Prepared for a wall of text? Here we go!
"Management" has never been Frontiers strength before. Neither with the oldschool games nor the more modern games (I've played them all a lot) they made it to implement gripping and fascinating management functions. After the first few hours playing the Planet Zoo beta my first thoughts regarding to this topic were "Okay, no real management part again and hopefully the few functions available and the environment doesn't end up in permanent stressorgys like in Jurassic World"
But - All in all I (hope I) can live with that!
It depends on how you approach Frontier games; To me especially the Planet titles are games to spend hours and hours in building/creating cool stuff in an pretty awesome looking sandbox environment with an astonishing attention to detail - And it's not static! It is moving/living/working, in 3D!!! This is Frontiers strength and in my opinion they are the market leader on that score, for reason! Planet Coaster is fantastic! Yeah, there are some 20 year old functions available - like the staff configuration f.e. - Some people call it management functions, I call it nice to have but not really necessary content. Because there's no real impact. There's no exciting gameplay regarding to this. Very simple example: Have you ever had money problems in a Frontier game...?
Similar counts for Elite Dangerous... It's all about collecting/exploring/improving in an breathtaking looking universe, but not about direct management. Nevertheless I love it to fly thorugh the universe by using my HOTAS.
Jurassic World Evolution was a pancake landing in my eyes. In this title Frontier tried to raise the management factor at the expense of the building/creation factor in an awesome looking environment with an astonishing attention to detail (
)... Like I already said, pancake landing, stressorgys... Frontier stay true to your roots!
And now Planet Zoo... I have no glue what will happen when my Zoo includes 50 habitats and hundreds of animals... But what I know is, that there are too little functions available for a good animal/issue/desaster/meltdown management, this starts especially with overview functions that are prequisites for a good management game in my opinion - And I'm not talking about 4X-like micromanagement, don't get me wrong.
Can I continue building while the game is not paused in a big Zoo? Or is there another stressorgy similar to JW:E coming up to me, because my zoo is out of control and I don't have the chance to act proactive nor reactive because of lacking interfaces/functions which leads to frustration and demotivation and kills the feeling I expect from a building game? And the time is currently running very fast in Planet Zoo. These are points where I can understand why the word "survival game" was used in their review.
For now I've played 50 hours Planet Zoo. My Franchise Zoo is very little, that's because I'm loosing myself in details while building without quite being bored... And in the end that's all that counts for me when I'd like to play a good building game.
