself and safe the cost of paying workers, but once things get bigger you'll probably need to hire some help.

Zoo Photographer Mode
This mode is basically an advanced screenshot feature. You get to go through your zoo a use a camera to snap pictures of you zoo and animals. You can then save them in albums which will be shareable among Zoo Tycoon players (most likely the sharing will not be an in game feature). Apparently Microsoft will also be holding Online Photo Safari challenges. Now word yet as to how these competitions will be judged, or what the prizes may be.

Biome Brush
The Biome Brush is a new tool for changing the type of environment of your exhibits. It automatically chooses the best mix of land and foliage. Most of the Zoo building technique needed to master the original Zoo Tycoon was based on building quality exhibits for the animals. Because the Biome Brush seems to do this for you, I'm guessing there are some downsides to using it over the traditional way of placing foliage and other exhibit elements (unless the old method has been removed from the game).

Habitat Editor
This sounds like a great new feature. Thanks to the 3D graphics in zoo Tycoon 2, you can now make more detailed terrain. In addition to hills, you'll be able to create streams, lakes, rivers, mountains, waterfalls, and plateaus. Things will look much more diverse thanks to this feature.

Campaign Mode
Campaign Mode challenges players to build a zoo and complete certain scenarios in a designated time period.

Free-Form Mode
Free-Form mode gives you a map and a certain amount of money to build and manage your zoo.

Sandbox Mode
Sandbox Mode allows you to build a zoo without having to worry about money. Could be fun to build a really nice zoo, but it's not very challenging.

Zoopedia
The Zoopedia is an informational tool that will let you read up on some facts about your animals.

Downloadable Content
Like they did for Zoo Tycoon, Microsoft will have some bonus animals, scenearios, and scenary available for download from their website. They will likely add new things occasionally as well.