Black & White

Rating:
Summary: God-like Micromanagement
Review: After reading all of the previews and ad information for this game, I was convinced that it really was going to be a unique gaming experience. Black & White is unique, uniquely frustrating, uniquely cumbersome, and uniquely over-hyped.

I want to start by pointing out that if you have read the previews and even reviews for this game, you are being misled. The professional reviewers of this game base most of their opinions on the "stunning graphics" (that can burden even the best video cards) and the interesting God-game storyline. The graphics, while well made, are nothing unexpected, and at the close in zooms show quite a bit of blockiness for such a supposedly "revolutionary" game engine. As for the God-game storyline, this game differs little from your standard RTS (real-time strategy) game. Resource management, and a semblance of a "tech-tree", in the form of captured village centers that offer different miracles, lead you down the same path as any other game in the genre. Adding in the Creature makes the game a micro-management nightmare. The creature starts off dumb and greedy, and grows smart and aggressive even when you actively discourage that behavior.

The interface is an exercise in frustration. Attempting to navigate the map is like trying to drive a car with one steering wheel for each tire. Turning can lead to being stuck on the sides of mountains until you change your zoom to get around it. Moving through confined areas, like the mountain passes in the first map, can take a significant amount of time, zooming, turning, and tilting. All this adds together to completely prohibit quick movement on the map, a major problem for any RTS game.

The job of managing your villagers, in their various villages, means that you will spend the majority of your time tending to these lazy people. Instead of just providing their resources, you must begin construction on ALL of their structures. The will whine about everything, and do nothing to fulfill their own needs. This means that you will spend most of your time watering fields that your farmer disciples do nothing with. Making forester disciples means nothing unless the trees are right in front of these idiots. In fact, the only disciples, of the eight that you can create, that do their jobs well are the breeder and missionaries. In the end, you will have to do most things yourself and leave your followers to sit on their blocky behinds.

One last note, if you are really intent on buying this game, my recommendation is to get every help guide and walk through you can find. The manual provided is practically useless, and the in game help is more comic relief than help. Your best bet is to wait for this game to end up in the bargain basket, and at least save yourself some money.

Rating:
Summary: Worst Game in the World
Review: I got new Dell Dimension 4500 with 2.0 ghz and 40gb hd, and this game won't work although it said on the box it would. This game did work on my old computer but it has HORRIBLE graphics. Don't waste your money, find another game. I was unaware when i puchased it, but This game is also severly sacriligious and if i was EA i would be ASHAMED. This is a pathetic game and all the copies should be burnt for satanism. HORRIBLE HORRIBLE HORRIBLE. I'm going to burn mine tomorrow. I don;t think ill buy an EA game for a VERY VERY long time jest because of the nerve it took to make such a santanic game.

Rating:
Summary: Misleading info about system requirements
Review: I got this game when it first came out and was really looking forward to it. And I wish I could tell you how great it was. Or even how bad it was. However, I can't because even though I have Windows 98, this game wouldn't even load up. I called EA's customer support and they told me that there was nothing they could do. Since I had already opened the game (as I had planned on keeping it), I was out $50 for nothing but a blank screen.
Moral? Make double sure that your system will run a game before you buy it. And even then, you're sometimes not out of the woods.

Rating:
Summary: The Best Game Beta Ever Released as a Retail Product
Review: Black and White is an incredible game. I was completely blown away. The game is based on brilliant and wonderfully executed ideas. It is a rich and engaging game with many different levels of play. The gameplay is so varied, I sometimes feel like I'm playing five games in one.

It's addictive, it's fun, it looks nice, it has a great interface, wonderful sound, and I'm pretty sure people will be talking about this game for years to come.

BUT... It is also perhaps the most buggy piece of software I've ever personally encountered. Several features that were supposed to be in the game at release are not even there at all. The game crashes constantly. A lot of things simply don't work right. Many little issues with gameplay balance combined with countless bugs stack up to one big problem: a barely-playable game.

I wish I'd returned it to the store at which I bought it before my thirty days were up. Fans have been waiting for a patch for two months. And just learned they have another few weeks to wait on that patch. The game is absolutely not a final version; it's a beta. Don't pay forty dollars for a beta (really, everyone who has bought the game so far should be compensated for finding the bugs).

My advice: Get this game, once the patch comes out... and once you've heard about whether or not the patch works.

Rating:
Summary: Great concept and great game=Great Fun!
Review: This is a great game. I found after only a little playing that the game is as capable as the player allows, which leads me to write this review.

I have read several of the earlier reviews and found my urge to write this review increasingly growing.

First off, the performance-issues. I have a Creative Labs Voodoo Banshee car 16 MB, 450 MHz PIII, 128 MB RAM. At first I got graphic glitches, so I installed a newer version of the driver. Problem gone. It still hangs occasionally, but I believe the upcoming patch should fix that. For such graphic quality I think the engine runs very smoothly on my system.

Now on to the game-play. I have found that this game has an awesome depth. Many reviewers say that it is limited and that there is too much micromanagement involved, but this is just not true. It comes down to being prejusticed in what is possible in this game. Think in terms of real life instead, and you will see that the villagers are getting lazy because you are serving everything to them on a silver plate. Put them to work instead and soon enough they will handle things themselves.

I have personally found this game constantly surprising me in how versatile it is. Most of the time the limits and restrictions are my own, because I was prejusticed as to what is possible to do in a game. Again I stress that if you think in terms of real life and drop the preconceptions about what is possible in a game, you will find that most of the time the limits stem from your own imagination. Experiment! This game is as immersive and fun as you let it be. Play it as if you've never played another game before, and you will see what I mean.

Graphically this game is astounding. As a programmer and dabbler in game-programming I can say that this is one hell of an engine. As a 3D-modeller I can only marvel at the mesh-animations of especially the creatures. How the logic of the code can handle movement, interaction, and the casting of miracles within the same input-medium (the mouse) so elegantly is beyond me.

Several reviewers have complained that the options don't permit changing the graphic configuration (color-depth, resolution, etc.). Again I must beg to differ. In the same program-menu as the shortcut to the game, there is another to a program called "Setup", wherein you can change everything about graphic quality. Check it out.

Which leads me to the interface. Two words: FULLY CUSTOMIZABLE! If you don't like the initial configuration, then change it. Simple as that.

Yes the forced tutorials can be bothersome, and yes there are still several bugs and system-hangers lurking in this game (which hopefully the patch will relieve), but hell(!) it's a great game. With all the hype this game has gotten there are bound to be disappointments (Star Wars, anyone?), cause in reality nothing ever meets up with everbody's expectations. I think this game delivers, and aside from the bugs (Please oh please let the patch fix them!!) it is as far away from a disaster such as Ultima IX as they come.

Five stars!

Rating:
Summary: FUN FOR ONE! STINKS FOR MORE PLAYERS!
Review: 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!

Rating:
Summary: dull and tedious
Review: I remember being really enthusiastic about this game. I have liked similar games, dungeon keeper and the populous series.

But this one failed on many levels.

Good-
Interesting ideas and large area to play with.

Bad-
Buggy, there were many small errors and crashes that I had to deal with for the short time I was playing it.

Too much micromanagement. If I were a god for those people I would wipe them out and hope the bee's were better subjects. they seemed inept at just about any aspect of life needing help for the smallest tasks, seemingly unable to learn from their mistakes and always demanding you do more for them.

Creature, good idea, but bad in practice. It was an interesting idea to have this animal and train it. but it was time consuming, vague on how you were supposed to do it, and not terribly useful.

Controls were terrible. I spent eons on one part throwing rocks since they didn't take into consideration that some of the movements would be difficult with a trackball mouse.

Narrators were annoying. The little devil and god were overly cartoonish, overused, and their voices quickly got on my nerves.

in a whole unless you like monotonous work, go with some other game. This game wins on coneptual department, and fails in playability and fun department.

Rating:
Summary: Feel BW with the Logitech iFeel Mouse
Review: After reading so many positive reviews on Black and White, I ran out and actually made two purchases. One was for the game. The second was for the Logitech iFEEL Mouse 930525-0403. (found here on ...). I'm glad I bought both. Not only does this game present the most stunning visual and audio effects I've experienced in a game, but it also has some mind blowing force feedback effects as well. The guys at LionHead specially programmed this game to play some really cool effects that you can feel through the IFEEL mouse.

For example, you can feel the nappy texture of your Creature's fur as you stroke him (Almost like scratching a short haired cat). And when you hit him, you feel a solid smack. Lightning literally crackles in your hand, fish peck and nibble at you fingers, water pitter patters off you finger tips as you cast a rain spell. I spent hours running my hand over different objects, repeatedly casting random spells, and picking up items, just to see what they "felt" like. Not because I was trying to accomplish a specific goal, but if anything, for the sheer act of curiosity and discovery.

There's a ton of different effects in the game. Every single spell, every single object, and almost every action has a unique force feedback effect that flows naturally with the game. The fireball cracks and sizzles. Villagers squirm in your hand. One shot miracles pulse with power. Your fingers thrum over a wood pile. And you can tell the difference between picking up wood and picking up grain, just by the way is feels as it floats up into your hand. One has a rumbly feelwhile the other goes "shhhhhhh" like sand.

I highly recommend getting both this game and the mouse for several reasons. I've played this game with a normal mouse, and after using the IFEEL mouse for about a week, I just can't go back. You really get used the luxury of feeling when you can pick up an object. With a normal mouse, you just have to eyeball it, click, and hope that you've grabbed it. With this mouse, you know by feel that the object is right at your finger tips. I've even heard that the testers at LionHead, won't play multi-player without it.

Seriously, get this game and get this mouse! You won't be disappointed.

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating and Innovative. But is your system strong enuf?
Review: Here is the Quick Summary from me:

<<Pros>> *Fantastic detail, with extremely amazing zooming (world level to person level). *Interesting storylines, and plenty of smaller challenges to keep it fun *Good reactions (creature and villager) to your actions. *Humour *Definitely the best GOD game to date *Challenges are fun, different techniques required to manage things, with different outcomes.

<<Cons>> *Use of the mouse is tough *Requires a pretty hefty system. Make sure you have a good video card and Memory *A little tedious with creature maintenance *Creature fighting isn't well designed *Should allow to skip cut scenes

It may seem like I have listed a fair number of cons, but overall, I was very impressed with the game. The visual effects are quite stunning, and I have definitely spent my share of hours in front of the screen playing God. It does require some patience, but I also find that if I plan my strategy better, the outcomes are very different. I like games that are challenging to master, and B&W has a lot to offer in that respect.

Rating:
Summary: It Works With XP
Review: When you click install in the pop-up it wont respond and i have XP I Simply explored the disk and hit setup.exe and presto Works fine. Great game!