Wait, is it a Korean Sims knock-off? Yes, and no. That is also a difficult answer to work with, because what is a video game, and what is a software simulation? Ok, just hear me out. Korean devs makes a game that lets you create avatars, with facial capture, and seemingly generated A.I. content.
Whether that's a good thing for you or not, is something you'll have to really figure out with InZOI. It feels like an ambitious experiment, at times it feels as deep as a puddle, but also feels as if there's more to find out about it. Like, I can see it is trying to offer something truly unique to the usual Sims games that we know of. But it's not offering at that fun level.
There's something checkmark about it, like any other game could have done it. It does look fancy, but I am not a fan of the UI or UX, how navigation and traveling works, events planning, how you keep contact with others, and so on. But it offers a lot in broad strokes.
Now, credit where it's due. InZOI has the best character creator ever. I mean, robust facial customizations, you can even change the color grading of each clothes even, and work with different backgrounds. The facial expressions alone are really out of this world.
Once done, I had to pick between three towns to reside in: Kucingku, Dowon, and Bliss City. They're based on real life cities like Seoul, and Santa Monica. They changed Kucingku to Cahaya. Ok, I'm guessing quite a bit has changed. It is early access, after all. Meaning they have more coming on the way. I'm looking forward to it, but for now, I picked Bliss City.
I had only 50K in currency to pick a house, so I picked one for bachelors or couples. Pretty spacious, I thought it was ok. Though, I'm questioning if it makes a difference in how the ZOIs will react to the place. In case you've heard, Nvidia is adding adaptive A.I. for the ZOIs.
First thing my character does is talk to people walking around. Actually, just put them there, and by default they'll talk to people by themselves. I know Sims does that too, but it's more proactive here. Of course, I've also seen my guy here throwing a tantrum out of the blue. Pretty polarizing behaviour for a guy who's an explorer, and likes fixing things, working out, and cleaning.
Most interactions start by how you greet them, you can be rude too, But you can pick it up from there by being friendly again, social engineering at its finest. But the options for interacting are vast, I mean you can talk about a lot of things. Make requests, get their personal information, invite them to parties, and so on. Well provided you increase relationship. There are four types: Family, Friendship, Business, and Romance. Family if someone is part of your household.
Now, the thing with its presentation is pretty outstanding, that is if you're ok with beige color almost everywhere. This is like playing a game made by Silicon Valley nerds into thinking that similar UI to iOS attracts people. I wasn't having fun with this, despite again stellar presentation and amazing visuals. Good video games are used to being so creative, creating unique visual looks.
That isn't to say I'm not into the whole experience, but there were moments I was almost going to sleep. Other times I was super looking forward to the next thing. If that next thing worked well, here's the funny part. Some of the ZOIs I formed bonds with, they don't even live in the city. I tried calling them over for a hangout, they're either unavailable nor in city. Yet I kept finding them during outing.
Not every ZOIs would bond with me seamlessly, but this one girl did, and we hit it off. I so wanted him to get along with her to the point of going steady even. We had a date, and it was going smooth. Next thing I know, after heading back home, I can't contact her at all.
Look, I don't mind playing my young adult single jobless dude, but he's a bit of a neurotic. There's nothing that is fun when I see him eat, look at paintings, watching TV, working on projects on his computer, and so on. Honestly, I had money leftover, and I thought about using it to buy some arcade, maybe a piano, but the lack of curiosity put me off.
Also, the cat keeps telling me my karma level is alarmingly low, what even is that now, and how am I supposed to work around it? I don't even know how to get my guy a job yet. Which, speaking of.
Terry is also in university, but he can't have a part-time job or full-time even. There wasn't even a warning about me losing University progress. Thankfully, I loaded my savegame, and got back. Hey, you want to know a crazy tidbit? You have to fast-forward 8hrs of in-game college time.
I did this thing in Sims 2 University, where one guy was the only domicile, but at least the neighbors reacted around my lot. It made it interesting even things were moving so fast to see how the world is doing while he was away. The college town has so much going on, and yet with this, I have either no way of knowing or just snoozing away for 6 minutes into nothing till it's over.
Don't get me wrong, I like the foundation set up here. It feels like it's gearing more towards social experimentation as a life simulator. I eventually will learn skills to better program, and sell them off to earn my keep. The one thing the Sims never did was add depth to skill learning, and this one is sort of trying. That I can see, so I am looking forward to what it does in release.
I tried out builder mode, it's fine. Wish there were more furnitures around, but I guess that'll come by in the future. At least there's a search bar. You can even modify city activities, like denizens, animals, weather, theme, you can make things nonsensically ridiculous if you want.
Right after trying to marry the girl I found in another event, I decided to try another ZOI, and she lives in Dowon in some rinky dinky cheap apartment. I never knew Korean cities had stupidly expensive real estate costs. Actually, take me back to Bliss City. I feel squeezed by everything.
3D model developers are going to have field days with this one. The facial and motion capture, there's Maya and Blender integration for character models and mods. You can custom create furniture too. Sweet, isn't it? Impressive features one on top of another. Of course, the big asterisk we all should ask is how much did generative A.I. play into its development?
I think there's so much to come for this game. But it's going to leave so many questions about how future games will support unethical content theft for generative content. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, you can actually drive the cars here. Maybe that's the big selling point!
