User Reviews (61 - 71 of 413)

Show these reviews first:

Highest Rated
Lowest Rated Newest
Oldest Most Helpful
Least Helpful

Mine's not buggy

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 11
Date: June 11, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Black and White worked perfectly out of the box on my computer. I have had no technical problems at all except for internet connectivity with AOL, but AOL is horrible, anyway.I think it's a really fun program. Teaching your creature things is fun and intuitive. See if you can try the game out on your rig to see if you will have problems. The only complaint I have is that it's starting to get a bit repetitive because you have to take over many villages. However, you can impress them in many different ways, so it never gets boring.Without the bugs I've been hearing about, it's a really fun game, and a fine addition to my gaming library. I feel sorry for those who've had technical problems, but there have been none for me. Well, I'm off to unleash my creature on an enemy village and impress them with some heavy-duty lightning. Fun Fun Fun! See ya!

Over Hyped and Over Priced

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 11 / 18
Date: April 16, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I was very excited when I bought Black and White and eager to play it. I had been waiting for this game for a very long time. After loading everything I watched the intro which got me even more excited. The game went straight to the tutorial and thats when I started to think diffrent. The game kept skipping parts, and lagging. I didnt want to believe that this was happening since I had been waiting forever to get this game. Through the lagging however, the guides in the tutorial taught me some of the controls, and let me tell you, they are the most difficult controls on a PC game I have ever seen, and I am not new to PC games. After about an hour of getting nowhere through the tutorial, I decided to play a "single player skirmish". When I did, the game barely seemed to be running at all! I was so disapointed that I had paid the money I did for this game. I think this game probably needed another year of designing because it is just plain unplayable as it is. I never thought I would be writing this reveiw about a game that was supposed to be a turning point in computer games. If you are looking for a strategy game, I would recomend you try Age of Empires2:The age of Kings(Greatest game ever!), or if you are looking for an RPG, buy Diablo2. Thank you for reading, and dont be disapointed.

Time-consuming, but fun.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: September 10, 2002
Author: Amazon User

This game can be fun if you are willing to sit down and dedicate all of your spare time to it. I spend all day at work, hence I have not advanced very far into the game!

The game gets off to a slow start as the "consciences" teach you how to play the game (how to use the hand, how to train your creature, how to cast miracles, etc.). It's pretty self explanatory, yet they make you try out everything just to make sure you know how. The consciences are always popping up trying to tell you *something,* and sometimes you just wish they would go away.

I love this game's sense of humor. For instance, for one of the "silver story scrolls" you must bring some would-be sailors supplies. Bringing a sheep for meat prompts the lead sailor to say, "Oh, a sheep. Very lovely. Good for a long journey!"

I have no problem "micro-managing" the villagers - in fact, it is kind of fun decide who will be farmers and who will be "breeders." I also think it's fun that you can plant trees wherever you want, and break large rocks with ease.

The "Creature" is another story, however. Keeping track of the creature in one village is do-able if you have the animal on a leash. But when you must travel across the land (including large mountains), bringing the creature with you proves to be difficult. And when your creature gets injured, it's scary! My cow got struck by lightning, and I was so disturbed that I shut the game off! It's not gory or disgusting, but it's just not fun to watch your precious creature writhe in pain on the ground.

At this point I have not gotten very far in the story line, but I do enjoy the game so far. The format definitely takes a lot of patience to get used to, but I think once you do, it will be rewarding to watch your influence grow!

Requires a lot of patience.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: November 18, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I've used this game as a hobby for the last few months. I love it. The game is set in a virtual 3D environment with many individual objects to play with. Mostly, you are limited to throwing and setting down objects -- but some have special functions. Trees can be replanted and grown, for example.

The storyline is not terribly compelling. Mostly, I get wrapped up in village management and playing with my creature. The creature animations are fantastic, and the creature almost feels like a real animal.

The cutscenes and tuturials are usually entertaining, but can get tedious the second or third time around. The cutscenes and tutorials cannot be aborted with the escape key like most games.

The game crashes often. You will not be able to finish the game if you only have the minimum hardware requirements. I would recommend at least a 64M video card and 256M of memory. The minimum requirements of an 8M video card (absurd!) and 64M (CRAZY!) of memory are wholely inadaquate -- although you probably will be able to finish the first level with the minimum requirements.

The crashes are fairly predictable. With the proper patches, the crashes result less from bugs than from the game engine simply overloading your computer's memory and CPU. Cutscenes and tutorials seem to trigger crashes, particularly when there are a great many objects to catalog. The game slows quite noticably when there are too many objects in the game. This can be frustrating when stockpiling miracle seeds or whatever.

Game saves take an unusually long time -- sometimes as long as five minutes (I timed them.)

Not for the blood thirsty

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: April 05, 2005
Author: Amazon User

If you like running from room to room or planet to planet (or whatever) shooting things and blowing stuff up. This is NOT the game for you.

If you enjoy sociological endeavors, you'll enjoy this game.

As others have said, micromanaging (who ever said God's job was easy?), is tedeous BUT the one person who complained obviously did not read some of the instructions. You can set up short cuts to various places on your island. Then it is as simple as pressing "4" to get from one place to the place you've designated as area "4". No biggie.

There does not appear to be any book out on how to accomplish things you want to accomplish. I suppose that is because there are too many variables in the game.

Some parts of the game are pretty funny. The boat builders song is pretty humerous as well as people falling "in love" and giggling etc.

So, all in all, not the most riveting game I've ever played but certainly not the most boring. This is kind of like SIMS meets The Swiss Family Robinson.

At $3 for a used version, how bad could it be?

Wish I had gotten mine for that price!

Frustrating Fun

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 7 / 9
Date: April 25, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I have played this game a LOT since I got it, and I'm still not sure what to make of it. One thing is certain - Black & White is more of an experiment than a game. The backbone of B&W is a god RTS - you have little villages on tropical islands which you watch over as their guardian deity. You can play either as Good or Evil or anywhere in between - anything you want to do is allowed. To top it off, you have a gigantic creature (like a 50 foot monkey) acting as your pupil/pet in the world, which you can train to do your bidding.

Your creature is definitely the highlight of the game - the Artifical Intelligence is revolutionary and absolutely amazing. They watch watch you, imitate you, and learn from you. You can teach them things like go find food when the village store is empty and poop in the fields instead of on people's houses. Eventually I've heard you can teach them really complex tasks like planting and growing forests. However, it takes hours of dedication to get your creature beyond the simplest of things. To me, the pace of creature learning is just too slow. Casual gamers will not get much from the game with only a few hours of playtime. Also, the methods which the game expects you to communicate with your creature are usually hidden from you and often subtle. Often my advisors would comment that my creature had learned something completely different from what I was trying to teaching him.

Take away your creature (which actually happens on one level) and you have a generic, shallow RTS game, with limited options. The hyped ability to play as either Good or Evil is also very shallow and limited. Both sides have to impress villagers into worshiping them - Good gods do so by casting Good miracles, Evil gods cast evil miracles. That's all there is to it. There is no strategy except to train your creature to do your work, so that you are effectively 2 places at once. Supposedly the land would change to reflect your alienment, but the only thing I have witnessed is my temple growing horns when I'm evil, and doves circle the temple when I'm good. Many promised features of the game obviously did not make it into the final release.

The single player story mode in Black and White is very good yet riddled with bugs and uncertain goals. Constantly you are presented with moral challenges that push you to do good while testing your patience. For example, 3 lazy sailors need help getting their boat afloat, but they are so annoying in their songs that you will certainly be tempted to chuck the little twerps out to sea without their boat. Then there are quests which are so vague you don't know what to do, or at least logical solutions do nothing. Plus, many many bugs seem to halt your progress as well. One quest with some stolen cattle I completely on my first play thru, but on my second time around the same actions did nothing. ???

In the end, I'd recommend you buy the game after the patch comes out, just to see what the fuss is about.

You are God

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 7
Date: November 30, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Black & White is a game where you are the God of a village and you need to get every villager on the island to worship you. You do this by giving bad harvests, mudslides and forest fires if they don't worship you and a good harvest, lots of fish, and plenty of cows if they do. You also have this pet. You can choose what to teach the pet, for example, to break dance, if you play your cards right. Your pet will battle other God's pets if you get the other God's powers. It's pretty fun, but it's hard to get the camera were you want it, which is a big problem.

Not Too Hot

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 6 / 7
Date: June 10, 2001
Author: Amazon User

This game is a downright sorry excuse for a game. The graphics are great, but the game play is just plain lousy. You spend most of your time watching over your villagers because they can't do anything for themselves. The only reason I even gave this game one star was because of the graphics and it is fun to throw people around, which is one of the privileges of being the god-like character you are in the game. Don't waste your money you'll be disappointed as I was. Try buying something worthwhile like a Command and Conquer game, Age of the Empires, or Warcraft.

What a fantastic game!!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 7
Date: September 02, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Black and White is a tremendous game! In it you play a god and you have control over all of your subjects, and that means being in charge of building their houses, deciding how many people will worship you at a time, and who will be sacrificed for the good of the religion. Those are just samples of the sort of control you have over your people. However, it isn't just a Simcity style 'God Game' - there is also the tremendously entertaining feature of the 'creature' in Black and White. You, as a god, exercise your influence over your creature - you can choose the tiger (a good fighter), the monkey (a good thinker) or the bull (a combo of both). These creatures start small and as you teach them more, they grow in size. After a while, from observing your actions (such as creating water for crops or forests for building), they learn many of your skills. So instead of constantly monitoring the state of your people, the creature does quite a bit of it for you.

In Black and White you must also conquer opponents by expanding your 'influence' - it grows as more and more people believe in you. By impressing opposing villagers you can gradually win them over, and they start to believe in you rather than their current god. This is not a one-way process; rather, you must always make sure your villagers believe in you otherwise they will lose faith in you. Ultimately, Black and White is a very complex game with subtle nuances all over it, and since it always has something new or unique happening in it, you'll never get sick of it.

Oh, Well...If it just worked..

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 10 / 16
Date: May 10, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I have a Athlon 600 with 8 mgs of 3-d video ram...half of the 16 recommended.... but I wouldn't think that would.... Stop the miracle dispensers from working....or Have my creature get stuck in a wall and then not take any commands.,which he did after I finally released him in land 3. It also has saving problems..and sometimes just reboots the whole computer. On top of that I can't even be online...and open the game..the internet modem link won't work and locks up my system totally. So much for multiplayer option.

But despite all that I feel it has entertainment value. I like the slow pace and the chance to figure things out and observe little things. I am not a "Hack & Slash" player. I have played over 60 hours now and haven't made it through land 4. I keep replaying with different stratigies and creatures. The first time through I used the ...hurry up and win attitude..and that was boring and I could see why there are so many negative reviews. The rest of the time I have gone thru a land as completely as I can and have enjoyed the interaction.

It has beautiful graphics and an interesting premise..but they need to fix the bugs, and allow you to skip the tutorials(at least in replay..ie if there is a saved game in the file offer the option of skipping).

I think if they had a system check for components at the beginning of the installation and let the players know that their hardware shortage may contribute to problems, customers may not feel that all the blame was the software. I waited for this game for over a year..and felt that the hype was way out there...no game could live up to it...and it didn't..but it has promise and room to grow with add ons.

If you are an old time figure things out..and ways-to-get-around problems person (the game itself giving you some of the problems)...you will like this game. If you want fast pace beat the bad guys game..don't bother.

Review Page: Previous 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Next 

Actions