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Easily one of the best games ever

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 10 / 14
Date: April 06, 2001
Author: Amazon User

First of all this is probably the most addicting game I've ever played. The best feature of the game is the AI. Teaching your creature different things is a blast and there doesn't seem to be an end to the things he can learn. Also, the freedom you have is awesome. You can be evil or good, or somewhere in between, and your creature reflects your alignment by his appearance. It has a great storyline which separates it from most real time strategy games. Rather than just building up your civilization there are mini quests along the way, which you don't have to accept at all. There are a million ways you can complete them as well...for example you could help a woman find her sick husband and she'll give you a magic stone, or you could just trash her house and take it. Gameplay is easy to learn and there are no lame interfaces with a million icons. Beautiful graphics and sound. Definately a must buy for fans of any genre... Some say its hard to control... Whats so hard about pointing and clicking? The zoom and rotate takes practice, but not much...And finding your creature isn't hard just press "c."...Anyway, thanks a lot to all the designers for taking gaming to a new level

Underestimated excellence

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 7 / 8
Date: May 11, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Black & White goes down as one of few games that I call a work of art. I've played on hundreds of games over a few years and this and only a few others do I think should be remembered as one of the best. I only review games that I think are worth it and so a lot of them say how good a game is, but this one is certainly worth the five stars that it is given.
Obviously unless you live in a cave you'll know that the game is based around you as a God. It's far more though. You not only govern your own population in any way you want, but also you get to rear a creature from a tiny little guy to a massive creature that if taught properly can help you no end to create a working system for your population.
And no kidding, he really learns what you tell him, if you were near him and you perform a miracle like shower, then he'll point at it in amazement and learn eventually how to do it himself, and if you make sure he's on the side of good (white) he'll help your population by creating food using miracle powers you have taught him, and he even helps with carrying things like wood to the store. You can tickle him to tell him he's done something right and he'll learn from that, or you could hit him to tell him off if he eats a person or something, and believe me, if you let him and he's hungry, he will.
A large part of the game is looking after your creature. The story line is that there is an evil God called Nemesis who wants to take over the world, and it's up to you to stop him. He has allies that you'll meet and wipe out hopefully in a good or bad way.
By making nobody believe in a God in this game will destroy him. Because it's belief that makes a God, when someone believes in one, one is born, and so obviously if you take over his realm in a good or bad way, he will cease to exist because nobody believes in him anymore. That's the whole point of the game, make everyone believe in you and not in him.
The game does require patience. It's so varied that it takes a very long time to learn and half the main game is a structure of training teaching integrated into the story line.
Only half way through will if all make sense.
The atmosphere is by far the best ever experienced on a computer game. You being God and providing your influence stretches far enough can zoom right out so that the island is a small object surrounded by blue sea, and so far in that individual grass's can be seen.
You can go anywhere on the whole island again providing enough people believe in you to create a big enough influence. Once you have gain control of one island you'll go through a portal onto the next.
Throughout the game there are scrolls. Some silver and some gold. The silver ones when clicked on are side missions that get you something to play with like a beach ball. I never go to another island without it. As soon as the portal opens, I chuck in my beach ball to play with when I'm bored. Some Gods prefer to through rocks, trees, sheep, cows and people, I prefer the beach ball.
So the single player game is an excellent experience that you can play in any way you want. You look after your creature at the same time and you can even fight other creatures with him and he can get hurt and need some TLC, it's cool.
The management side of the game really requires patience and good thinking. It's pretty demanding to make your people totally happy, so don't worry if their not, just give them the essentials through miracles and make sure enough are breeding to continue the population and make sure the keep improving their belief so that you can go further from you town centre.
There is also a Gods playground, which you can visit at anytime you want to muck around and throw things about. And also as a side to the excellent main game you can play a skirmish game against one, two or three Gods simultaneously and try to win over the populations.
Also, finally, the game has what I think the is best ever seen and largest quantity of game statistics ever. It's got loads of graphs and numbers showing births deaths, population of male, and female people, and even the amount of food eaten and number of houses.
So, to say that this game isn't good just because it's a tad hard on the brain isn't fair at all. It's one of the finest and original games I've played on so far and deserves nothing but praise.

Waste of Time and Money

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 7 / 8
Date: April 10, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Overhyped, underdeveloped. Shrot linear plot/storyline where fluid was promised, terrible amounts of micromanagement, AI on the creatures is not adaptive, just rote canned "behaviors" that you can enable or disable.

Save your pennies kids, there's MUCH better out there.

Great name, great game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 7 / 8
Date: July 03, 2001
Author: Amazon User

At first, I thought it was too good to be true. I read many game reviews in my pc magazines and many previews online. All of it giving great praise towards lionhead studios. They also commented on some amazing new technology, some of which even ddownloads weather input for your game online! Now i knew they couldn't be lying about the technology, but i also knew that there is always a few bugs. There weren't any. I have had the game for about a month now and all that i have found in it is fun, fun, and more fun. The game is a mixture of types. Part RTS (real-time strategy), and part role-playing. You control a civilization once you convert its beliefs towards you. You can do this with your creature. The creature is a very new and unique idea too. The game is over when you spread your beliefs so much to become the supreme god. No bugs. No flaws. Lionhead studios did a great job.

FUN FOR ONE! STINKS FOR MORE PLAYERS!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 7 / 8
Date: January 09, 2002
Author: Amazon User

This is a great game for solo play and it could have been unsurpassed for multi-player fun..... but NOOOOO!

Yes, the graphics are good and the limitless 3-D interface is fun. On that everybody agrees.

Here's my assessment of the issues that people have unrealistically extreme and differing opinions on.

TEACHING YOUR CREATURE: Takes some practice at first and no the manual isn't all that helpful. But if you stick to it, you'll find it easy and fun. For those that say it's too easy or boring than I say:

1) you're not being creative enough -- teach your creature to destroy enemy town by throwing boulders and uprooted trees! It causes more damage and doesn't use up your spell power.

2)Teaching (anything)in real life is a lot more fun and challenging -- so turn-off your ... computer and interact with carbon-based life-forms for a little while. Success in either reality will help the other.

FIGHTING: I'm disappointed that you can't use your villagers to attack your enemy's villages & villagers and also his/her creature. Villagers vs Creature now that would be REALLY COOL! I happen to enjoy the creature vs creature fighting (if you were expecting mortal combat then you should have bought that mind-numbing game instead)it is well animated but not graphically violent or bloody.

MANAGING VILLAGES/VILLAGERS: Except for the lack of villager warfare I think B & W has a perfect mix of AI controlled management and all the divine interference you desire.
If I was to add anything it would be "disciple tree-farmers" instead of managing farms like "disciple farmers" they would farm trees for the "disciple foresters" to harvest. I always run out of wood and have to resort to magic forests which becomes very tedious.

GAME PLAY AND PLOT: The story line is particularly unique but there are lots of fun little puzzles that you take the time to figure out or just completely ignore if you don't like puzzles. Where the plot become tedious is having to virtually start over form scratch with a new village every time you teleport into a new world. If only you could throw scaffolding through the portal (like you can all the other resources) before you jump then it would take so long to rebuild towns each time. I also can't figure out how to make miracle dispensers -- the manual vaguely suggests that is possible.... ?????

MULTI-PLAYER ACTION: This is the most disappointing portion of the entire game. In fact it just plain [stinks]! It's full of memory related bugs (I have 2 500mhz, with 314 & 196 megs of ram respectively. They are networked on a LAN with 10/100 cards and a 10/100 switching hub)that can sometimes crash the game. This would be tolerable if the designers of B & W had made it possible to save a multiplayer game so that you can restore after a crash. But apparently they were too lazy or incompetent to do so. It takes 6-10 hours to defeat a single computer opponent even when you gang up on it. Who has that kind of time!? Why isn't anybody else complaining about the lack of a save game feature in multiplay?

SUMMARY: I now notice that there's an scenario edition to be out soon. My research has found no hint of any corrections to the problems I and others have mentioned.

... Buy a copy (you'll need one for each computer if playing on a LAN or over the internet) and you'll see why this is a game worth saving!

Original but demanding

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 8 / 10
Date: June 13, 2001
Author: Amazon User

The game is original and uniquely versatile. It lets you do what you a lot with the villages inside your influence. It hones your parenting abilities when you train your creature. If the routine bores you, it lets you play various puzzles on the side that help your overall game.

BUT the game has issues: -A severe problem I encountered was BUGS - I had to reboot so many times it became irritating, and within the game things did not always work as advertised. -Another issue is TIME - to complete the campaign, be ready to spend weeks. -As many have mentioned, it is difficult to make villages and the creature self-sustaining, so you need to MICROMANAGE quite a bit. -Finally, my creature proved only marginally useful though I spent a great deal of time training and teaching it.

OVERALL VERDICT: The game is promising but it needs rebalancing and more development. Wait for Black & White II or III before you play.

A.I. Good, gameplay bad

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 8 / 10
Date: August 25, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Enough has already been said of the creature avatars in this game. Their AI is fantastic and they are truly fun to play with. Once past that, however, one realizes that there isn't much else to this game. Movement is awkward and difficult, the cities are unmanageable, the citizens whine constantly and irritatingly about things that they should be taking care of themselves and the missions are poorly designed. One mission simply requires you to follow a monk to his secret prayer spot by staying behind him as he walks. This is a mission that seems desinged to capitalize on the challenge presented by the horrifically innacurrate movement controls. In another mission some of your people are kidnapped by barbarians who demand animals as a ransom so they can start a circus (?!?) And where does one find folk with the unmitigated gall to make ransom demands to a very visible deity and not expect to be smited for it? Yet another mission has a pied piper figure leading away the village children. For some undisclosed reason, you can't simply pick this problem person up and toss him far out to sea; you have to have your creature capture him. Great ideas, poor execution. But did I mention that the creatures are fun?

Definitely an effort to stay interested

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 12 / 19
Date: May 09, 2001
Author: Amazon User

This game really isn't fun. I'm not really sure what is supposed to BE fun about it. You can't skip through the cut scenes and the characters that play your concience are just annoying. Even with the trick to make immense amounts of food and wood with miracles you spend all your time trying to make the ant like people do SOMETHING. I spent about thirty or forty hours trying to enjoy this game and then I gave up. I had spent a rediculous amount of time trying to get through only a few parts of the game. Your creature really isn't very interesting. Sure it learns and everything but even teaching it is just a matter of repeating the same thing over and over and over and over again. Not something I really enjoy in a game but hey that's just me. A few "levels" into the game your creature is taken from you and you have to be a god without him for a while. Right when I was getting a close to getting him back, I was set back another several hours by an attack I could have stopped had the symbol interface not been so slow. I'm not sure who would enjoy this game for any amount of time. If you like being in control I'd suggest a Sim game. Another thing I found odd was that this game came on a single CD. For it's price and the amount of hype that I had heard I would have expected a game which consisted of a little more than poorly rendered worlds in which tasks are set up that are much more like chores than quests.

In closing, if you like taking out the garbage and doing other menial tasks, there is a slim chance you could enjoy this game.

Doesn't Work on Windows XP

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 9 / 13
Date: August 09, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I got so excited after hearing rave reviews about Black and White. I washed a few cars to get the money to buy the game, and on the day I bought it, I was saddened when the game didn't work! It installed properly, but after the startup screen, the whole computer screen went white! I could still hear the music in the background, but nothing else worked. I went online to try and find a remedy to my problem, and I learned that Black and White doesn't work on the Windows XP home edition. So I took it back. I'm just so disappointed. I'm sure it's a good game, but I may never find out.

If you have XP or XP pro don't get this!!!!!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 9 / 13
Date: May 05, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This game wont work with XP nor XP pro no matter what you do to your settings as suggested on the games website for XP users. There is no way to get this game to work. It'll start up with the title screen then boot you back to the desktop screne. I wish the makers of this game would make a patch for this game to work on XP and XP pro. If they ever do then try buying this game. Otherwise your going to have to downgrade your operating system to ME or 2000.

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