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Jane's Zoo HD
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Graphics & Sound:
Jane’s Zoo HD has the same delightful and colorful graphics that it did when I reviewed it for the iPhone last year, they just look bigger and better on the iPad. You’ll spend time at three zoos from around the world and each one is themed and has weather effects to match its location. Lush, green Europe is prone to sudden rain showers and you can see large mountains in the background. Arid Africa is plagued by tornados, but is decorated by thatch-roofed animal housing and the great pyramids of Gaza and the Sphinx can be seen in the distance. Lastly, China gets pelted by snow on a regular basis, but has adorable Asian-inspired animal housing with rolling green hills, a waterfall and cherry blossom trees to dot the landscape.
Each animal is absolutely precious and they have their own little animations as they frolic in their habitats. The penguins slide along the ice, the peacock fans out his tail and the otter plays with a ball. They all have their own sound effects as well and they sound like they should. My favorite is still the peacock since his call is cute. I have no idea what peacocks sound like in real life, but in Jane’s Zoo HD, they are quite charming. As you progress through the levels in your zoos, you will be given baby animals that will grow and become new additions to your zoo. Each of them sounds like a cooing baby until they grow into the sound for their breed. The background music for Jane’s Zoo HD doesn’t change between zoo locations, but it’s catchy and I find myself humming it long after I have turned off the game.
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Gameplay:
Jane’s Zoo HD is most definitely trying to convey a message of ecological awareness and preservation. Jane’s goal is to help animals all over the world and she accomplishes this by making her zoos a happy and healthy place for animals to inhabit. She starts off in Europe, then moves on to Africa and finally to China. While she is there, she’ll tend elephants, zebras, penguins, peacocks, otters, lions, ostriches, pandas, giraffes, skunks, hippos and monkeys, depending on the zoo’s location. Jane and Uncle Ben care for all of the zoo creatures’ needs. Jane is responsible for feeding and watering them, while Uncle Ben handles the repairs, cleaning the habitats, changing the baby animals’ diapers and watering the grounds. Each animal has their own habitat with a picture of the animal on the grounds, in case you forget who goes where. You’ll take them out in the morning and quickly return them if inclement weather occurs. When they have needs, a small icon will appear over their head and you will tap the appropriate spot on Jane or Uncle Ben’s tab to have them go take care of the need. On occasion, the crow will come to rest on an animal’s house and squawk to annoy the critter. Shoo away the crow by tapping on it, or risk your animal getting disgusted.
As you progress, you’ll also open up new options for your animal’s health and pleasure such as a bathing and drying station, a gym for exercise, a hospital when they are sick, a manicure station to clip their toenails, a play house for doing puzzles to entertain them, and a music house to cheer them up. When the icon for one of these locations appears above their head, you’ll tap on the animal to select it, and then tap on the appropriate location to set them down. Then you’ll have a mini-game to do. Get them done quickly and return them to their habitat before they lose patience. There’s a "clock" on the HUD to indicate the progress of your day and at the end of the day, you’ll need to return the animals to their homes.
The one thing that is different from the iPhone version is the insertion of hidden object levels every so often. They will be themed to match the location of the zoo, so you’ll have forested locales for Europe, desert locales for Africa and snowy, mountainous locales for China. You’ll be tasked with locating and removing 15 pieces of garbage per level and you’ll have 60 seconds to do it. It’s pretty easy and for the most part, the locations in a given region look fairly similar, but it does break things up a bit and once again, sends that eco-responsibility message loud and clear.
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Difficulty:
You can begin Jane’s Zoo HD on either Normal difficulty mode or Expert, which makes things a bit tougher. If you are just starting out in time management, Normal is the mode you’ll want. It’s fairly easy and there are only a few occasions where things get overwhelming. For the most part, it’s pleasant and you can easily get through the levels. For folks who are familiar with time management games and consider themselves pros, you’ll want to play on Expert Mode. You’ll get a bigger challenge and the animals will lose patience more quickly. Just remember that whatever mode you start on will be the mode you stay on throughout the entire game. It’s a good idea to create two separate profiles, one on each difficulty, to be able to try your hand at both modes.
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Game Mechanics:
Jane’s Zoo HD has you running back and forth to care for the animals, but it also mixes things up with mini-games. In the bathing station, you’ll tap the dirty spots to clean up your animal, then eventually you’ll also have a drying station where you tap and hold the dryer on the wet spots to dry him off. To exercise your animal, drop him off at the gym, then tap to go through the exercise options. When you land on the one he wants the most, the color surrounding the animal will turn to green. Red means he is unhappy and yellow means he is so-so. The green aura is what you are going for in each of the stations you take your animal. While in the hospital, you’ll see a thermometer on the right side. Your goal is to tap it while it is in the optimal range, indicated by a smiley face. The mercury will raise and lower and you can tap it while in range, whether it is going up or down. While at the manicure station, you’ll get an automatic green/happy score if you clip all four toenails. If not, your score will be lowered. In the play house, you’ll be presented with a puzzle and a missing piece. Your three possible matches will be at the bottom of the screen and you’ll choose the correct one to make your animal happy. In the music house, you’ll play a basic game of Simple Simon as you match the notes pressed. It’s all pretty basic, but if you have 4 animals in the various stations, it can get hectic. I always drop the animal off, do the mini-game, then take advantage of the few seconds of "grace period" while the animal finishes up, to accomplish another task or drop another animal off at a station.
As you do well in each level, you will earn gold and silver coins, which can be used to buy upgrades for the zoo such as nicer pools, flowers for the habitat and fences and roads to make things easier on Jane and Uncle Ben. You can also do upgrades to Jane and Uncle Ben such as making them walk or work faster, giving the animals more patience, or speeding up the time it takes to do a mini-game. Remember that the better you perform in the regular levels, the more coins you will earn, so it’s important to take care of the animals as soon as you can to earn as many coins as possible.
Jane’s Zoo HD is great fun for time management fans, but it would have gotten a higher score were it not for a pesky bug that I encountered in the middle of the game. Somewhere around the 11th level at the Africa zoo, I encountered a situation where I clicked on the icon for Jane to accomplish a task and she wouldn’t do it. I could click for she and Uncle Ben to do other things, but the game wouldn’t respond until the animal had lost all patience and then I simply lost the level and had to redo it. I am happy to report that it worked fine when I redid the level, but it still caused me frustration.
Overall, Jane’s Zoo HD is a great time management and one that I enjoyed a lot. The entire game is delightful and I enjoyed it as much as I did the last time I played it, and that isn’t always the case with time management games. If you enjoy the Jane games, you’ll like Jane’s Zoo HD. It’s actually my favorite in the series and I highly recommend it. Hopefully, the bug I encountered was just a fluke, and if not, perhaps it will be addressed in a later patch.
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-Psibabe, GameVortex Communications AKA Ashley Perkins |
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