Black & White

"Good idea that should have been used better"

Introduction-In Black and White players take the role of a God who can choose to be good or evil or a bit of both. You can help the villagers or destroy them, doing certain tasks either good or bad will make your villagers believe in you more or less. As a God you get a type of creature, which you feed, and command. Your creature will either help the villagers or eat them depending on what you teach it to do and how you treat it. He can go into battle with other creatures and impress or destroy foreign villages.

Gameplay-Unless you enjoy battling your creature with another creature a lot, this game seems to have a lack of action. If you throw a fireball at an enemy village, you have to charge up energy from worshipers before you can throw another one. This can get very annoying and it’s kind of like an old musket. The worshipers worship at the worship site and produce energy, which can be used for miracles. The only fast way to capture an enemy village is through use of your creature and this can be frustrating, I’d much rather prefer it if you could use a barrage of fireballs or command an army. After a few hours this game gets super boring and you probably won’t play it again for some time. There are good things about Black and White though such as the ability to help villagers with daily tasks, occasional creature fights, constructing village buildings and if you have a good supply of rocks you can throw them at enemy villages. It is probably more fun destroying your own village rather than the enemies because it’s easier to simply drop a fireball on to a building and watch it catch on fire rather then throwing it from a distance with careful aim and hoping it will hit.

Graphics-The graphics in this game are pretty good; especially the landscape and natural objects such as trees, rocks, animals and water. The buildings also look good and your creature looks excellent. For example when your creature kicks a beach ball and it hits the ground dust actually flies up. The villagers on the other hand have hands with no fingers and some have triangular feet.

Sound- This game has very good sound primarily because of the voices and how they match the characters almost always. The background music is not bad but not too good.

Control- The control in this game is simply bad; to move forward you grab the landscape and pull the mouse towards you. You can’t really do anything with most of the objects in this game except pick them up and throw them. Moving around the map gets very annoying because of the effort it requires and you also don’t even have very good control over your creature and villagers. You can’t even tell the people at the worship site to go get a bite to eat when their hungry; they would rather die worshipping then getting themselves a bite to eat. So every 2 minutes or so you have to put food into the worship site and believe me it’s not an enjoyable task.

Difficulty- The lack of ways to conquer your enemies makes this game very difficult and because you can’t use something like the arrow keys when your creature fights you may find yourself losing a lot at first in this game. Some of the Silver Reward Scroll assignments are very hard to complete and you will probably give up on them quickly. Overall this game is not that easy.

Replay Value- This game gets really boring after 4-6 hours of play and so you can’t have very good replay value with something that isn’t that great itself. Although if you really enjoy Black and White then maybe you can play it over and over again and never lose interest but I seriously don’t think so. There is an online mode to add a bit more replay value.

Overall- Basically a good idea and a good theme but poorly used in most parts of this game.

Gameplay-7
Graphics-8.5
Sound-9
Control-6.5
Difficulty-9
Replay Value-7.5
Overall-7.5

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 03/20/02, Updated 04/18/03