Rating: 
Summary: At heart, just another RTS
Review: B&W sells itself as a new type of game. The main thrust appears to be that you are a God faced with challenges, and your decisions affect whether you are good or evil. The game appears this way at first. The controls are a bit difficult to master, and it took me about an hour or two to figure out how to move around using the "playground" tutorial. The first level was filled with nice challenges and interesting quests. However, soon after arriving on the second level, and still in the tutorial phase of the game, I made a stark discovery. While I was still learning aspects of the game, I came under attack and was utterly trounced. Only then did I realize that this is just another real-time strategy game, where you have to obtain resources, build an economy, and develop weapons to defeat your enemies. If you don't figure out the right way, you lose. There's really not much room for creativity, or not nearly as much as the marketing would have you believe. The creatures are cute, but in reality they are just another cog in your struggle with rival gods. Despite its many innovations, it really is just a souped up version of the old Populous game, where two rival gods duke it out using people as a pawn. Had I known this early on, I probably would have taken a pass.
Rating:
Summary: At heart, just another RTS
Review: B&W sells itself as a new type of game. The main thrust appears to be that you are a God faced with challenges, and your decisions affect whether you are good or evil. The game appears this way at first. The controls are a bit difficult to master, and it took me about an hour or two to figure out how to move around using the "playground" tutorial. The first level was filled with nice challenges and interesting quests. However, soon after arriving on the second level, and still in the tutorial phase of the game, I made a stark discovery. While I was still learning aspects of the game, I came under attack and was utterly trounced. Only then did I realize that this is just another real-time strategy game, where you have to obtain resources, build an economy, and develop weapons to defeat your enemies. If you don't figure out the right way, you lose. There's really not much room for creativity, or not nearly as much as the marketing would have you believe. The creatures are cute, but in reality they are just another cog in your struggle with rival gods. Despite its many innovations, it really is just a souped up version of the old Populous game, where two rival gods duke it out using people as a pawn. Had I known this early on, I probably would have taken a pass.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Game
Review: I bought this game when it first came out and have been playing it regularily since. I haven't once regretted getting it and have had hours of fun. Black and White is a god game, and yes, managing resources plays a large role, but there's a great deal more to it than that. There are numerous puzzles and tricks, not to mention you get your own personal creature to train. Resources aren't generally much trouble since your people will gather them automatically. You can gather them yourself or create them via "miracles" which are useful when you want to gain belief from your population or convert new villages. Which, is the whole point of the game. In each level the goal always includes converting villages and expanding your influence. It should be noted that a multiplayer patch is now available for the game. I haven't yet managed to find anyone to play against, but I expect it will be lots of fun if the single player levels are any indication. I've established that the game is fun, but what about performance and playability? My system is an upgraded 500 MHz Beige G3 running OS X 10.1.5 and 448MB RAM. The game runs well on my system with only the occasional slow down. (This basically means don't have anything processor intensive running in the background.) If your system meets the requirements you shouldn't have any trouble playing.
Rating:
Summary: Great Game
Review: I bought this game when it first came out and have been playing it regularily since. I haven't once regretted getting it and have had hours of fun. Black and White is a god game, and yes, managing resources plays a large role, but there's a great deal more to it than that. There are numerous puzzles and tricks, not to mention you get your own personal creature to train. Resources aren't generally much trouble since your people will gather them automatically. You can gather them yourself or create them via "miracles" which are useful when you want to gain belief from your population or convert new villages. Which, is the whole point of the game. In each level the goal always includes converting villages and expanding your influence. It should be noted that a multiplayer patch is now available for the game. I haven't yet managed to find anyone to play against, but I expect it will be lots of fun if the single player levels are any indication. I've established that the game is fun, but what about performance and playability? My system is an upgraded 500 MHz Beige G3 running OS X 10.1.5 and 448MB RAM. The game runs well on my system with only the occasional slow down. (This basically means don't have anything processor intensive running in the background.) If your system meets the requirements you shouldn't have any trouble playing.
Rating: 
Summary: Do not insall this game
Review: If you are running OS X and have an Nvidia Geforce 4 MX card do not install this game. After installing this game I noticed pixel artifacts all over my desktop, lines through everything. I have a dual 1ghz G4 system. I am not sure if it is specific to this system configuration or not, but Apple Card has narrowed the problem down to this. Anway, a word of warning. Don't install this unless you dont have a problem reinstalling OS X.
Rating:
Summary: Do not insall this game
Review: If you are running OS X and have an Nvidia Geforce 4 MX card do not install this game. After installing this game I noticed pixel artifacts all over my desktop, lines through everything. I have a dual 1ghz G4 system. I am not sure if it is specific to this system configuration or not, but Apple Card has narrowed the problem down to this. Anway, a word of warning. Don't install this unless you dont have a problem reinstalling OS X.
Rating: 
Summary: boo.
Review: It crashes constantly and I got so bored and frustrated with it that I stopped playing before winning.
Rating:
Summary: yay, another [bad] game.
Review: so yeah, some of my friends were talking about how fantastic this game is, so I got it. apparently my friends are not very smart or they are pathalogical liars. basically, my main beef with the game is, if you're god -- why all the rules and restrictions? people tell YOU what to do, not the other way around. you have a little god and a little devil guy telling you what to do all the time and you have to feed and maintain what amounts to a really stupid pet. your villagers have no idea how to build anything, you have to do all of that yourself. it's basically just a strategy game where you have to defeat rival "gods" and listen to 2 stupid cartoon characters tell you what to do all the time.
Rating:
Summary: Original
Review: This game is GREAT! The gameplay rocks and is totally original. The graphics are amazing (and there's the cool 3d menu). You play a god and the aim of the game is to kill the other gods. However it's not that simple as you have to maintain a healthy supply of worshippers who you can treat well or badly. Evil or Good. Black or White. You also have your mini avatar which is your creature, performing your will on the planet and it learns from you becoming more powerful etc. Admitadely it does take some work to get used to casting spells but once you get proficient at it it adds an element of gameplay to the game, can you cast that lightning bolt in time? Might be a situation. All I can say is buy it, you won't regret it.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Game, but the Mac is not a Game Console
Review: This is a fun game. The graphics are beautiful and the play is mostly good. It is very difficult to get some of the gestures down, and while it's cute to have a game where you cast spells by drawing patterns in the air with your mouse, getting them done is really fussy. It would be better to just press a key. The only extremely annoying thing about the game is that it completely takes over your system. You cannot switch out of it to read mail, check messages, look at a web site, and so on. You have to completely quit the game. This is especially annoying as it takes close to a full minute for it to start up (it has to show you all the animated logos for all the people who worked on it, even the ones who polished the CD), but it takes 30 seconds or more for the darned thing to quit. So while it's is a great time and very amusing, it was done by people who've obviously never heard of the Internet. I docked it a full star for that.
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