Before we start the main review, let me just comment on a few recent titles that may whet your appetite. First up, Washing Line Tycoon. Carefully manage the washing on the line, being careful to use the correct mixtures of soapy suds and further unlockable rinsing agents. Innovative new features include dynamic wind affecting the drying speed of your precious washing and a variety of different washing lines to play on.

Also we have Flea Farm Tycoon 2. An exciting, action-packed title where you get to manage your own fleas, ensuring a careful balance between breeding and flea satisfaction. Now in full Flea-D ©!! You can individually view and name every flea, as well as monitor their various needs and desires. Last but not least comes Toilet Brush Tycoon 4. A spectacular title that introduces a competitive edge to the… Gah, forget it!

Tycoon games are falling out of our ears. You can't walk into a games shop nowadays without being drowned in a deluge of them, or their counterparts, the Theme games. If they were all fantastic it wouldn't be so bad, but unfortunately the majority of this style of game use the exact same formula as the rest, but with perhaps a different setting or occupation. But just when you are sick to the gills of sub-standard Tycoon games, along comes Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 and sets a whole new level of excellence, reminding you why you loved Tycoon games in the first place.

So it was with some degree of hope that I plunged headfirst into Zoo Tycoon 2, hoping that it might set the world alight with some amazing new features or ideas. I was disappointed. Everything that makes a traditional Tycoon game is present and correct, everything is balanced reasonably well, the graphics are acceptable, there are lots of little details that need to be addressed and a mob of boisterous visitors constantly charge through your gates to litter the paths with their rubbish.

But new features? I can count them on one hand. With four fingers left over. And I'm not even sure something as primitive as this can be counted as a new feature, but this is the addition of a biome brush. Basically it just allows you to paint ground with the natural habitat of your chosen animal. This automatically includes trees, bushes, flowers, rocks etc, which saves you the bother of manually placing all these by hand. Whoopee!

That is precisely the extent of fresh ideas that ZT 2 dares to implement. Thus, by exercising such precautionary reticence to employ anything new, it simultaneously proves itself to be yet another false pretender to the Tycooning crown. It almost angers me at times that publishers have the gall to demand a fee of £35 - £40 for simply applying a lick of paint to something that in essence people have played many times before. But the most frustrating part is that ZT 2 is not a bad game. I can't demolish it with a well-prepared blast of verbal abuse, because it just doesn't do much wrong to deserve that. It simply fails to do what's right, if that makes any sense.

Probably the only redeeming element of the game is that it aims squarely at the younger generation. A lot of Tycoon games are quite hard to get into, requiring you to build up a good deal of specialist knowledge about the subject matter to be able to handle situations properly. But here everything is as user-friendly and simplistic as the theme will allow. That's not to say it's too dumbed-down, but it is certainly more Fisher Price than Meccano.

But once again broaching the vast pathway of negativity, ZT 2 shows a fair bit of amateur design beneath the 3D veneer. Stupid little niggles like the way your animal lecturer continually wanders around the whole park area searching for a rostrum even when your exhibits only take up a few squares by the entrance. The fact that your handyman completely ignores one piece of rubbish but picks up the next. The odd sound effects. The constantly buggy 3D graphics that give a poor rendition of animal movement and frequently allows animals to walk around without moving their legs. And the way it brings even a zippy Half-Life 2 machine humbly to its knees with the ridiculously demanding yet unexceptional graphics.

As a final damning criticism, take a look at the Zoo management titles that are already out there. Aside from the original Zoo Tycoon, which was acceptable enough in its time, there is also Wildlife Park, which has a lot more depth and Zoo Empire, which did the whole 3D thing nearly half a year ago and with more success, it must be added. There is no reason for Zoo Tycoon 2 to exist. Everything it does has already been done before. This is just milking the cash cow to its bitter death. Newcomers might find enjoyment in the game due to its simplistic nature, but the rest of us have already flogged this dead horse many times before, or indeed, any other animal you might find in the zoo. I would wait for something a little more upbeat, like the upcoming Fish Finger Tycoon Deluxe.

Reviewed by Adam Shirley for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).