Rating: 
Summary: Requires a lot of patience.
Review: 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.)
Rating: 
Summary: doesn't even work
Review: i purchased this game, twice. and both times the game installed fine, but when i clicked to play, nothing happened. apparently it doesn't work well on windows xp. unless you have alot of patience and are willing to try and install the game four times and still not have it work, i wouldn't recommend this game to anybody ever.
Rating:
Summary: Has a nasty habit of DELETING YOUR GAME!!!
Review: I have been playing Black & White off and on for about two years. I'll start playing about three or four months after I stopped and wonder why I didn't finish it. Simple. Its impossible to beat. Why? IT DELETES YOUR GAME! I have played this on three different computers and every time this happens. It has happened to my friends too. This would be a great game if this didn't happen. Don't waste your money or time on this game. Its not worth it at all.
Rating:
Summary: Super fun, with a caveat
Review: I highly recommend this title if AND ONLY IF you do not use Win XP. I got to play it on my old desktop with Win ME and it was great; however, it simply won't work on most XP systems. On this website, it clearly states that the game isn't supported by XP, but one doesn't always think of these things when you are at the local gaming/electronics store. As I learned after wasting $20...
Rating: 
Summary: Great Game
Review: A great game for the power hungry. if you really want an awesome experience, download the "sandbox extreme" map and have a great time. it has all one time miracle dispencers that replenish in seconds. it is great. back to the game, you can cast miracles (such as lightning, heal, wolves, fireball, blast and grow, shrink, andchange allignment of creature [good or bad]) control a creature of your choice (in the beginning its a chimp, tiger, or cow) i would definately recommend this game to anybody who can afford it
Rating:
Summary: compelling and deep
Review: I just bought the game (aug 2003) and it's been out for quite a while now (B&W 2 is supposed to be coming out before long), however I found the game to still be solid, complex fun! First off this game has you play the role of a God. You perform miracles and interact with the world to gain worshipers and do various missions and tasks. The real selling point of the game is it's open-endedness. The game certainly feels complex enough, while not being overly complex to play. There is a lot of depth and almost infinite number of ways to play. You can choose to be good and gain worshipers through acts of mercy and goodness, or you can reek havoc on the villagers and gain thier loyalty through fear. Either way... it's fun! You can even do a little of each as your own conscience permits. The game really pulls this off well. I almost actually felt guilty when choosing to take a villager's sick brother and toss him into the ocean rather than heal him and answer her prayer to me. The game also has some really intricate AI. You get to have a pet of sorts in the form of a creature that allows you to further interact with the world and influence events. You dynamically train this creature by teaching him right from wrong and by him observing your behavior and learning. This is done very well and seems very sophisticated... it really feels like the creature develops a real and unique personality. I've only been playing the game a day, but have run across only a few complaints. The controls can be a pain and you may want to tweak them (playing on a laptop with a touchpad is a real source of frustation). The graphics feel a bit antiquated as the game is beggining to visually show it's age - although they are still good, just not great - especially by today's (2003) standards. All in all this game is original and offers a lot of fun. You will play and experiment for hours with this one and there is an infinite potential for replay value.
Rating: 
Summary: Ugggh, boring...
Review: Black & White in theory sounds like a really fun game and for some I guess it is. I found the game so tedius, repititious and devoid of fun that I never even bothered to finish the first level. The idea of the creature is interesting and the AI on it is impressive but that in itself could not hold the game together. The controls are awful. It is interesting that the developers spent so much time on the "feel" of the game and making it so it was like no other that it seems that they didn't stop to think at the cumbersomeness an impracticality of the vast array of controls. Another factor to this game is that if you are going to stick it out and play the entire thing you will definately need time for it takes for what seems an eternity to complete some of the tasks of the game. All in all, this game was not for me but I could see the ultimate attraction and some people who are willing to stick it out might enjoy it.
Rating:
Summary: Awesome simulation....
Review: If you like simulations, this game is the best I've encountered so far. Combining nice graphics with great AI, fun surroundings, cool creatures, a fantastic plot, and groovy Easter-Eggs, this game deserves all 5 stars. I can't wait to get Black & White II when it comes out!!!
Rating:
Summary: Lots of bugs!
Review: Very Very interesting idea and one of the buggiest games I've ever played. The auto-save feature is necessary because of all of the crashes BUT after you've been playing awhile the auto-save can take up to several minutes per save, which can be very annoying when you are right in the middle of something interesting and then, bang, auto-save, go take a nap and come back. After looking at Lionhead's site on this software and seeing some of their comments about Quality Assurance (ie: they basically seem to think that it wouldn't be necessary if EA didn't make them do it), I know that I will not be paying full price for any more Lionhead games until they fire whoever is in charge of QA and actually put in place a real QA process. The idea is VERY interesting and that's why they get some points for originality (or at least an original spin on the populas model of games). But they really need a debugger. Quite frankly I'd be happy to play a FUN game with less then state of the art technology, if it is stable and fun. Bells and whistles are great but I'm looking to have fun not get frustrated. Also, the micromanagement required to keep your people alive is very excessive. It takes alot away from the fun of the game. ... Buy The Longest Journey instead, if you are looking for a great (stable and visually appealing) game at an excellent price!
Rating:
Summary: Does for Civilization what Dungeon Siege does for Diablo 2
Review: Graphically this game is pretty good it was maid in 2001 so it is not going to have the greatest graphics. But for the type of game it is they are good. The premise is you are a god and you determine how a town and they're culture will develop. You can be a good god and tend to they're every need or you can be a bad god and torture and kill them for fun. You also get a creature to raise to be good or evil. Good and he will help you're town bad and he will help destoy it. I played this game for 4 hours then I realized that was the training section. So needless to say this game will take along time to beat. I have played for 15 hours or so now and have barely started. This is a good game for people that like RPG's, Strategy games, and Simulation games. Why did I give it a 4 this game is not for everyone. It does not have a lot of action. When you're creature fights with other creatures it is not like Mortal Kombat.
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