I Love Being God (Black and White (PC))

Member Name: Gannondorf

Product:	Black and White (PC)
Date:	22/08/02 (53 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great strategy game

Disadvantages: gets boring to fast

Ever-fancied playing God? Well now is the chance to do just that. Do you want to be a good God or an evil God? This is the first thing to decide. The choice is all yours. However you decide to play the game, you will be amazingly surprised at how addictive it is!
Being a God or an Evil God makes no difference to how far you can go in the game. It can be completed by being either. The idea of the game is to play God. You control your world and all the people in it. You can do what you like, there is no right or wrong. You are GOD. You make all the decisions.
You can, if you want, be a good God and help your community.

*You can delegate to your villagers. Everyone is at your command. You can assign the villagers with tasks, and that will be there job. You can have: breeders: they breed and make children (obviously)
Lumberjacks: they chop down wood and bring it back to the village store, builders: they build and repair buildings,
Missionaries: if you drop a villager in a town you do not posses, and then a missionary will impress them and make them believe in you!
Farmers: farmers plant, grow, cut and bring the crops back to the village store to add to your food stockpile.
This is a few of them, but I can’t remember them all!

You can do what they ask of you. If you help them, they may reward you, by believing in you more, and this gives you more power. The more people that believe in you, the more power you have.

Provide food for them, so the villagers don't have to fetch and carry things. Therefore giving them more energy, to worship and sing your praises.

Help with the crops that are being grown, by casting rain miracles, or getting your creature, (who will also gain power along the way, by watching you) to do his business in the fields.

You can help with the chopping down of trees, to provide wood for the community. Therefore providing more buildings, for expansion.

You can b
uild civic buildings, which are:
Workshop: it produces scaffolds to build with
Graveyard: people mourn less, if some one has died and is buried in a graveyard
Wonder: It adds to a particular trait, depending on which tribe you are
And Miracle dispenser: It gives you one-shot miracles

Get as many followers as you can. This provides you with more power. The more power you have the bigger your influence. The bigger your influence, the more you can get away with. Meaning you can hurt more people and no one will care as much as normal!
You can be an evil God. This will not affect the game play, because people will still worship you. They will worship you because they are scared of you, rather than they love you. If you want to be an evil God you can:

Punish people if you want to. You don't need a reason. Go on just be mean.

If someone doesn't do something you want him or her to, why not set fire to his or her house. That will teach them wont it?

If someone really annoys you, you could always get your creature to eat him or her. A good meal for the creature and that villager wont annoy you again. Be careful though, if your creature gets a taste for human flesh, you may have no villagers left.

Don't do what is asked of you. Who are they to ask you to do their chores for them!

I have mentioned the creature a few times. You do not start with a creature; you get the chance to choose one a little later in the game. There are three to choose from.
Tiger: He is a natural fighter and takes a very long time to teach him any miracles.
Cow: I don’t know anything about her, as I have never used her before!
Ape: My favourite, as he is able to learn miracles very quickly and is not weak in battle.

It doesn't matter which one you choose they will all be loyal to you. One is quicker to learn than the others, one is a little lazier than the others, but that doesn't
matter. It is your creature. You can raise how you like. The creature is capable of everything you are. So remember that. They learn from their master.

If the creature miss behaves, then give him a good slap, if you don't want him to do it again, Remember though, punish him straight away, or he wont know what he is being punished for.

If he does something nice for the villagers, then praise him. If you want him to carry on being nice, that is.

Use the three leashes for training him. One is the leash of compassion. He will always do nice things for your villagers if he is wearing this leash. Or the leash of aggression. He will not always be nice with this leash on. Or the leash of learning. He will learn your miracles and spells while on this leash. Things can go wrong though. He needs to practise what he learns.

If you are looking for a God game, that will tax your brain, but give you hours of joy and excitement, then this is the game for you. It is not difficult to play, but you do need to think about some things.

The graphics are the best I've seen. Everything is really clear to see, and it all looks so realistic. You can zoom in and out, so the amount of detail, is really noticeable. That is a nice touch. Everything looks as good far away, as it does close up.

Well I hope that you will go out and buy this game, because I promise you, you will not be disappointed.
It is available at most computer game shops for roughly £20.

Thanks for reading. Alex

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