Black or White? (Black and White (PC))

Member Name: R_Easton

Product:	Black and White (PC)
Date:	29/09/01 (60 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Innovative, Addictive

Disadvantages: Bugged, Short(for production time)

Black box or white box? This is the first of many decisions you will make in this huge R.T.S game. At every point in the game, you can choose whether to choose the ‘Good’ or the ‘Bad’ way of doing things. One good example of this, in the first land you must get a ‘Gate Stone’ from a villager. She asks you to find her missing husband and then she will give you the stone. You could do as she asks, or you could forget about her lost husband, knock her house down, take the stone and maybe sacrifice her while you’re at it.

The story of the game is that you control a newly created god (one is created everytime someone prays), fighting for power and the belief of the people of Eden. You must convince people of your godly power by use of ‘miracles’. You could use good miracles like food or wood creation (these are the two resources in the game) miracles to assist people, or lightning and fireball miracles to scare them. The people all live in villages, and when enough people in the village believe in you, the village is yours to control. On later levels there are other gods, competing for power with you, and they will gain your villages if you do not continue to impress the people. Of course, it can go the other way…

You have a ‘circle of influence’, which is decided by how many villages you control, and how big they are. It grows as your population grows. You can’t do anything outside of your circle of influence, not pick things up or cast miracles. The only way to do things outside of your circle of influence is through the help of your creature.

Your ‘creature’ is a giant monkey/tiger/cow (and more animals are available later on in the game), which can grow up to about 100ft tall. You can train you creature to do anything you want. He (or she) can do anything that you can do, as long as you have taught him how to. You train the creature in t
hree ways. The first is rewarding or punishing him for his actions by stroking or slapping him. You can also find out what they are thinking and so you can reward or punish them for their thoughts.

The second way is to tell your creature exactly what to do. You click on the thing that you want your creature to interact with/pick up and they will do that. You then either click where you want them to put that thing, or can stroke or slap them to make them do something with it. Slapping will make them drop it and stroking will make them eat it. The will eat anything if you tell them to, including people.

The third, and most useful are the three leashes. The first is the leash of learning. This helps you to tell the creature what to do, and will also make the creature watch what you, or what you have clicked on, is doing. He can learn to these things if he seems them enough. The second is the leash of compassion. This is similar, but encourages your creature to do nice/generous things. The leash of aggression encourages you creature to do angry/violent things. Through these things you creature can be trained anyway you like. You can even play the game one way, and encourage the creature to do something else.

Many things change in the game, depending on the way you play it. Your creature’s appearance will get lighter or darker, depending on how good or bad they are. The mouse cursor (a hand) will do the same for you. Your believers will act differently depending on the way you play. If you play it the ‘Bad’ way, they will work more and socialise less. This means more work is done, but fewer babies are born in your villages.

This is the best bit about the game really, all the little details that Lionhead put in. Many of the features aren’t written in the instruction manual and you will have to discover them for yourself. Only yesterday, I discovered something new and interesting. I found that
not only can your creature get taller, he can also get fatter and thinner. I had left mine in his pen for about an hour (a lot longer in game time) where there was plenty of food but he couldn’t get any exercise. When I remembered him I found he was excessively fat. A couple of long walks around the island soon sorted that…

The control system is also very clever as it only uses the mouse. There are keyboard shortcuts (I recommend you do learn these), but don’t need to be used. You may be thinking that this isn’t especially original as games like Command & Conquer also just use the mouse. This is better than that though, as it doesn’t have any on-screen icons. The game is played with just the Action button and the Move button, or sometimes a combination of the two. The move button is used to pull yourself around the landscape, and when you move it to the edge of the screen you can rotate the view, or change the height of the view. To zoom in and out you hold both mouse buttons, and move the mouse up or down. The action button is used for picking things up and interacting with things. To cast miracles you must draw special shapes on the ground. You first draw either a clockwise or anti-clockwise circle to choose the type of miracle. You then draw different shapes for miracles, like a heart shape for a healing miracle and a rounded E for food creation.

The graphics in the game are also amazing. The landscapes, items and people animations are all very detailed, especially when you consider the size of the levels. The game barely ever has to slow down to load information, but it does take a while to load at the start. Some of the small details, as with the gameplay, are the best. People yarn when they get up in the morning and their health is also shown. They will walk or run if healthy, walk slower with a limp if ill or old and if they are close to death, they will crawl, still dedicated to their job. T
his is another good example of the good/bad choices. A kind caring god will cast a healing spell on the Ill, whilst a crueller one will ignore them or even sacrifice them, as they are close to death.

Prayer power is needed to cast every miracle. It can be got by sacrificing people, animals or plants and by sending people to worship at the temple. When you raise the village totem the people head up to the temple to dance and chant round the altar. As they do this your prayer power goes up, and you are able to cast more powerful miracles. When you cast the miracles the power goes down again.

Some people will complain the game is too short, and it is if you play through the game as fast as possible. If you experiment, and test, and train your creature you will find it will last you a lot longer. There are two scrolls in the game; Gold and Silver. Gold scrolls continue you with the story, whilst silver ones are side quests. If you play through these side quests (some will take longer than others) you will find the game lasts longer also. This game is a real classic and worthy of going in anyone’s collection.

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