Rating: Summary: Worth the wait Review: I work in a computer shop in England and this game is selling like crazy and i managed to get a copy(privilige of working in the shop) This game has amazing graphics and the gameplay is unreal. You have to raise a creature and you choose the path that you want it to go down. Your creature can be good and nobel or it can be evil. The interaction on this game is good and you will want to play this game again and again. This is the best game to come out on the pc for a long time
Rating: Summary: Not that fun Review: I had heared a bunch of good stuff about this game, so I tried it. I don't see what everyone else is so pleased with. The controls are agrivating, or at least they were to me. I do agree that the graphics were nice, but the game itself is not that enjoyable. If you think you'd still like to try the game, feel free, but there are much better games out there.
Rating: Summary: I normally don't write reviews but.... Review: I normally don't write reviews for games. I like to keep my comments limited to word of mouth. But this game has forced me to change all that. I ordered the game last week from Amazon and was both excited and scared. I owned and kind of hated Populous, and downright despised Dungeon Keeper (the interface held it way back). I heard the concept of the game three years ago and watched from afar. It seemed like the game was too ambitious to please a skeptic like myself. Now after playing this game for 5 days nonstop (except for studying for Biochemistry) all I can say is that the game is by far one of the best games ever made. The game not only creates a world, but it's AI and atmosphere create one of the best experiences ever in gaming history. I state again that this is far more than a game...it is an experience. Buy this game today!!!!! I guarantee you will not be disappointed!!!
Rating: Summary: The Sims meets Virtual Pet Extravaganza. Review: The world's leader Computer Gaming magazine, PC Gamer, pointed out BLACK and WHITE as the hottest and most promising RTS titles in years. That was four years ago. The game has hit the shelves surrounded by a tremendous amount of hype. Of course that is to be expected, having been delayed so much. First of all, had this game been released before The Sims, it would have been hailed as a revolutionary triumph. Had this game been released a year ago, it would have been the visionary break through. The God Game. Unfortunately for Black and White, the Sims has already done that. Before I get into the detail of this game, I can tell you, if you loved The Sims, you will love this game. Even though on the surface, both are completely different titles, at their hearts they are similar. First of all, don't let the God gaming Genre fool you. This is a Real Time Strategy, with a mask. A mask which is quite gorgeous and brilliant at times. Almost makes you forget that you are playing an RTS. However after 8 addictive hours, you will realize that this is just a really good strategy game. The God elements are good, but not ground breaking. This game is quite amusing and will have you grinning for hours. After all no one will forget the first time, they toss a villager into the sea, or slapping their pet into oblivion! The strategy elements are quite good, and the competition between other villages is addictive. If you get bored of single player, you can challenge other's online to your glee. The only downside to this game is, after you get through all that great fun, you do eventually realize that this game is a bit typical at it's core. And at times certain things will tax your patience. However this game is a great buy. Along with Tribes2, this is currently the hottest title of the year. Enjoy.
Rating: Summary: Flawed perfection Review: Like many other reviewers of this game I had heard about it over a year ago and have been looking forward to it. I was enthralled with Creatures (although Creatures II was a complete disaster), and enjoyed the Sims, so I was looking forward to a similar experience. I also like the Heroes of Might and Magic series. Black & White reminds me of all of these but more so. It is beautiful. The way you move about the landscape and pan in and out gives a sense of freedom I've never experienced in another game. You can swoop way up in the sky until the land is a little island, then double click on the spot you want to go to and you swoop back down. You can zoom in so closely that you can see a worm wiggling in an apple or see inside a house. You can reach inside the creche and grab the dice that your creature is so enthralled with. And all this without things fading off in the distance the way they do in most games. A couple of misconceptions I read in other reviews deserve to be debunked. First of all, you and your creature become good or evil independently. You can be a good god with an evil cow, or an evil god with a good tiger. Whether you are considered good or evil depends on how you (or your creature) behave. If you kill a lot of villagers, if your solution to a quest is to crush the house and grab the rock the villager is hiding from you, if your method of taking posession of a new village involves lots of lightning bolts and fireballs then you will become more and more evil. The appearance of your hand (your representation in the game) will reflect your evil orientation. If you feed villagers, help the villager find her sick brother so she'll give you the rock, and take posession of the village through missionaries, traders, and miracles you will become more good. Your creature becomes good or evil depending on how many bad deeds (i.e. eating villagers) or good deeds (i.e. replenishing the village food supply) your creature does. You can fairly easily influence his behavior via a combination of reward and punishment and the judicious use of the learning, compassion, and aggression leashes. The gameplay is also different depending on how you choose to go about it. If you solve certain quests via mayhem you will be rewarded with the ability to create more mayhem (like a Lightning Bolt Miracle) while if you solve the quest in a non-violent way you will receive a similar miracle (like a Water Miracle). On the downside, the game has some serious technical flaws. The developers, Lionhead Software, have posted an announcement stating that a patch will be forthcoming promptly, but in the meantime the game crashes and freezes and slows down far too often. And the Black & White website which is supposed to be an integral part of the whole B&W experience is still not functioning. Also, the online game playing interface is confusing at best and incomprehensible at worst. Although I believe them when they state that they did not release a "beta" version of the game, I also believe that they were pushed into releasing the game before they would have liked to due to their arrangement with EA. So these technical problems have turned a game with a 5 star concept and 5 star gameplay into a 4 star review.
Rating: Summary: Refreshing Originality in Gaming Review: Have you ever tried to explain what Black and White is to somebody? That's what often happens when friends wander into my dorm room and point to the screen at my large cow, wandering through my village amongst forresters, farmers, breeders, disciples, and worshippers. "What is it?" they ask. "Well," I start. "You play God..." How cool is that? But you see, it's just the tip of the iceberg. It would be quick if I could say "Well, basicially it's just like this other game, the..." But it's not. Black and White is, as they say, a true original. No matter how long I take explaining to someone what Black and White is (and trust me, for some people, I've taken quite a while), I'm still left with this feeling like I haven't said enough -- there is still more to say, but still saying anymore would be futile. It's very hard to describe a game like this. To be cliche once again, it has to be experienced. One thing does come to mind that I must emphasize: In the day where graphics are emphasized over a good gameplay experience, Black and White is the iconoclast: The real pearl of this game must be the artificial intelligence, or AI, of your creature. The AI in this game is incredible. Teaching your "pet" is a very rewarding experience. How good is it? I've taught my creature to skip rocks; I've taught him to eat sheep and not pigs; I've taught him to poop in the fields to provide natural fertilizer. The AI, in my opinion, is what makes this game -- not the high-resolution support you'd typically see plastered on a first person shooter (which I dig too, but not like this). Experience this game. Buy it -- you won't be disappointed.
Rating: Summary: DON'T BOTHER Review: Just like everyone else, I waited forever for the release of this over-hyped "let down". First off, it does not work with my video driver (ATI RAGE MOBILITY). I get this annoying blue strobe. Of course getting any help out of the manufacturer is IMPOSSIBLE. The game crashes constantly and is actually really boring to play. Everyone seems to be so amazed by the graphics, but I find them average at best (I see better graphics on my playstation). Anyway, don't even waste your money and time on this "half finished" waste of a CD-ROM.
Rating: Summary: There isn't as much micromanagement as some say Review: The game looks spectacular. I think everyone agrees, but some say there's too much micromanagement. This isn't necessarily so. For one thing, you don't have to pay any attention to your cow to play. He might die, but he reincarnates at the same level at the temple. All you lose is his location in the game. When it comes to taking care of the villagers, there is a trick that's in the manual for some miracles. Get a wood miracle ready and take your hand over to the store. Your hand needs to be off the ground. To get the right height put your hand over the wall running through the middle of the store and start right clicking fast. Experiment. With a little effort, you can get 60,000 food or wood from a single miracle. Just get the right rhythm going with the right click. The creatures do a lot of amazing and funny things, but if I were to sum this review up, I'd say you need to look at Black and White as sort of a toy with a lot of experimental qualities. The quest or missions are not the high point. The high point is the trip, the fiddling around with things. The game is sort of like a combination of Seven Kingdoms, Age of Empires and a few other things. It's a whole new weird world of it's own.
Rating: Summary: Excellent, but... Review: To put it simply this game is great. Top notch graphics, sound, etc. The controls are very innovative and easy to learn. They can be a little imprecise at times but than again all games have tiny flaws. THE ONE MAJOR DRAWBACK TO THIS GAME is that it is huge. There will be massive slowdown, and bad graphics if you only have a pentium 3 or lower and a video card (not a graphics card). That was my setup when I first got the game. The game was too slow to play. However I purchesed a fairly cheap ... graphics card. This makes the game much faster and better looking. however part of the problem is with older computers the hard drive are simply not fast enough. But if you have a good computer and a very nice graphics card you're gold. The whole world of black and wihte is creative, the way you interact with villagers, the tasks, and especially your creature, who sometimes becomes really disobedient without warning. But these are tiny scratches in this game's otherwise perfect appearence, Get this game! It is one of the most innovative games of our time.
Rating: Summary: Black and White rocks, most innovative game ever Review: Right out of the box Black and White worked without a glitch. This is by far the most innovative game to date, and also very fun to play, can you get any better than this? Check out Black and White for yourself and prepare to be emmersed in another world, where the game become "you".
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