Black and White (PC)

You know the feeling, you wish for just one chance to have magic powers, to be all powerful, to 'blow stuff up' or 'Create world peace.' Well the time is now! Play 'Black and White.'As the name states the game revolves around good and evil, and quite simply, you're a God, you take the form of a giant 'hand' in which you move around the world and do your 'Godly thing'. Choose to be evil, or be good and watch the world change to your will. Firstly I should mention graphics, visually stunning, the amount of detail in the game is mind-blowing from small dust plumes as your creature stomps across the land, rolling thunderclouds casting a shadow and rippling rain across the landscape, as well as awesome lighting effects and shadows sent out by an immense variety of sources. All in a totally 3D world, pan, pitch and move in any direction, zoom out until your land is a small blip in the ocean below, complete with the different storm systems, that from above look awesome. Or zoom in to see the individual expressions on each villagers face, and everything in between. I could go on about graphics for a long time, but there's so much more! The storyline in Black and White is an original drama of tense Godly rivalries, Fate, and unseeming plot twists that keep the player enthralled in this totally none-linear plot. The story takes place in the land of Eden, and by completing 'Gold Story Scrolls' which can be activated at any time to allow the player to go at their own pace are what advances the game forward, but also littered across each island are 'Silver Quest Scrolls' these are optional side quests, but grant very useful things such as new miracles and creatures (More on those later)With all this choice its hard to remember the other responsibilities, being a God aint' easy. Black and White really brings out your true inner self. I've always been a 'Good Guy' and so set off playing as a kind, good God. My first task was to find followers, this can be done by impressing towns and getting them to believe, and therefore worship you. As I was a 'Kind God' I helped out by aiding them with harvesting, supplying food to the store, casting showers upon there fields, and healing the sick. The amount of choice of how to play is breathtaking right from the start and really presents loads of replay value. Once I had enough belief from my village, they built a temple, the source of the Godly power, when villagers worship here you gain power, with this power you can cast lots of lovely miracles, hundreds of miracles are at your disposal, each with 3 levels of intensity. There is no 'Right way' to play Black and White, anything goes. To my horror when some of my friends played, instead of gaining belief through charitable means, they simply rained fireballs from the sky, ripped trees from the ground and knocked down buildings, created storms across the land, ripped rocks from mountain peaks, and rolled them into the village centre. As you play and your True self is shown, your world, creature and temple change accordingly, after a month of playing my land was a shining glimmer of beauty, Rainbows and doves flocked around my temple, night came very rarely, and my creature was a sparkling beauty. On my friends user the total opposite was present, his land was a dark charred red, darkness was always present, his temple was a spiky dark haven of evil, Lightning ripped through the sky, and his creature was a clawed vision of murder. I should explain about creatures. When you start you get the choice of three creatures, a Cow, Chimp, and a Tiger. They start very small, and act like their animal counter-parts. But with your training you can make them become evil, or good. I started with the chimp, he was a disgusting little deep red fur ball, that pooped, ate and slept. It took me a while to realise that the AI in the game is so immensely in depth. Your creature learns from you. It copies what you do, and by giving it a quick slap or stroke accordingly, it will know what you like such as not eating villagers, pooping in certain areas, casting its own miracles (it IS a Gods creature after all) such as food and wood miracles to help out towns or if you want an evil creature you could have it eat first born sons, take food from the store, throw fireballs around etc. The creativity is wonderful, but it can't just do simple tasks, it can even manage complex situations. My Chimp would water small trees only, and take large ones to the store, it would catch thrown rocks, and later even fireballs and dispose of them out of the village, and they grow. They start, small but grow VERY big, and change with your alignment, although there are 16 different creatures throughout the game, I have always stuck to the chimp, and now he is a glowing yellowy orange, smart, helpful creature that is very angelic in nature. Your not alone either, there are many rival Gods, some allies, some enemies, all striving for the towns and worship, intense godly battles follow, watch the sky fill ablaze with Godly miracles, its awe inspiring. Watch each of Gods creature battle it out, with you directing its hits, blocks and miracles. Which leaves me and my friend, Good and Evil, Black and White. Very happy to see a LAN and Internet play option, both started it up, and played, the ultimate vision of Ying and Yang. So what can I say, if you want to see who you really are, and don't mind loosing a few months...years...etc...of your life, then Black and White is a fantastic bundle of wonderful Graphics, Gameplay, and Originality.

Black and White is a fantastic games spoiled for many by frequent crashes. It is possible to get it to run on all operating systems but it takes effort. Well worth that effort though.

This would be a great game if it ran properly on xp. The game constantly crashes and its very annoying because you get so far then when you save it, it causes an error and locks up. I really like the game i think the graphics are so cool and the story l89ine is brill its just a shame it doesnt run very well.

Yet another example of a badly playtested game.

Played it on 4 diferent machines. It crashed on all of them constantly and made the game unplayable.

Nice idea.. shame about the game.

I would have been adicted to it if only I could have played it for long enough before it crashed.

A complicated but very good game

Black & White, it says it just by the name. There are good and evil in the world and you are to decide which one will rule eternal. As soon as you have installed the game you get some brilliant pictures, and tips on how to play the game, and this is before you've even click new game.

The graphics are a real head turnner and the quality of sound is imense. I could just sit and say good things about the graphics all day, but that would not be much help to anyone.

So, when the game does load up there is one problem, you can't skip a really long video that to be perfectly honest is a bit crud. You know the kids not going to die but thats how it goes.

The tutorial is excellent it teaches you all the basic camera moves and positions you'll need to play the game well. Also the tutorial doesn't stop there, when you obtain a creature, a woman called Sable, teaches you how to use him to the best of his/her ability. After that a giant creature teaches you how to use one-shot miracles and how to fight, the creature that teaches you changes depending on what creature you choose. When you finally reach land two you will get another tutorial from a friendly god called Khazar, isn't his turtle pretty!

The story line is a brilliant, with twists and turns every step of the way. To advance through the story, you must complete gold-story scrolls, but there are many silver-story scrolls which could provide a new creature that you can swap to, or a one-shot miracle despencer, or maybe something totally different.

The temple is your focus point, if it gets blown up, your dead!

Talking of miracles the selection is huge and each one comes in three different levels, you can make food and wood appear out of thin air, if that is your type of play. However, for all you destructive forces out there who what to rain terror down from the sky in a hail of flames and vengence, then the are powers such a fireball and lightning bolt which with fry buildings, and people, when struck by your awful wrath. The most powerful weapon of the gods, is Mega Blast. In it's simplest form it delivers one beam of focused energy to the ground, blowing up anything below it, but the real fun starts when you get the extreme version of Mega Blast. This delivers one beam right in the centre of where you targeted it, followed by a malestrum of beams that will destroy a temple! However, you may only be able to use this power once as it requires a hell of alot of worshipedd energy.

I think i have covered all the brilliant points of the game, oh and did i mention the graphics being sooooooo good!? So i did..... damn!

KABOOM!

You are god. Not thee god but you are a god in a world controlled by a number of gods. Are you a good god or a bad god? Well that is entirely up to you! Yes, gone are the days where you have to follow the story line to continue till the next level. You have goals to complete, but you can do what ever you want to achieve them.

You start off as a neutral god, neither good nor bad, in control of a small village, the more people worship you the stronger you get. How do you get them to worship you. Either by cruel or kind and with the help of a magical creature who aids you on your tasks. Also to help you is your conscience which talk to you giving you ideas on what you could do. You good conscience is a well spoken little white bearded man floating on a cloud, while your bad conscience is a little New York flying red devil in a black G-String.

Lets start with the villagers. The are a number of different tribes, some live in wooden huts, some medieval stone houses, some brick almost mediterranean houses, who either worship a god or no god. If a few people in the village worship you, you get a circle of influence inside which you and do your deeds like throw cast spells, throw rock, or even people! The more people worship you the larger area you can influence. You get more people believing in you by impressing them. You can help them by using magic to grow forests, make it rain on crops and trees to make them grow faster or heal the sick. You can also move people around your influence area and designate them jobs by putting them near certain objects. For example, putting a man and woman together with make them breeders and produce babies who will grow and worship you, more magic for you then. Put people in fields and they will be come farmers who will look after the fields and put the grain into a food storage, people in a by a forest will cut trees for houses, to name a few. There are also builders and workshop people who make crates which you combine to make houses, temples, fields and others, when you place them down the builders get to work making the building where you placed the crate. You have to have houses for your people or they will not breed.

Next onto the controls. All you have is your mouse represented by a hand on the screen and only 3 icons at the bottom of the screen used for your creature, (More on that later) and to activate your last magic spell. To activate your magic you have to move in a pattern which you are taught in the tutorials. To activate a spell you move your mouse in circles with each circle getting smaller, almost like a corkscrew effect. The shape you make will appear on the ground with light shooting up which looks very impressive. The icons will be shown on the bottom of the screen with the shape needed to activate them. At first you think that its a long way of activating a spell and you never get them right. But after a while you will know all the gestures to activate a spell and you blend one into the other, and the computer is clever enough to know what you are after. You the click on the area you want your spell to activate, and if there are people around you, you will impress them and your strength will grow. However people get bored of the same magic trick over and over until no one is bothered about it.

The idea of the game it to kill the other gods of the level. And how do you kill a god? You make people not believe in them and they will disappear. But most of the time the towns which believe in the other gods and thus keeping him alive are out of your influence area so your magic wont work there. While you are growing your own town and make you stronger, you can send out your creature to the other town.

Your creature range from a Cow, Bear, Turtle, Tiger, Ape over 9 animals if I remember. Some you get when you complete special tasks. Each creature has its own attributes. The Tiger is a better fighter but slower learner, Ape fast learner but not too good a fighter for example. You control your creature by 3 leashes, a kind one, aggressive and learning. Put the kind leash on your creature using one of the hand gestures and your creature will be kind to people, doing magic, giving them food, putting them into groups, farmer, breeder etc. and even dance for them. This helps greatly because your creature can do all of this outside your area of influence. The aggressive one is used to attack other villagers, if the villagers are wiped out completely then the god dies, and it's used to attack other god's creatures in a kung-fu fight, which is very well. Its entertaining and challenging too.

The learning leash is used to when you want to teach your creature. Do a magic trick with while he has it on and after watching it a few times will try to copy you until the get the hang of it. Your creature needs attention in the early years while it is small and in experienced and will make many mistakes, like eating people cattle and smashing houses. One time I taught my Cow how to kick a beach ball, then the Cow thought it was funny to kick a sheep over a mountain. For this I had to punish the creature, because that is not what I wanted my creature to do. To do this you have to slap your creature, it then knows that it has done wrong and will not do it again. Like wise you can praise your creature by tickling, scratching and stroking it, this means that is knows that it has done good.

I hope you are still with me because here comes the best but about the game. You can be bad or good. You can influence people by being nice, or by burning houses or throwing a few people. On the first level some ones husband has gone missing and if you find him she will give you a sacred stone. Being good you can bring him back safely and she will be thankful and give you the stone, or you can find him, kill him and place the body in front of her, smash her house and take the stone anyway. The possibilities are huge. A good way to influence people out your area is to throw fire balls over them and burn a few houses, if you want to be evil. Your creature can become evil with you, killing people, eating grain, smashing houses to help your influence.

The nice part about being good or evil is the way your creature and your control hand change. Being nice, my Cow (Yes Cow) was bright white with black patches and looked a little goofy. As evil cow, he became red and black, with huge horns and teeth and a nose ring. And instead of walking like tellytubbie with a wiggling bum action, the evil cow walked with a hunched back taking log heavy strides. This change doesn't happen all of a sudden. The hunch starts off subtle, the horns are tiny and the colour, over time, fades.

Your control hand changes too, from an nice normal looking hand to a red, evil long nailed hand.

This game has lots of life, but not enough. Once you have finished the game as a good or bad player, you should then do it again being the opposite. The on line gaming is great too, so you can play against friends or strangers over the net. I'm not an online gamer so after I completed it twice there was nothing left, although I do still play it every now and then.

If you like RGP games then this is a 100% yes for your collection. The graphics are some of the best on the PC, nice, sharp and colourful. The sound nothing too special, it sets the scene nicely and the banter between the good and bad conscience are funny. Anyway sound it not a major thing on a RPG.

You can get lost for hours in the game and you, for some reason get very attached to your creature to the point where you don't like it being hurt, which is worrying really. I wouldn't recommend this game for anyone younger than 10 or 12 not because of the content but because at times there are lots of things going on at once, too much for a younger person. However I think that they will find the first 2 or 3 levels very enjoyable before getting onto the harder levels, which they may be able to cope with.

All in all one of the best games in the world, but not everyone's cup of tea.

Sweet RPG if you want to call it that!! (you do roll play)

The God Part is cool and making people do stuff for you is nice and fighting other beasts if fun.

Black&White although NOT original is still one of the best games available on the PC to date. With the mix of many gaming styles, if proves to be one for everyone.

You play god, and with your creature at your side, you conquer lands by making villagers "believe" in you. This game has many plots that evolve as the game progresses, and with many sub-plots this game can last a life-time.

Congratulations to Lionhead for this title..which undoubtably will be in the charts for some time to come.