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Disappointing ...

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 12 / 15
Date: May 23, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Well, I ordered Black & White very early and received it a few days after its release and I must say I am VERY disappointed with it.

OK, the idea and game concept look very interesting and indeed they are, however what is bad about this game is that it is lacking features that were promised to be included. In addition to that, the gameplay gets very tedious once you advance to level 2 (Feed the villages, get wood, feed the villagers, get wood ...) and the story comes a little too short as well. Add that to lots of technical problems like bugs that cause the game to crash and hang (very frustrating) and quite lousy technical support (no patch, no response to very specific questions, ...) and you have a potentially great game gone gone wrong. (The somewhat uninspiring multiplayer mode doesn't really save it either)

All in all it's a nice game and once Lionhead has managed to patch out the bugs it might be good to entertain you a few hours. But it definitely doesn't live up to the hype that surrounded it during its 3 years of development.

Be prepared to pray a lot!

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 9 / 10
Date: May 14, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I'm compelled to write a review about this game because it is groundbreaking in the fact that the gameplay *is* unlike any other game. If you find yourself bored by the same crop of first person shooters or command and conquer clones, you may want to pick up a copy just to try something new and different (but read on first to be sure...)

Considering EA owns the rights to the Sim-City franchise, this game could have been accurately billed as "Sim-God." I think Amazon and the other reviewers have done a good job of describing the gameplay so I'll try not to be redundant.

First off, when you first load the game - be prepared to spend a full evening playing around with it. The game starts off with a very well done introduction and teaches you how to move around, control the creature, cast spells, etc... You'll find yourself drawn in very quickly as you want to see what happens next and that is where the problems start.

You see, when you first start out it's rather unclear what it is you ARE supposed to do in this game. Being weaned on many years of resource management games and trying to be a nice God, I spent a long time trying to keep my villagers happy, ("we need houses, we need food" yada yada yada), but they would never shut up! It's enough to make me go nuts and destroy everyone - which kind of makes me wonder if that's what God thinks of all of us but that's a different discussion. In any case, it took me a while to figure out they won't shut up regardless and I just need to progress with whatever I'm doing and ignore them. (That's a tip for all you new players.)

So what is it you are supposed to do? Basically use your influence to take over villages which allow you to increase in power so you can take over more villages. At its heart it really is a resource management game much like Command and Conquer. Instead of building up a bunch of tanks and army men to take over the next town you cast spells and use your creature -in good ways or bad - to "wow" neighboring villages into worshipping you. If you don't, you're stuck in this constant state of inertia trying to please your villagers who are never satisfied with anything you do. This is quite the opposite of the "do anything you want" sales pitch EA's marketing department puts in their ads.

Another myth is the concept of your creature having free will and the ability to learn. This is far from the truth. Basically the creature will do something and you either reinforce the behavior positively (petting) or negatively (slapping). Based on what you do the creature is "supposed" to do that same action more often or less often. At the risk of this entire review not making it past the censors at Amazon, I'll give you an example. You see, I picked the tiger creature - not the brightest but supposedly a good fighter. Well apparently it has decided it likes to poop on houses. It's kind of funny to watch, but the villagers understandably don't like this very much. I've been slapping the poop out of him (pun intended) but he won't stop. So much for the ability to learn. Instead I'm supposed to try to get him to poop in the fields as it'll help the crops grow. Well what am I supposed to do? If I place the poop in the fields it just stands there. If I hand poop to him, he'll just look at me funny or worse yet, try and eat it. I guess I'm the one that needs to be praying he poops in the fields so I can quickly pet him and reinforce the behavior. As far as the things the creature has done right, positive reinforcement doesn't really seem to make him continue to do the same action. I've found the whole concept of trying to "teach" my creature very frustrating and it's been more of an annoyance than an asset to the game.

And fighting? It's kind of like playing Rock-em Sock-em Robots. There's no control. Instead you just mash a lot of buttons and (again) pray you end up the winner. When winning a fight against another creature becomes a necessity in the game (and I know it will eventually), my inability to do so will probably be the point I put down the game and never play it again.

The review is harsh so far I know, but you see, in spite of these problems I still find myself drawn to this game. In fact, just writing this review has made me want to load it up again. The graphics and music really are top-notch and I haven't run into any bugs or system crashes (a rarety in the gaming world these days.) I'm usually the type that will give a game one or two days at the max before giving up on it. Even games I do like rarely hold my interest to the end. This game is a rare exception. I keep thinking, maybe if I do something differently...

Reread the Amazon and DailyRadar reviews or jump over to the PCGamer site and read all the praise they've heaped on this game. Contrast it with the review I wrote and hopefully it'll help you decide whether this is the type of game you would be interested in.

Highly original...and highly annoying

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 10 / 12
Date: April 02, 2001
Author: Amazon User

This game has tons of original ideas, and it's definately unlike anything you've ever played before...but I got annoyed and bored with it after about 6 hours. You have to wonder just how bad the voices were before the game was delayed to have them re-recorded. The repetitive screaming of the villagers, and the cutesy-pie voices of the conscience-characters, combined with the extremely annoying movement interface (a simple mouse-look would have been so much nicer,) left me kind of dissapointed. While the game never lacks for content, the repetitive "follow-me" games and "find this object" games began to wear the nerves quickly as well. Based on the hype, I also expected the game to be less linear. On the plus side, this is unquestionably an historic and unique achievement in gaming, with utterly amazing AI (in regards to the creature), but I'll be waiting for the --hopefully-- more refined sequel.

Give it a chance!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 11 / 14
Date: May 07, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Many reviewers seem to lack the patience. You have to devote some serious time to this game to get your Creature working well enough that you can extract yourself from the elementary game playing to handle more advanced and abstract tasks and quests. Things get progressively complex as you advance in the game, and if you haven't trained your Creature well enough to do lots of the simple things for you, you can't enjoy the game as a whole. You just need to get past the tediousness of the initial training of the Creature. Black & White satisfies those who enjoyed other god-games such as Populous and SimCity. I would, however, recommend adhering to the "recommend hardware" instead of the required. With an 8MB 3D graphics card and AMD Duron 700MHz, rendering can be jumpy, and the speech of the characters occasionally gets truncated.

Black & White great idea mediocre game.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 11 / 14
Date: May 14, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Black and White is a brilliant and engrossing game, no doubt about that. Unfortunately this game isn't nearly as fun as it should be. One of the fundamental problems is the designers decision not to use a traditional icon based interface. To cast spells you have to trace symbols in the air, this is definately a interesting Idea, but clicking a button, or pressing a key would undoubtably be easier. Worse still is building creation, where you have to gather wood, supply it to a mill, wait for scaffolds to be built, place scaffolds together in different numbers to create different buildings and then supply more wood to the buildings. The thing about the game is that the wood to make buildings task takes up most of the game. If it sounds tedious it is. Another fundamental problem is that well the Creature AI is phenominal the villiger AI is abysmal. Everything needs to be done for them. I really wishthe game eskewed its tenuous goal oriented structure for a more fluid sim-cityesque feeling where the user is free to define his own goals. Oh well, at least it looks pretty.

The game is ok, but the way they handle it is BAD!!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 11 / 14
Date: May 23, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Ok, you have to like this kind of game, but when you do... it's good. I love the gameplay, the creature, the miracles, the creature (yep, it's an important one), etc.

But, i (and many with me) disagree with the way we are treated. The game is buggy, crashes a lot, you do not want to enter land 5 and your creature forgets miracles. Lionhead and EA refuse to give any information on a patch, and when they do (they gave us a release date), they do not keep their promises. This is why i rate this game bad. Don't buy it until you find a patch, because you'll get really upset at reinstalling and beginning the game all over again after 10 times.

Dissapointing

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 11 / 14
Date: May 24, 2001
Author: Amazon User

While the concept of the game sounds inviting,I found it to be way too tedious and slow. The awkward movement methods and constant script interuptions makes for a very frustrating game experience (I thought such games were supposed to be fun). I made it to the beginning of the second level and decided that it was time to quit the game for good since any further effort would only add to my already high frustration level. Perhaps I was expecting too much as a result of just finishing Myst III Exile (an awsome game).

Oh well, I tried it. Perhaps I can find someone with more patience and gaming skills than I who would appreciate a freebee.

Are we beta testers?

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 13 / 19
Date: May 26, 2001
Author: Amazon User

It seems people either love or hate this game. I suspect this depends a lot on your tolerance for frustration and your liking of eye candy. I started out liking the lush graphics and the cute creature, but after playing a while, the tediousness of constantly refilling your worshipper's food supply, the constant "we need homes" whines, and the 2 minute auto saves every 15 minutes started to drive me nuts. You can turn off auto save, but you can't change the interval.

Navigation in a game world should become automatic after a while, but all too often in B&W I wind up looking straight up at the sky instead of moving across the land, because I clicked the mouse too close to the edge of the screen. You have to pay careful attention to how you navigate, especially when you're in a hurry, just when want to pay attention to what you're trying to do.

Drawing on the screen to activate miracles is an interesting idea, but if you're running a system that isn't well over the recommended graphics capability, the system gets confused and I have to try two or three times before a gesture is recognized. Why couldn't they have provided keyboard shortcuts?

The gameplay/strategy elements of this game are pretty lame. Make wood, make food, make some more wood, make some more food, go to a town you don't own and throw some miracles until they believe in you, make some more wood, make some more food, etc. etc. Not a lot of thought or strategy involved. The quests are more interesting, but by the time you've completed one, all your worshippers are dying from lack of food. There's plenty in the town store just down the hill, but the worshippers are too dumb to go get it.

After a while, the negatives just eroded out the positives and I no longer have any desire to play the game. If they ever get the patch out it may be tolerable. If you can tolerate some tedium and frustration, you might like this game.

Not Satisfying

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 8 / 9
Date: May 24, 2001
Author: Amazon User

The game has an incredible look and feel to it. However, gameplay is repetitive and becomes boring rather quickly. There are only five levels to complete, and while each level has its own challenges and quests, there is not enough action and most of the challenges are too easy. Additionally, there are "bugs" in the program and some promised features are not activated. I have been unable to complete the game because of the "Land 5 Creature Curse" bug. (For more information about these problems you can check the bulletin boards at www.bwgames.com. A patch has been promised by early June, but it seems too little too late.) I would not recommend this game other than as a curiosity. It has been overhyped and does not deliver enough bang for the buck. If you think you want to buy this game WAIT FOR THE PATCH!

Imposible to not like

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 9
Date: June 21, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I don't know what the problem is with this game. Some people have been talking about having trouble with game interface. It really isn't that hard to manage. I was very comfortable with the interface after the first 30 minutes of play (HINT: Use the keyboard to rotate and pitch views!). There are also complaints about not getting used to the views. I find this very strange. It really isn't that hard to orient yourself. Creature training is a chore. This game reflects what it means to be a god. Consider the following, to be a benevolent god, one must take care of their village, villagers and creature. This requires a lot of time and micromanagement. Being a malevolent god will accomplish the same goals over the course of the whole game as a benevolent god. However, being malevolent, your people worship you and your creature through fear. Malevolence may even mean less responsiblity. Try creating different gods, with differnt personalities. You will find hat this game accurately reflects the personality in which you roleplay your god.

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