Early Verdict
For all the noise about a rich simulated reality, inZOI currently underperforms and overpromises.
With so many points to be grabbed and changed, building a Zoi feels like sculpting a masterpiece.
You’re a town planner alongside your role as a Zoi-directing deity.
But the problem with inZOI is twofold.
The Sims 4is little more than an interior design program for me now.
Build houses, decorate them, play the actual game for five minutes and get bored.
That’s the routine.
The start of a happy family in this brave new world.
Full of promise, I direct my Zoi to hug their husband, but she’s instantly rebuffed.
Even married Zois start off with an entirely neutral relationship, they barely know each other at all.
I give up on him for a bit and go to the park.
A Zoi’s rigid autonomy can be fairly disabling.
She refuses to hold a meaningful conversation with anyone else.
She won’t use the easels to paint, just deleting it from her queue.
She won’t really doanythinguntil I send her to take a selfie.
She takes one, but there’s no way to view it.
Defeated, I send her home.
Five minutes after arriving, with her ‘need’ bars fully satiated, my Zoi keels over and dies.
She’d been alive for a grand total of 4 in-game hours.
There’s nothing I can do.
Multiple hours of carefully curating the perfect characters and home, devastated in minutes.
Once they get home you’re able to eat, work out, or sleep.
Youcanpick up a hobby, or make a baby, or meet someone new.
There are options, but none of them feel particularly enticing.
They also can’t multitask and often get stuck in weird situations as a result.
It’s quite eerie.
