User Reviews (91 - 101 of 413)

Show these reviews first:

Highest Rated
Lowest Rated Newest
Oldest Most Helpful
Least Helpful

Highly enjoyable, but 50/50...

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: June 28, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This game will apeal to half the simulation game lovers. It is a highly realistic training micromanaging masterpeice. However if you are the sort of player that likes civillization, or action type games, you may have trouble enjoying this. B&W is more for the Sims lovers. This game tends to be more about the journey and the actual time played (not rushed) then about a finished result or purpose.

One problem with this game seems to be the later levels. Past level three the gameplay starts to get a bit confusing and a little frustrating, the story also seems to fall apart a bit. Its almost like the game developers spent years making the start as incredable as possible but then rushed the end to hit a deadline. I personally found the first two levels the most enjoyable.

On the plus side, the color and graphics in this game is an experience unequaled!

Bugs, bugs and oh, hang on... Another bug!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: June 02, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Well, where do I start? I'm not going to sit here and tell youall that Black and White stinks and yada yada yada. Personally, I think that the whole idea behind the game is quite unique and innovative. Why the 1 star rating then? Because the game is so bug-ridden that it is (to many customers) virtually unplayable.

Lionhead has announced that they will release a patch fixing many of the known bugs within the game, however this patch was supposed to have been released on the 18th of May. On the 18th however, it was revealed that because EA staff had taken time out to go to E3, the patch would not be released until the coming Monday (the 21st).

So of course everyone's like "Yay! Only need to wait another few days and we'll be able to play the game!" and then on the 21st, we are told that because of some problems that were caused while fixing some Netherland cable bug, the patch would have to be post-poned for a further ten days.

By this stage Lionhead were starting to get some very harsh criticism (and rightly so) and then on the 31st, what do they tell us? The patch is finished and ready to go AFTER EA has signed it off. WHAT? Another delay!

Now, what's the fuss you might ask? Well, let me explain one of the bugs to you. In Black and White, you are able to teach your creature various miracles etc. However, there is a bug that causes your creature to forget everything he has learnt! Now, I want to make this clear: the creature is a BIG part of the game! If you're creature doesn't even remember what you spend hours teaching him, then what is the point of even playing?

Another very frustrating and disappointing bug, is the "Save-Crash". There is nothing worse than losing your ENTIRE saved game (not just the information since the last save but the entire saved game). Quite frankly, I would rather have my head placed under the wheel of a Mack truck.

As you can see, these bugs affect a huge area of the game, and are in no way small or irrelevant. Nor are they the kind of bugs that you can put up with.

My criticism of the game may seem a little harsh or exaggerated, but consider this: There are many systems on which the game won't even run! That's right, the game doesn't even start up.

To come to some kind of conclusion, if you are thinking of buying Black and White, then think again. If you still want to buy it after reading this review (from someone who has the game and knows from personal experience the feeling of losing hours of gameplay in the blink of an eye) then I suggest you go to the shop and buy the biggest fly-swat you can find, because the bugs in this game are far from being squished.

Habit forming

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: October 10, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Black & White is a powerfully addictive game. You will find yourself playing it for hours with absolutely no awareness that so much time has passed. Mouse and keyboard controls are exceptional. After ten minutes of game play, they are intuitive. Graphics are outstanding. They hold up flawlessly on a 32-bit color 1600 x 1200 pixels display. There is only one problem: you have very little opportunity to delegate authority. You must simultaneously juggle a large number of villager, creature, and opposition deity needs & challenges. Your managerial and logistical skills are tested. But this is one test that you actually enjoy taking.

So much potential ... but it ends up being a shade of grey

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 7 / 11
Date: April 27, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I had HUGE hopes for Black and White. I love moral discussions, and this game had some of the best advertising I'd seen. One ad said something like: (good) Your loving wife makes you breakfast in bed / (evil) You eat it with your mistress. It made it seem like you'd really have these sorts of decisions to make.

Instead, when you play, you have a cutsie little angel and a cuddly little devil, both making fun comments. The devil's comments are always promptly slapped down by the angel. The "evil" you do is more like Dungeon Keeper than anything else - drop things on peoples' houses, bug them if they're not doing what you want to do.

You only get to start with a choice of three 'creatures', and these creatures have got to be some of the slowest learners on the planet. You tell one to pick up a drowning person, and he pops the person in his mouth and starts eating him! Eventually when they DO learn something, half the time it's not what you had been training them to do.

The graphics are GORGEOUS. The whole interface with the game is beautiful, and lots of fun. There was so much potential as to how the game could have played, but somewhere along the way I think they got swept away in the graphics and lost track of what they were doing. Now dumb sailors tell you one at a time the things they need, farmers lose their cows even though there are only 2 to watch, and game crashes mean even things that work aren't necessary going to last very long.

If you're a Populous fan (like I am) I'd get it just to see how far they have come, but don't be expecting miracles.

If you have a year to spend... do something else!

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 7 / 11
Date: June 08, 2001
Author: Amazon User

This game takes a long time. A VERY long time. For example, each time you start a new game, you MUST go through a tutorial that if you speed through it will take you no less than 45 minutes. Teaching your pet will take longer and your pet will at any given moment learn a trick that you had no intention of it learning. If you were to have two games, one for a good pet and one for a bad one. IT would take you two hours at least of straight playing to get to the 2nd level. I commend the advanced AI and the incredible graphics, but the unbearably tedious gameplay makes this game [not worth the money], as soon as you decide that the time it takes to play the game is not worth the effort.

Black and White Kicks *ss.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 14
Date: May 03, 2001
Author: Amazon User

This game is great. I have never liked these type of games. Mainly because I have the intelligence, focus of a monkey. But this game is the greatest. I have read all the articles on how the game was created and the AI in this program is nothing but the best. The technology and environments are probably some of the greatest around i've seen so far. Buy this, you wont waste your money.

Just answering a few questions

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 14
Date: May 17, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I've read many of the posts and, to be honest, I believe that people should give it more time. A lot of people are complaining about the micromanagement and the "poor" creature AI. But I'll get to these problems in a bit. What I really want to say is that this game is not for everyone. EVERYONE will not think it is the best game of all time. I don't. Yes, I gave it 5 stars, but maybe this game is not for you. I would definitely suggest playing the game at a friend's house or borrowing it before buying it. Anyway, I'm not trying to convince anyone here, and I'm not going to tell about the story (seeing as how that's what all of the other posts have done) but I will make a few points.

First of all, many people don't like the micromanagement of the villages. A lot of people don't want to unceasingly supply the people with their every needs, which is completely understandable. But take note that the micromanagement system is very complex. If you give your people too much food, then they will want to reproduce, thus causing a desire for more houses, therefore more wood, and thus affecting all of your villagers' needs, just by over-supplying your villagers with food. So you can't give them everything they want. It's ok to let them be for a little while, but food is definitely the worst thing to over-supply them with. Acknowledged, this system is very tedious in the beginning of the game, demanding a lot of your time, and running out of trees can be a ... big problem. But, as others have said, get past the early, simple, repetitive tasks, and the game expands in customization. Teaching one's creature to handle the villages will save you a lot of time in the long run. It will allow you to do the side quests, or, if you are an evil god, to do the fun stuff (killing people!).

Now, another thing I've noticed is that people are very discouraged with the Creature AI system, saying that the creatures are really dumb and don't listen to anything their master says, therefore causing the player to like the game less. However, I must point out that the creatures of these players are most likely young, with their gods having just started playing the game. Take note that human babies are not the most intelligent beings in the world either. They do not come into this world with the ability to learn things instantly. This is the same for the Creatures. True, in the beginning, it can be very repetitive, stroking or slapping the Creature multiple times for the same action before it gets it right. But again, the more time you spend with it in the beginning, the less time you have to spend with it when micromanagement calls later in the game (since it's never totally gone).

Also, some people have complained about the saves failing, and this has never happened to me. What you have to do is actually enter the Temple and go to the Save Room and save it manually there, because the Auto-Save doesn't always save and let you load (Auto-Saves simply back up your creature's personality and your alignment, so that when you do manually save, it doesn't take 10 minutes).

So, perhaps people didn't have the patience for these things. Or maybe they don't understand the complexity of the systems. If there's one thing this game does NOT do for you, it is to give you a white line to follow to beat the game. So again, rather than going by someone's word (including mine), try the game out for yourself if you can. There is so much customization to this game that you couldn't play it the exact same way twice if you tried. So if you want a game to beat and master quickly, this game is not for you, obviously. But one thing's for sure, it's not like any game you've played before.

(Yes, you need a very good video card and computer to play this game smoothly, because low detail definitely ruins the experience. And yes, the graphics dominate my soul.)

Misguided effort results in tedious gameplay

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 8 / 14
Date: June 06, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I really wanted to like this game, having heard much of the hype from some time out before release. However, when I got it up on my PC, I was amazed at how trivial, silly, clumsy and arbitrary it all seemed. Sure the graphics are good and it's clear that many programmer-hours were burnt in bringing this to market but why didn't they think through the game-play a little before spending all that money on this nonsense? What a waste!Unfortunately I feel that this is aimed at juvenile/compulsive types who want to spend all day "stroking" their creature and casting silly "spells". Anyway each to their own.

Don't believe the hype - leave this one on the shelf and if curiosity gets the better of you then buy it used (there'll be plenty around let me assure you). Don't reward the providers of this game by paying list price for it - it'll only encourage them to come out with more sub-standard products.

Oh yes, I nearly forgot - there are bugs which cause the game to crash - though in my case that was a blessing as I could use it as an excuse to finish with B&W and play something worthwhile like Unreal Tournament. Now, there's a game.....

Potential Wasted is Worse Than No Potential at All

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 6 / 9
Date: August 22, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I was excited to first read about this game. Advertising, screen shots, and packaging all served to get me pretty excited about this game. The premise of being able to play god, no constraints, no need to conform to a programmer's notions of good and evil, just free form, do what you like, make the world the way you want it to be sounded like what I've always wanted from a computer game.

So much potential...

The game's concept is wonderful; You are god, you have a creature you train to do good or evil who represents you to your people. You may either help, or hinder your people, making their lives either heaven or hell.

The problem with the game is the interface. At no point in the game, other than the training scenarios, can you simply kick back, and enjoy what you are doing.

The game actually PREVENTS you from having fun.

As was pointed out in earlier reviews, you can never take your eye off your creature. If you do, he will go around making trouble, and generally being a pain. You can never take your eye off of your people. If you do, they immediately start to die off, complain, and generally stand around and do nothing. Add to this, the MINUTE you get a handle on scrambling back and forth between training your creature, and helping your people, BAM!....the game goes and yanks you away from what you are doing, and sends you on an artificial quest where you get to do exactly what you were doing before, but at a higher level of difficulty.

I have that problem in real life! I don't spend cash for that kind of head-ache and call it entertainment!

DO yourself a favor and steer clear of this wrist busting, brain numbing, angst ridden mess and go get Diablo II for some REAL gaming fun!

CCGR.ORG's review

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 5 / 7
Date: February 08, 2002
Author: Amazon User

In this game you are a deity. You can be good or evil (hence the title Black & White). You also get a creature/titan to help you out. You are to convert villagers through love or fear and establish your reign against other gods. Not only do you have to maintain your worshippers but you also have to raise your creature to do your will. This takes a lot of time and skill. It actually pays to be a good deity. Wood is a hard resource to acquire quickly, so be careful when destroying villages, they are hard to rebuild.
From a Christian perspective this game is a little new agey. The game starts off saying in a land of innocence a god is not needed and they are created by praying to one. There are also some references to the ying/yang. Another thing I found it awkward having the villagers worship me. One thing I must admit, I have been convicted not to play this game anymore. I was uncomfortable with the idea of villagers making sacrifices to gods including the one you portray. The last thing to consider would be violence if you are a bad deity.

The game play is real fun. This game took three years to make, so my expectations were high. The graphics are beautiful. The sounds are good. The controls are a little tricky and takes some getting used to. You can multiplay this game and even play online. On the downside, there are some bugs in the game. There is a patch out though. Hopefully that fixed them. From a Christian standpoint, don't play this if you are uncomfortable being treated like a god.

Review Page: Previous 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Next 

Actions