More like grey (Black and White (PC))

Member Name: Stalin

Product:	Black and White (PC)
Date:	27/06/01 (24 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Immpressive creature AI, Innovative ideas, Good engine

Disadvantages: Poor villager AI, Shallow game, Rough around the edges

B&W's development was heavily publicised, and for several good reasons. First, it was a god game, being creating by the master of the genre, Peter Molyneux. Best known for the groundbreaking Populous, there were great hopes for him to pull off another epic.

And it was an epic he promised. Evangelising the game as a huge step forward in gaming generally, people got excited, as they started hearing about the advanced AI that was to create a living, breathing world.

So, have they pulled it off? Upon first loading the game, you are immediately struck the game's enormous "wow" factor. As you are taken through the tutorial, you don't know what to gawk at first. I was literally mesmerised as I picked up a tree and tossed it into the ocean. Then, I picked up a villager and did the same! The detail is incredible. You can interact with practically everything, from mountains to turds (no kidding!). Watching your villagers is also very interesting. You can see them going about their lives, collecting wood, taking their children to the creche, dancing, you name it. And this is even before you meet your creature.

Your creature is like your earthly personification. You can initially choose between a monkey, tiger or – for those of you with more unusual tastes – a cow. More choices open up later. You can instruct your creature to do things such as helping your villagers build new houses, or, later on, to cast miracles. However, he will not always do what you say. When you begin, he is like a baby, and you need to teach him how to do things. It’s a bit like having a tamagochi – only 100 times more realistic! Throw a rock, he will watch. Give him a rock. He’ll wonder what it is. Continue, and eventually learn to throw the rock. It is really satisfying to teach your creature something new. And there are so many things you can do with him. This is one of the most interesting parts of the game.

Every
thing I have described so far does not constitute a game. It is more like a toy. Games have objectives, and B&W is no exception. You and your creature must play across five preset scenarios. The first two are essentially tutorials, leaving only 3 real levels. Not much you may think, and to a certain extent that is true. But the amount you can do in each scenario is astounding. You don’t have to accomplish everything to complete the game, but you should. Otherwise, this would be a very short gaming experience. It’s all about seeing the marvels that the game offers in terms of innovation, not about completing it. Although, I feel that the omission of a free play mode is quite annoying, as this could extend the game’s life considerably.

Once you stop marvelling at the game and start playing it, you begin to see that beneath all of these innovative ideas is a fairly average gaming experience. The heart of the game is real time strategy, building up villages to get you belief, which gives you the power to take over other villages. In theory, you could leave your villagers to gathering resources and building up the town by themselves. However, your villagers seem to be as thick as your creature is clever. They gather resources at a very slow rate, often sitting idly by waiting for you to do the work. And in the end, you do have to do the work. Watering plants may not seem like a very godly activity, but you must do it. “Battles” typically involve lobbing fireballs into nearby villages until you cause enough destruction for people to believe in you. And then once it is captured, its time to rebuild – using those damn brain dead workers!

The challenges you have to undertake follow a similar route. Farmer lost his sheep? Well, you will have to scour every corner of the map until you find them. This is boring at best and aggravating at worst. Not the sorts of adjectives you would want to describe a gaming experience.


Lionhead created the engine for this game from scratch, and it is excellent. The beauty of it is scalability. You can go from viewing your island from a thousand feet high to studying the dirt particles between your creature’s toes in an instant. The landscape is also pretty impressive, with great rolling hills and mountains. Textures are fairly low detail, but that isn’t too important.

Following on from this is the user interface. Or lack of. That’s right, there is absolutely no user interface. There are no buttons on screen to press; everything is done with the mouse. The mouse is used in rather innovative ways. To move, for instance, you “grab” the landscape and pull yourself forward. You stroke your creature by gently rubbing your mouse over its belly. These features all seem very clever, but in fact they are simply annoying. When you start you will be floundering all over the place. With practice you get better, but it never really feels intuitive. There is no alternative either.

Multiplayer does exist, but it is pretty poor. Creature fighting is all that’s currently on offer, and it is very dull. One interesting point is that you can import your single player creature into multiplayer to do battle. However, this merely has the effect of having battles between newbies with a 5-foot tall creature and masters with a 100-foot high one. Not a balanced fight. While the game was in development, we were promised a persistent world to play in. Whether this is coming later is anyone’s guess.

This game is remarkable in the way that it is so incredible in some areas and so appalling in others. You get the feeling that Lionhead was trying to create the most realistic environment they could, a sort of toy to play with, rather than a game. And this is very true. I’d much rather teach my creature to dance with the villagers than actually play the game for the objectives. There are so many big strid
es forward here; it’s just a shame that – as a game – it doesn’t hold together. You should definitely play this game to see these advances, but don’t expect a riveting gaming experience.

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