INZOI IS HOMOPHOBIC. (Patreon)

Remember my Inzoi Demo post?
Well, let's do the same thing for Early Access and the live mode stuff.

EDIT: GAY CHARACTERS IN THIS GAME ARE NOT ALLOWED TO KISS. STRAIGHT CHARACTERS ARE. DO YOU EVEN NEED TO READ THE REST OF THIS? I HONESTLY DON'T THINK SO. THAT IS THE DEALBREAKER, THAT IS THE END OF IT.

THE GAME IS HOMOPHOBIC.

Remember, I am actively kinda "not very into" Inzoi. So no, these positions may not be super neutral. I think the game's aesthetic is just awful and pandering to a very specific market. I think it's very clearly not aiming to be a Sims game or competitor. I think it's ridiculous that wildly dumbed down features, like choosing ONE SINGLE TRAIT for your character, are being praised by people who would destroy EA from the inside in a covert ops infiltration mission because they put a typo in an item description. I think the wild hypocrisy of Sims 4 haters praising Inzoi for things they'd lose their minds about if Sims 4 did it is unbelievable.

But I want to see what the game is actually like! Let's see if any of my impressions from early access videos and such are true and what is and isn't good about the game.

Because I am trying to review it in <2 hours and refund the game, as I don't expect to like it enough to want it on my account forever, this review will not be well structured or ordered and may be lacking in screenshots. Every second spent out of the game typing something up is precious time lost!

Let's go!

• The game is compiling shaders and my computer sounds like it's going to explode.

• I've literally never heard my computer get this loud. That's not great.

• The format of "You're working at an augmented reality company and these are little digital people" is really bizarre tbh

• Enabling smart zoi prompts you to LOWER THE GRAPHICS SETTINGS BY ONE LEVEL to support running it. WOOF!

• Teen and Young Adult look even more identical than they do in The Sims. There is zero attempt made at separating them.

• I don't want to spend an eternity in CAS so I'm using a preset. The asymmetry is nice. The hairs are extremely limited.

• There are sliders for things like skin overlays which is nice

• The camera in CAS is free movement and it's actually way better than how Sims 4 forces you to certain locations

• Fem frame clothes work on masc frame out of the box. ALL of them. Take notes, Sims 4.

• There's a little bar on the left showing what is equipped with buttons to remove them without having to go back to the item itself. I like that a lot.

• It is still absolutely crazy to me that you can only choose ONE TRAIT.

• Literall TWO of the traits are "negative" - Authoritarian and Sentinel. The rest are all positive and hopeful and ambitious and quirky and fun and free and spirited.

• Traits don't seem interesting in general

• There are no preferences whatsoever, although it looks like your trait automatically determines some. That's pretty bad.

• The music is cute but very generic

• I made two zois- both presets.

• The map view is cute but you can't...uh, see anything. You can't zoom in.

• But hey don't worry! While you can't even see what your house will look like, there's a huge, huge button to toggle...shoe-wearing.

• This is the farthest you can zoom out, it makes navigation very hard

• I moved into a lot on the edge of town specifically to see how that works. Things outside town are very low detail.

• There are built-in filters that are actually pretty good. The cartoon filter works great.

• This is what woohoo looks like. what the fuck

• The game plays an entire little song when you switch between characters based on their mood. It's terrible. It's so annoying. It's not the 6 note diddy Sims 4 does, it's an ENTIRE LITTLE SONG. It's like 8 seconds long.

• The controls are absolutely awful. Just awful. WASD is ALWAYS movement controls even if you arent focused on a character, and they focus you to the character. Camera movement is all click and drag which sucked in the 00s and sucks now.

• Ok wait there are preferences but you set them in-game instead of in CAS. That's stupid. There are VERY few preferences and you're limited to ten. The small list includes things like...bathing?

• These two are "flirting":

• This is what "hold hands" looks like

• The TV shows are literally Sims 1 style still images flashing between each other lol

• The interactions on EVERYTHING are EXTREMELY limited. Like, Romance interactions are...I don't even know what to say. You can't DO anything. I couldn't get any kisses to show up. One character had a different set of romance options entirely and I have no idea why. They couldn't get into "a mood" with each other but could have sex whenever they wanted.

• EDIT: SAME SEX COUPLES ARE SET TO 0 ROMANCE STRAIGHT OUT OF CAS, WHILE HETERO COUPLES ARE NOT. WHAT THE FUCK.

• Audio increases in pitch as the game is sped up. This sucks. This is just awful design. It makes everything sound very annoying or stupid or both.

• For all the complaining Sims players do about "set dressing", that's all this game is. There's really nothing to see or do in the city at all.

• Everything I interact with is extremely shallow.

• Skills seem so under-developed that this feels like a prototype more than early access.

• The controls are actually so annoying im about to ragequit lol

• NPCs at places like restaurants are handled much differently than The Sims. In The Sims, they are characters around town who are there for their job- but in Inzoi, they are job-having NPCs who can "become" characters if you interact with them, I think. Until you form a menaingful relationship with them they seem to be faceless NPCs. It's a toss-up if that's actually better or not. It DOES mean they do their jobs and stand where they're meant to be and such at all times because they're very robotic and not "full autonomy characters".

• I literally can't get a single real romance interaction to show up still

• Texting other sims is just a random interaction sent to a random character, very weird

• I don't know how to explain it but nothing I do feels "real". This is a roleplay game, it's like GTA RP but you play by yourself. As a lifelong Sims player, here for the entire 25 year run, something's just off. I don't feel like I'm playing with little virtual dolls. I feel like I'm supposed to be setting up fake little scenes. It's different and hard to articulate.

• Interactions seem completely random- while some are mood-based, you can do massive things like completely upheave your relationship seemingly at any time just because you feel like it. My characters interacted enough to get a "moment" where they could pick two interactions- one to reaffirm the relationship and one to say it wasn't going well. There was nothing happening to make it not go well. It was just a choice I was given for storytelling with no purpose.

• The build controls are also awful.

• I cannot even figure out how to get a job, not that I need one as I started with enough money to buy a fully furnished modern home and then some.

• The flow of time is way, way, way too slow. It takes the same amount of time to do things as it does in the sims so you basically have endless free time. I made food and it took about 9 minutes. But then you have to eat again 2 hours later because the timescale is all whacked out. There's no game balance here and it contributes a lot to the "I am not playing a game" feeling.

• I'm actually disliking this enough that I'm not even giving it a full hour. It feels really bad to play, the UI is awful, there's nothing going on with anything you do...I just...don't like it.

Not a super in depth review, but, hey. There you go.