Santa brought this title for my five-year-old daughters. They love it. It's got a lot of different animals they can play with, each in their own exhibits. The game is easy to learn. You can get involved in the details - I like to try to perform the challenges. But it's also fun to just wing it & try different things. My nine-year-old nephew also loves it. I highly recommend it.

• from

I am a hero with the grandkids. They tell me I am the best grandad ever. It provides hours of fun. It arrived quickly and in excellent condition for Christmas.

• from

Bought this game for my 6 year old daughter. She does not like Wii competition games(Mario), and prefers more creative games (like Simms...). The animal behaviors are realistic-- The penguins slip and slide on the ice, tigers stalk each other, animals poo after eating. Unlike other games, there are no discos for penguins or kittens riding flying carpets. The animation is cute, though, and I keep hearing giggles and laughter from her while she is playing the game. It is easy to navigate (although she is a pretty good reader), and full of animal facts. Highly recommended as good, clean fun if you have an animal lover.

• from

My seven year old wanted this game for Christmas. He has been playing it a lot, and has been having a lot of fun. His favorite part is unlocking new animals and playing with them. He also likes building playsets for the animals.

• from

I've been reading about how 4- and 6-year-olds are playing this game, so I am hesitant to say that my G&T grandson and his friends are totally immersed in this game. They are 10. It has so many options that they can play it for (many) hours at a time, day after day. They spent the Yule holiday glued to the controls.

(They have an array of innumerable games and players -- and this one was "the" requested new one this year.)

Millions of game options and ways to design/create your own animals. And pretty darn eco-friendly in its conceptualization, too.

• from

After reading the reviews, we ordered this game for our four-year-old. She LOVES it! It's very easy to play, and easy to understand, and the animals are adorable.

She has a blast playing this game and I love hearing her laugh out loud when the animals do tricks and play.

It's adorable and I highly recommend it.

• from

I bought this for my 6 year old son for Christmas. He loves playing with the animals and taking care of them. Even though the graphics are not as good as I would expect, the overall game is fun and it is a good experience for him to be responsible for taking care of the animals.

• from

I think this game is adorable, I love the cartoon style of the zoo animals. When you start the game you are able to pick any one of the animal families to begin with, and the others are able to be unlocked with the star coins you earn by caring for your animals' needs. The whole point of the game is to make the animals in your zoo happy by playing with them, keeping them clean, expanding their habitats with playsets, petting them, brushing them, and so forth. You win awards by interacting with your animals, such as feeding them 5 different kinds of food, or having them play with 5 different toys, or hand-feeding an animal. Awards give you star coins which can be used to purchase playsets, extra animals, or a new animal family. While not difficult, the game is challenging and requires time to earn enough star coins to unlock all the animals, but it is also fun to just watch your animals interact with the toys you throw to them. If an animal wants something it appears in a thought bubble over their head, and all you need to do is click the thought bubble and pull it out. This method means it is easy for any player to make their animals happy, and kids won't have to worry about what to feed the animals or what they would want to play with, all you have to do is pull the item out of the thought bubble. There's no money involved, so there's unlimited food and toys, nothing like having to know what kind of food your pandas eat and having to buy it, only to find out you can't afford it. No guesswork, just thought bubbles. There are also animal facts provided by National Geographic that appear on loading screens and can also be viewed when picking an animal for an exhibit. This would be an excellent game for kids and anyone interested in cute animals (cartoon style) who has always wanted to brush a panda bear or get a penguin to slide down a slide or watch a polar bear play with a bouncy ball. If you get bored of the animals offered, there's an animal creator that allows you to customize the animals. Similar to creating Miis, you are able to alter animals' face and ear shapes and sizes, as well as their colors and markings, or if you would rather your giraffe was purple and that your elephant was pink with polka dots, you can do that. I was pleasantly surprised by how much there was to do in this game, how much you can customize, and how much I enjoyed the cartoon art style. World of Zoo is simply fun, engaging, and adorable!

• from

My 4-year-old daughter (about to turn 5) picked this game out yesterday and is in love with it. I was pleasantly surprised at how user-friendly it is for her. It is rather difficult to find Wii games for very young children that they can do fairly independently--beyond Dora and Diego. This is definitely one to consider if you are looking for such. Also, I was very pleased that the characters are more cartoon-like and not at all scary for youngsters. Even the crocodiles are funny. My daughter is constantly laughing about something with this game.

Update: OK, we've been attacked by a crocodile and a lion, but really not scary (animal comes close to the screen, shakes its head back and forth,the word "ATTACKED" appears, and then the animal goes on its way). The more you play, the more items you get to unlock and you also get promotions. I have discovered that once you get promoted to animal whisperer, you've also unclocked the hypno-hand, which makes your animals go to sleep. It is at this level that the animal can get agitated (usually because you are antagonizing them, or you've done something in their environment that made them upset [such as turning the rain on]). You'll see an encircled lightening bolt over their head and the animal will start to approach, as if to give affection (this is what I thought the crocodile was doing, until the word "ATTACKED" came across the screen). To prevent an attack, use the hypno-hand to make the animal go to sleep. The animal will then wake up in a good mood. My daughter finds it humorous that she can instigate an animal and antagonize them further (such as by blowing the air horn at them). She knows what to do in order to prevent an attack, so she's fine with it. Still going strong and is still totally in love with the game.

• from

My daughters both like the game, and I like that they both can play at the same time. My oldest daughter (11) wishes the game had more animals, but she seems to enjoy the goal challenges, and awards. My youngest daughter (6) likes to pet the animals and just make them happy. They both like to create and name the animals and that they can change the animal's appearance.

• from

My 4 year old has loved this game. He pretty much handles everything himself. I have been very impressed. The only trouble we have had is figuring out how to get the treasures once we have located them, and sometimes the animals are too fast for my son to keep up with when trying to brush them or do the medical scans.

Today, however, for the first times in over two weeks, he had a lion attack him. We aren't sure why, but suddenly a lion's face appeared full screen, growling and angry, and at the bottom of the screen it read "ATTACK!" It totally scared my son, and he stopped playing the game immediately. I need to do some research apparently as to what caused this, but I wanted other parents of smaller children to know this was a possibility, as it really frightened my son, who does not normally scare easily.

Aside from that, he had loved the game, and played for hours, carefully fulfilling all the needs of his beloved animals. The animals are very interactive and fun to play with. I just think a parent should be nearby in case the "Attack!" happens, or the animals get sick and the child needs help scanning them to heal them.

• from

Both of my kids (ages 4 and 7) like this game a lot. It is a little tricky for my 4 year old at times to figure out how to do things, and I had a hard time figuring out a few myself, but that doesn't seem to bother him a lot. It is a really cute game.

• from

My sons really enjoy playing Zoo Tycoon and Roller Coaster Tycoon on the PC, so I was really hoping that this was something they'd enjoy playing on the Wii. The game is fun, but there is an initial learning curve and I wish there was an option that let you play with multiple animals right from the get-go instead of having to earn money to buy them. It's a little tough to learn how to navigate each screen, and my boys were frustrated as they learned to use the camera. I think there's plenty of room for improvement in this game.

• from

We bought this game for our 9 year old and 6 year old to play together. They enjoy it a lot. The game play is pretty simple and the animals are cute.

I reduced it a star because I think the graphics could be better and the background music is annoying and repetitive to non-players.

• from

This video has allowed our son, who has mild autism, to develop creativity. Being in control of his own visual perception and handling the choice of colors for each animal. He normally doesn't have any interest in drawing, creating, painting. This game has brought his imagination to a new level and he can communicate it with others. Thank you, SD.

• from