I’ve tried to playThe Simsa few times, but I’ve always bounced off it. I think part of the reason is you see people online who aremasters of the craft, creating perfectly designed Sims in bustling cities with creative architecture, and then you start with a Sim who kinda looks like you but doesn’t really look like you in a boring town where you don’t know how to do anything. ButInZoi’searly access arrival has me tempted to try again.
The Sims isn’t the only sim-style game I’ve bounced off. While I have 250 (pandemic-aided) hours inAnimal Crossing: New Horizons, I tend to quit most other life sim or building games before the going gets good. I’d say it was a patience issue, but then I writeDungeons & Dragonsadventures thattake me dozens of hours despiteknowing players willnever search out each corner- or will drift away before they can - andI watch test match cricket. It ain’t that.
Maybe it’s a whatever-the-opposite-of-a-perk-is of the job. I find it hard toswitch off the Content Generation part of my brainwhen playing a video game, which has me constantly chasing new releases ripe with discourse. Sim games designed to be played for hundreds of hours and where there’s no benefit besides making you feel relaxed and creatively fulfilled do not put words in the blog.
InZoi Feels Much More Real Than The Sims
So part of the draw with InZoi is that it’s shiny and new, and thereforeoffers the shiny and new opportunity to write about it. But there is something else to InZoi too - it looks like a better game. I don’t mean that it will play better or give me more control (or if needed, more guidance), or that it has better features. I mean it looks, aesthetically, better.
The Sims has always been quite cartoonish, even withthe darker side to simulating lifeand drowning people in swimming pools. The graphics have gotten better over the years, with more textures and rounder angles et cetera, but it has always retained that cartoonish look. It’s similar to a series likeSuper Mario- it looks a lot better than it used to, but on a fundamental level, it also looks exactly the same. And it’s making me feel like a bit of a hypocrite.
The art style of The Sims works perfectly for the world it wants to create, with its overly animated body language tying into the slapstick nature of the gameplay. Speaking broadly, I alwaysgo to bat for games that build around a more timeless art style, using the look of the game as a bigger part of the identity and standing out fromevery other game chasing and, currently, still falling short of photorealism. Speaking in general terms, I much prefer a game to look like The Sims rather than to lose personality by trying to look like real life, which I already see enough of away from video games. But speaking specifically, I find myself more drawn to the stylised realism of InZoi.
InZoi’s Character Creator Is Its Secret Weapon
In my defence, InZoi is not entirely realistic. It is not on the level of Sony’s blockbusters where skin pores and tiny white hairs are bristling from their cheeks. It still hasa rosy, slightly cutesy twist on reality. But it is clearly embracing a less comedic look at the life sim genre for a more grounded, immersive version. I’m not sure why I find that more appealing, but I have to admit I do.
Maybe it’s because I’ve becomeaccustomed to fully involved character creators. A large reason I was able to finally ‘get’Monster HunterwithWildsafter giving up onWorldandRisewasbecause I loved the look of my Hunter, Lena. The Sims doesn’t quite have that same power when everything is so squishy and cute. InZoi’s character creator seems like the sort of thing I could spend hours in. I probably still couldn’t make a character who looks like me, but with these sorts of creators you don’t want to, you want to see the endless possibilities (before settling on looking uphow someone made Taylor Swiftand then copying them).
For InZoi to last, it will need to entice over Sims players and prove itself to be the superior life sim game. This town has proven time and time again not to be big enough of the both of them, and The Sims has come out on top. But as an outsider, for what it’s worth, there seems to be something magnetic in the draw of InZoi that I’ve never felt with The Sims.
