Animal Paradise is an average game; it does some things well but in other areas it lacks polish and mixing the realistic aesthetics with cartoon drawings just doesn't fit. The controls work nicely but it's the same rubbing over and over that we've seen in other pet simulation games. Not using the microphone in order to speak to your animal friends seems to be a big missed opportunity. All in all, kids will like it at first but may tire of it after a few hours.
Zoo Games, Inc. today announced the opening of a European office in Bushey, Hertfordshire, England. This division will be called 'Zoo Entertainment Europe Limited'. The parent company Zoo Games, Inc. has undergone a rapid period of growth in North America and this new office will enable them to become a major player in the European casual gaming market.
The game is based upon the photography of Yoneo Morita, who popularized the Hana Deka style of photos, which means "big nose" in Japanese. Hana Deka might not be a term familiar to western players, and while you might think you're not familiar with Morita's photography, chances are that you've seen it just about everywhere. It's the fish eye style of animal photos that shows them with enormously huge heads attached to pictures of various creatures, and while the popularity has fallen off a bit in recent years, there's still plenty of merchandise out there that sports this look, so it's no surprise that someone thought it would be a great idea to make a video game out of it.
Photography-centric games are uncommon, but when they show up, they're usually pretty damn good. Pokemon Snap, Fatal Frame, Beyond Good and Evil, Dark Cloud 2… these are all games that utilized photography as a gameplay mechanic and were much better games because of it. The latest photographic game, Animal Paradise, on the other hand, breaks this chain by being a game about animal photography that doesn't actually let you photograph the animals in question. Instead, you're merely going through a few simple minigames to get them ready.
