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InZOI Could Be A Sims Competitor, But It'll Never Have It's Greatest Feature
There wasn’t anything quite like The Sims until InZOI showed up. It promises a life simulation experience with an impressive amount of customization options, meaningful interactions between the player and the various NPCs, and a needs and wants system, all just like in The Sims. Fortunately, InZOI delivers on almost every front, offering a truly comparable experience to The Sims in a perhaps surprising move. It is also cheaper, at least when one factors in The Sims many expansions, which is a huge plus.
InZOI is already very popular with fans of The Sims, garnering impressive reviews from critics and players alike. It is great news, especially as the game is in Early Access and, therefore, has plenty of room to grow and add in any requested features. However, as amazing as InZOI is, it has one inherent flaw that it can’t really change, which could spell its downfall or, at the very least, make getting its foot into The Sims-sized door a little harder.
InZOI Beats The Sims In A Lot Of Ways
It’s A More Customizable Experience
It does bare mentioning just how good InZOI is and how, in many ways, it is beating The Sims at its own game. InZOI’s ridiculous amount of customization, from the character creator to building a home, is incredibly impressive and by far the highlight of the entire experience so far. That’s not to say that the relationship mechanics and intricate AI working behind the scenes aren’t great, but that InZOI’s greatest strength, especially over The Sims, is its robust customization options, which add a significant amount of longevity to the experience.
It is also a truly open-world experience, allows players to directly control their Zoi, has a lot of clothing and furniture options, the ability to implement your own designs as well as have AI cook up a new one, and so much more. The Sims 4 features some of this but still manages to fall behind, despite being over 11 years old at this point. Additionally, being in Early Access also means InZOI is constantly updated, with the developers promising a slew of new features that, if executed well, would drastically improve the game.
InZOI’s Visuals Are Too Graphically Intensive
Its Requirements Are Very High
However, InZOI’s major flaw undoes a lot of its amazing accomplishments, at least for a certain group of players. InZOI’s ridiculous graphical requirements are so high that even some high-end PCs are struggling to run it. While it does admittedly look incredible and significantly better than its direct competition, InZOI’s absurd PC requirements make it completely unapproachable for those on lower-end computers. While it’s hard to say just how many Sims players have powerful PCs, one has to imagine that the cozy gaming community typically plays on less impressive hardware.
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inZOI Has Just Stolen The Steam Wishlist Crown From None Other Than Hollow Knight: Silksong
The upcoming life sim inZOI just topped the Steam charts as the most wishlisted game, stealing the position from the highly anticipated Silksong.
Cozy games are by nature not demanding experiences, both mechanically and graphically. They tend to skew towards pixel art or stylized visuals over InZOI’s photorealistic aesthetic. As a result, cozy gamers have never needed to upgrade their hardware, at least not to the extent that InZOI requires. That could be to its detriment, especially as a large portion of people who actively want to play InZOI are within that cozy community. It is easily one of InZOI’s biggest problems right now, but it also isn’t one that can be easily fixed.
The Sims Is More Approachable For Cozy Fans
It’s Easier And Simpler To Run
If there’s one way in which The Sims beats InZOI, it is in its accessibility – well, aside from the ridiculous cost of buying all of The Sims 4’s overpriced DLC. The Sims 4 may not look as good as InZOI, but the fact that it still is playable on lower-end PCs gives it a significant advantage over it. While cozy gamers may consider upgrading their PCs in the long run to eventually be able to play InZOI, for now, those who’ve hung onto their less-powerful laptops or PCs as they didn’t need anything better will miss out on it.
While fancy visuals are certainly a drawcard for some, and many would like to see a more realistic life-sim, cozy games rarely, if ever, feature such intensely realistic visuals.
It makes one question why InZOI looks as good as it does. While fancy visuals are certainly a drawcard for some, and many would like to see a more realistic life sim, cozy games rarely, if ever, feature such intensely realistic visuals. This focus on photorealism could end up hurting InZOI in a way that perhaps developer inZOI Studio wasn’t expecting. It is possible that cozy gamers do all have powerful enough rigs, or InZOI Studio manages to lower the requirements. It remains to be seen, but I believe that InZOI’s visuals will be a barrier to entry for many.
