Rating: 
Summary: One of the best games I have ever played!!!!!!!!!
Review: To start off this game is a RTS/RPG. You play GOD, simply put. You can do whatever you basically want in this world. Along the way you gain the help of a creature which you pick. This creature has superior AI and learns by what you do. Or example if you put food into the village store while the creature is watching, it will learn this miracle and do the same. If you let it eat villagers and praise it, it will continue consuming villagers. When I got this game I was Amazed. It is one of the most innovated games ever. Once you start it is highly addictive. First off there is almost endless possibilites on what you can do. The graphics for this game are very similar to those of the game Giants: Citzen Kabuto except overall these are much better. The movement and camera controls can be difficult to learn in the beginning, but the game has an excellent tutorial in the beginning which helps out immensily. I suggest anyone who gets this game get a mouse which has a rolling scroller which can be pressed in, this becomes very useful when pitching and rotating the camera. I have played alot of games over the years this one can take the cake. I suggest anyone who has a decent computer, and wants to be amazed to buy this game.
Rating: 
Summary: Actually, it's more grey than you might think.
Review: I got to see Peter Molyneux demonstrate and explain Black and White in person at MIT in February of 2000. I was intrigued by the concept and what I saw looked great, so I've had nothing but positive vibes toward the game, and snapped it up the day it came out. However, I've got to be honest, this game isn't for everybody. This is the first 'god' or 'sim' type game I've actually ever owned, so perhaps if you're more inclined or experienced with this type of game, you might enjoy it more than I did. However, as an action and strategy gamer, I thought I was going to collapse across my desk and cry tears of boredom. Giving B&W its due, you need only read the other reviews here. Yes, these graphics are amazing, as good as anything out there. The AI is at a whole new level, and there are things going on here that have never been seen before and it makes my head spin to think of how on earth they could have programmed them, like the gesture-recognition interface or the intriguing learning ability of the creatures. This is, no doubt, an amazing piece of art and technology. That having been said, is it any fun to actually PLAY? For me, I'm afraid not. The game very quickly degenerates into an endless cycle of repetitive actions like moving trees and villagers around, all in the name of expanding your 'influence' to encompass other villages, at which point you have even more trees and villagers to move around. Add to this your basic lack of story (do this and this and this to defeat the bad guy!) or characters, and what you have is pretty much a colossal bore in the opinion of this gamer. It's far less Clash of the Titans than it is Competition of the Woodstackers. The micromanagement that you have to perform, and the complete lack of functions, interface, or information to make it any more reasonable, is just out of control. Literally. There are parts in the game where you can't even access the basic functions of saving and loading because those are in your 'temple', and sometimes you don't have a 'temple' yet. And this goes on for EVER, like hours and hours and hours. I read one forum post from an enthusiast who had spent (he said) about 20 HOURS of doing tasks like this to get through a level. And I'd have to say, embarassingly, my own experience is similar. He didn't spend 20 hours because he was a bad player; he spent 20 hours because the game is really that slow. The whole Tamagotchi-meets-King-Kong aspect of the game, the Creature, is an interesting idea but ultimately fails to deliver. The Creature becomes yet another thing that's only partially under your control and which the game doesn't give you the tools to manage. Classic example: the Creature eats one of your villagers. This is generally a bad thing because you need those villagers to increase your 'influence', so you'd want to punish the Creature so that the behavior doesn't happen again. However, the game never says "Your Creature just chewed up a villager." Instead it says "Your Creature will eat that sort of thing more often." Oh really? WHAT sort of thing? And unless you were ignoring the other twenty things that need doing and happened to be zoomed in close enough to actually identify what the Creature was eating, guess what? Your Creature goes on scarfing up villagers. You get labelled by the game as siding with Evil and you suck, and none of it was your fault. Considering that there are only about ten possible things that the Creature can eat, including his own poop, you'd think that the game itself would be a little more informative, or warn you before it was about to happen. Unfortunately, the game is just full of deliberate yet bad design decisions like this. You're informed of things happening only after it's too late to do anything about it. The concept that there is no interface, just a hand, sounds good on paper but is lousy in practice, depriving you of control and information. It's ridiculous that you have to move the camera for miles over to the correct place on the map and then hold the hand over the right building for a few seconds just to get the one piece of information that you want. Couldn't we have put that on the screen? It seems like some of the fixes to make this such a better game are entirely obvious, but were deliberately ignored. Even the game's manual is quite vague and seems to assume that the reader is already familiar with this kind of game, and omits a great deal of information that you'd have to be blind lucky to figure out. Additionally, any claims that the game is some kind of psychological tool, or that your Creature comes out as a reflection of your personality, are just silly. The game basically makes its own call as to what's good and what's evil, and your own intentions aren't figured in at all. In some cases even your actions don't seem to be figured in to that judgment. There's some hype that this is a game of moral and ethical choices, and that is just not so. This game may be a first step in that direction, but this is simply a game of micromanagement; in some senses, it's almost kind to call it a game, period. To wrap up, on the technical end I had no problems with this game on a 1Ghz PIII with 256MB RAM and a 32MB GeForce2. It has crashed once while I was multitasking, but other than that has been flawless, with some frame drop in extreme camera moves but overall seems well above 30fps. Anyway, definitely put some thought in before diving in to Black and White. It's an interesting piece but it's not for everybody.
Rating: 
Summary: Great game, bad interface, but it is, perhaps, worth it.
Review: Okay, let's get the worst over right from the start: the interface is bad. It's as simple as that: it is a very poor interface and it actively hampers the game (which is why I'm dinging it a full two stars). I understand what the designers were shooting for, which is a thoroughly immersive and natural interface, but the mouse isn't the right technology for what they were attempting. Now, if VR gloves ever start to penetrate the consumer market, then such an interface could be justified. That said, if you can grit your teeth and look past the interface (and, for many players, that's just not going to be possible), the game itself is nothing short of revolutionary. It's complex, its detailed, it's *entertaining*, it's imaginitive, and, above all else, it is utterly engrossing. I've never played a god-style game where you actually started to feel like a deity in charge of real people, with the full range of responsibilities and, most innovatively, moral choices that such a being would face. It's refreshing that the game doesn't compell you to be a good guy, or punish you for being a bad guy. In spite of that, I've found that it's actually rather hard to deliberately be a malevolent deity for the very reason that you are so thoroughly powerful and your people are so thoroughly powerless. Indeed, when I accidentally wreck havok (see above notes regarding the interface), I tend to feel bad about my actions and I find that I want to do something to set things right. I suspect that, for many people, the game is going to be a moral ink-blot. I can't over-stress the problems with the interface. I can understand why that would suffice to drive a person away from the game. It's also true that the game has stability issues (thank the avatars that I had a spare computer to install it on; it simply locked on the livingroom system in spite of all efforts). But it's also true that there is much to love about this game and, if nothing else, I would encourage people to buy it just to support this style of game and this level of creativity in game design. It may be a flawed child, but it is still a gifted infant.
Rating:
Summary: This game was a big disappointment
Review: Well I sure hate to be a spoil sport, but I feel pretty much let down by Black & White. There appear to be several issues that I think bring this great concept down. 1) This is supposed to be a game where I am a god. As a god I should have a lot of control over the world. However in this game you are just part of the story and you have to follow the game the way the developers want you to. There are levels and "missions" in the form of scrolls that you have to accomplish before moving on, so basically I am just playing a role and trying to "beat" the game. This is not a god sim - it is an adventure game. Like another reviewer stated, if you want to have control, play the Sims. 2) The interface is very difficult to get the hang of, and it is mostly mouse controlled. I found doing mundane chores like unleashing my creature (you get a creature to teach), throwing stuff, and just moving around to be tedious at times. While moving, your perspective has a habit of changing which I do not like (at times I ended up staring straight at the ground for no reason). 3) About three hours into the game I got a Visual C++ Runtime library error and the game crashed. Now I can understand a bug due to my system hardware or something, but this appears to be just flawed code. In all the games I play, I have never seen a runtime error from code (I won't count applets here). Was this game ready for market? 4) I crashed and went back in. To my suprise I found myself all the way at the beginning. The game's Auto-Save feature had not saved anything (even though it said "saving" while I was playing). At this point I was too bored and frustrated to continue. Again I believe this game was not ready to ship. Instead of starting all over again, I gave up and went back to Clive Barker's Undying. I eagerly waited for this game, and when starting it up it looked to be very well done. The intro sequence and graphics are awesome. But I felt this is a game that was a major hype turned letdown, and I recommend waiting until it is in the bargain bin before buying it.
Rating: 
Summary: Dogz...Catz...B&Wz
Review: This isn't so much a game as an annoying lesson in babysitting. Players should get paid to play because it feels too much like a chore! Peter M. needs to stop getting so enamored with himself and his ideas and really work out what makes a game fun. This isn't it! One feels like Sisyphus trying to roll his giant boulder up the hill in this -- no real sense of accomplishment. If you want to play an AMAZING game that has all the originality, humor, and fun that this game strives for, take a look at Giants: Citizen Kabuto -- incredible!
Rating:
Summary: Best game in years!!
Review: When I first played Black and White, beaten the tutorials, I got to a real mission, at that point I wanted to sell this game on Ebay. Unless you have read everything tidbit of information on this game you will have to restart at least once. In my case I was sent back 2 hours. When I tried again, spent more time with the villages, I easily beat the 2nd world. There is a lot of micromanaging be warned!! The gameplay is orignal, addictive, and fun. Of course the best part of the game is the creature. Unfortuantly the micromanaging takes away from the creature part of the game. Graphics are 2nd to only Giants, and sound is best I have ever heard in a game! The music blends in perfectly with the game. If you dont mind spending a little time learning the basics of the game, you will get a much more fufilling experience than a shootem up game, rts, fighter, action, or rpg game(hrm it is all those games!)
Rating:
Summary: Over-rated and over-hyped. Buy THE SIMS instead.
Review: I was all for this game. I was convinced that BLACK and WHITE was not going to be the next DAIKATANA. No, I didn't want to believe that. But it is true. BLACK and WHITE is an over-hyped game. It was in development for about three years and gaming magazines and such labeled this game as something revolutionary. Well, BLACK and WHITE may be that, but did EA have to make it so boring? The chance to play god should have been fun. In fact the opening moments of the game are the best. My two stars goes to the absolutley fantastic opening sequence of stunning visuals and graphics. And the music that plays really pumps me up for what I thought would be a special game. Alas, this was not to be. After, I choose my creature, the game really slows down the point of bordom. You make choices in the form of "Silver Scrolls". These are quests that happen on the little island your on. This is where the game lost me. As for the controls, I think the folks at EA made them a little to complicated than it needed to be. This to me was the most frustrating part of the whole BLACK and WHITE experiance. If you can't have good control using the mouse with a game, then in my opinion, that game just cannot be fun. Yes, this game is original, but I think some people will be bored. If you want to play god, I think THE SIMS is a far superior game, not to mention fun.
Rating: 
Summary: "Oh my God!" oh wait, thats me...
Review: I'll try to be short. Very nicely done, graghics are top notch as well as sound. The storyline and gameplay are phenominal! I only had one problem... Once you start a game, you have to listen to the same tutorial-type instructions every time you start a new game. I guess they didn't figure on us learning how to move the cursor within the first 8hrs of gameplay... Beyond that, this game is rockin' good. It has some of the best A.I. coding I've ever seen (your pet Creature really does learn). This game is well worth buying. You'll laugh (it's fun to teach your creature to throw people into the sea if they complain about you). You'll get hours upon hours of fun out of this one. There could be a few improvments, but for the first release after the beta they did one hell of a job. I'm guessing an on-line patch may be on the way for some of the problems, but don't quote me on that.
Rating:
Summary: Beyond Human Artifical Intelligence
Review: ...This game should be an AI material for studies! What do you want to do today? Eat people?...Throw rocks all over the world? Small building downs? You'll find those small ones in the first 30 minutes of the game. Wait until you get addicted and play all day and find all the nice (well, and bad) things to do in it!!! Imagine Populous with The Sims and you might be getting a bit close to this game, but with a huge missing gap. This game is astonishing, I never imagined someone could pull off such thoughtfull AI in a game yet. Plus, it has a good touch of humour! The other cool thing is that I don't know yet when I will be able to finish this, there are so many bad ways of doing this that I'll never find them all!!! If you are a gamer, you should already have this game and be stuck playing, not reading this!
Rating:
Summary: Jan van Wick is wrong
Review: Listen, you cant expect more of a computer game than is truely possible. You cant expect your creature to jump out of the computer screen and play with you. It isnt possible. I say dont give something less of a rating just because it didnt accomplish the impossible. In fact, Lionhead did a wonderful job on the game. The graphics are amazing, the AI is the best in the world without a doubt, and the personality and 'intelligence' of the creatures is unparalleled in any other game. This game is truely amazing and deserves five stars all the way for being the most ground breaking cutting edge game yet to date!
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