Not gonna lie, I saw this over on High Sodium Sims on Reddit and then I saw it again here and was like, I should bring that sub here so, I did. Thanks for the inspiration!
True, there’s no reason why The Sims 4 food should look so ugly! The Sims 4 is a cash cow for EA…They can afford to redo those dishes and make them look delicious!
I’m glad competition is coming!
The only way The Sims 4 is going to improve is by the upcoming competition strutting their stuff and making those hungry for quality content simmers jump ship! I can’t wait for the likes of Paralives and Vivaland to eat EA’s lunch and smack them for daring to protest.
I had never heard of Vivaland, but it’s on my wishlist now! We are potentially going to be spoiled for choice in 2025 if all three come out this year.
Vivaland flew completely under the radar, I haven’t seen any of the gaming news sites covering it! However, I found out about it looking for simulation games. Paralives hopefully will have an early access launch soon to capitalize on the momentum behind it; InZOI PC spec requirements makes me kinda leery about it (I’d have to look on ProtonDB to check if it ran well with Proton enabled). On top of that the AI generated content they are pushing in that game…is ultimately going to make me bounce off of it. I’m concerned that InZOI will be a pretty, but vapid game.
Yeah, I keep half an eye on the genre, and I don’t remember any of the major sites covering it. It looks really good, but I guess we’ll see what the gameplay is like. The idea of co-op, especially LAN co-op, is really interesting! I don’t think anyone else is attempting that.
Had you seen AlterLife yet? No release date yet, but it could be another contender.
I’ll have to see what Paralives is like when it comes out. I initially wasn’t impressed with the art style and the look of the gameplay, but I’ll see what I think when people start releasing long play videos.
My PC should be more than capable of running inZOI, but like you I’ll be waiting to see what Linux compatibility is like. I’m not thrilled about having a separate account just to play the game, and the AI stuff is definitely an anti-feature too. I agree that it’ll probably feel a bit flat, I got that feeling from watching their gameplay videos. I was hoping it was just because it was still a work in progress, but it just felt empty.
I’ve seen AlterLife, but, the art doesn’t inspire any confidence…It feels AI generated to me, the PC specs for that game are wonky AF. It makes me wonder if AlterLife is another slop game; I am getting ‘The Day Before’ vibes and that concerns me a bit. However, I will be keeping an eye on AlterLife to see if the devs actually make a meaningful life sim game!
As for Paralives, that game has been in development for so long, I wonder about the current state of it. The fact that we’ve been given mere glimpses bother me. However, mechanically it seems solid, and the art style is a cute whimsical one that appeals to me. Like you, I am not fully convinced due to the long dev time without a playable test version; I will wait to see first impressions from long gameplay videos. However, if the Paralives devs can keep their promises and make all the features they stated to be base game…My mind will be changed.
I’m excited by the style of Vivaland, it seems to be a blend of The Sims 3 with a bit of whimsy. The co-op element doesn’t appeal to me, as it’s optional, I won’t complain about that. The playable demo had some issues, but, the bones looked pretty solid! My hope is that Vivaland finally releases, and it’s not a mess like The Sims 4 was on launch (still is) to this very day.
Oof, knowing that inZOI needs a separate account, on top of the AI generated content, means I will be skipping inZOI entirely. I’m tired of needing a third party account just to play a game on Steam. I was going to do more searching and reading about inZOI before committing any hype to that game…
I’m going to keep an eye on all of them and see what happens. With the current drought of good life sim games I’m afraid we’ll have some developers putting out some garbage, and I’m sure in some cases some well meaning devs that get in over their heads too. We’ll have to wait and see what it’s like when the dust settles!
Yeah, Vivaland looks a bit like The Sims 3, and I see a touch of TS4 in there too! I’ll admit that I’m probably a bit too excited about having curved walls, my first attempts at architecture will most likely overuse them. I know the multiplayer features probably won’t be a big selling point for a lot of people, but I think my spouse and I could have some fun with it!
Unfortunately the Steam page for inZOI says it requires an external account to play. Which is a shame, because I’m in the same boat with avoiding external accounts as much as possible. It’s one of the reasons (besides the overall money grab nature) that I’ve not played much of The Sims 4. They do claim that it works well on the Steam Deck in a AMA they did though.
what competition is there?
Paralives and Inzoi are the ones I know, both of them coming this year. Actually, Inzoi is coming this month, I guess. The best of them is that both take diferent directions of art style among other things, that means more diversity for life simulators.
Japanese devs spend more time making the food look good than they do on the rest of the game.
It looks exactly like the food in The Sims 2, just at a higher resolution.
Theres actually a video on this, focused on pizza. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJbMvA-PNtA
My ideal version would be The Sims 2’s pizza but with the ability to order different kinds of pizzas like in The Sims 4.
