"Good for powertripping with, but a bad game."

When my friend first told me about B&W, I was all excited. ''Hey! A game where I get to be a god! Awesome!'' I thought. Then I played it.

Visuals:
Black & White does have some very nice graphics. Although close up, characters and objects tend to be a little too pointy (animals) or blocky (people), the details increase or decrease appropriately as you zoom, you get excellent color effects (the sky simulates reality very well, changing as though alive), and the lighting effects are superb. Also, some graphics evolve as your character does, reflecting your benevolent or sociopathic disposition. However, it doesn't always reflect movement well, particularly close up (your hand, the cursor, jerks around in tight zoom, and there are some minor clipping problems with heavy zoom).

Sound:
The speech is clear and understandable, and attempts to reflect the characters. However, either the voice actors were sub-par, or their director was at a loss for good ideas). Additionally, the world has various sounds, fitting the events. Most of them aren't annoying. Fires crackle; lightning causes thunder (they even adjust volume for distance); people scream when sacrificed, thrown, crushed, struck by lightning, set on fire, etc. The music's not particularly noteworthy.

But, if sound and graphics quality made a game, D&D would've gone away a long time ago.

Story:
The story starts out well (although you've got to watch a boring, though visually soothing to learn it): there's these people, on this young world, and some of them start to pray when their kid is attacked by sharks. Hence, you are born: their brand-new god. So far, so good (never mind the question of whether or not this world is part of a planet, a whole planet, or whatnot. Gameplay suggests just part, though the plot suggests a planet). You're a deity, people worship you, you can do whatever you want, and the more worshippers you have, the more powerful you become. Sadly, as you go through the first world, you learn the rest of the story. It seems there are other, more powerful, malevolent gods out there. The strongest (and worst) is Nemesis, who will be your, well, nemesis for the rest of the game.

That's right. You have to go fight a war with another god.

If the writers had been on the ball, that wouldn't be bad. However, besides Nemesis, you really only meet two other gods, and the plot involves some strange ''portals'' between worlds (that's right, you're one of those lame not-omniscient, not-omnipotent, not omni-present gods. In other words)... plus, they couldn't think of very many worlds to visit, and they all look the same. And, no matter how far along you get, the other gods will always be further along in their god-hood than you... it gets kind of annoying when it seems that the same rules don't apply to Nemesis as to you... And honestly, who wants to constantly have to fight the other gods? I just want to powertrip over my own little village.

Gameplay:

The basics of the game are quick to learn: move your hand (that's the cursor, and it's the one corporeal part of you) over something, and click to interact with it. Control your creature with various leashes and clicking.

It seems clicking is a skill that must be developed. Because your viewpoint has 360 degree rotation horizontally and 180 degree rotation vertically, along with really impressive zoom features, you all too-often end up clicking on things you didn't mean to click on.

As for that viewpoint: cool idea. And most of the time, it works. But, there's a problem: the mouse controls for the viewpoint are way, way, way too difficult (they involve holding down one or both buttons, moving the mouse forward or backward, clicking on spots on the ground, double-clicking, etc.) The keyboard's easier to use, normally, unless you only need to move a little, which is difficult.

Because of the lousy story, there's not a whole lot for you to do. You get various mini-plots you can solve (They come in some various forms, both fun and not: variations on the sliding-block puzzle, variations on the maze, fish-herding, true mini-quests, etc.) Most, sadly, are short, boring, and hard. There's the main plot, visiting the 5 worlds and fighting Nemesis (yawn). And there's building and maintaining your villages so that you can fight Nemesis. Or have enough spare people that you can afford to intentionally smite some.

You, as a god, are very limited. You can look at whatever you want, but you can only affect the world within your realm of influence, which expands radially from your buildings and is based on how much ''belief'' you have in the area. Within that realm, you can pick up trees, people, animals, and boulders pretty much as often as you want, and you can tell your people where to build. However, other godly powers (making rain, fireballs, lightning, causing food to appear, etc.) are available only through ''miracle dispensers'' which come as part of the landscape or through the worship at your temple - in which case you can only use those powers which come with each village, and only when you have enough power generated by your worshippers. There's a system, called gestures, where by making certain patterns with the cursor, you can load a ''miracle'' wherever you are, instead of looking for the dispenser and clicking the miracle bubble, but it takes several tries unless you're doing a real simple one (if it's @ or 3, it'll work, but if it's the M or W gesture, good luck)

You also get a creature - a giant animal you can train. Good luck training them, though. Even the ''smart'' creatures are pretty much idiots. And, the story eventually involves Nemesis doing things to your creature, on your turf, that you can't do to his, anywhere. Fun, huh? Sometimes creatures fight, and the controls for that were horrendous - click on the opposing creature to hit it there, click on yours to block, click to the side to dodge, or to walk. Meanwhile, your village gets ruined because you can only pay attention to one thing at a time.

Replayability:

The game wasn't all that great to begin with, so why play it again? And, as for its replay ability: all you can do is go back and, if you were evil the first time, be good the second, or vice-versa. You can also choose different creatures. Beyond that, there's no difference in what happens, and fighting Nemesis was tedious enough to begin with. You could do Multi-player, but there's not a whole lot of opponents out there. Probably because they heard rightly: Black & White's not worth buying.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 06/02/02, Updated 06/02/02