First Impressions:

IceWolf says:
It's been nearly three years since I first heard of this title, and I've been waiting for it ever since. The local computer stores know me as "the guy who wants to know when Black & White will be in." At long last, my wait is over.

My, oh my. One look at the preview and I was hooked. There is a bit of action, a lot of resource management, and plenty of puzzle solving, so I would consider it a cross-genre god game because, well, you play a god. Much of your interaction with your people occurs through your avatar, a mystical creature of your choice. More on that in the Gameplay section.

Banshee says:
The world is very attractive; the engine's style is similar to that of Shiny's Sacrifice. It really is strangely impressive to be able to do something as simple as skip a stone across the water, even if it takes some time to get the hang of wielding the mouse.

Graphics:

IceWolf says:
I'm afraid the graphics didn't live up to my expectations. The faces of the people don't move as they speak, which reminds me a lot of Nocturne. The people are very blocky; Lionhead could have put in some more polygons. Your creature has several minor graphical glitches that don't detract from game play, but are mildly irritating.

On the other side of the coin, each civilization has its own texture set for the people and their different styles of buildings. The stills are fabulous. Many of the special effects are gorgeously rendered.

Banshee says:
Black & White's graphics are rich and detailed, but also somewhat sluggish at times, even on a fast machine (I tested it on a 1 Ghz Pentium III). Something that I found rather interesting in the game was the player's participation in the actual construction of buildings. In many strategy games, the omniscient player simply delegates this task to a given population. Black & White adds a middle step of allowing the player to tweak and customize the same basic scaffolding blocks to build a small home, a large home, a city building, a field, or a wonder. Although this was fun at first, I soon wished that I could allocate the task to a disciple. This is just one example of the micromanagement complaint discussed in the Gameplay section.

Sound/Music:

IceWolf says:
These are a mixed bag, though it may be my sound card (an ISA Sound Blaster AWE 64). The voices are extremely well done, but the scripting isn't the best. There are places where the sound stutters but again, this may be my card or my system.

It is absolutely vital that players are able to hear what's going on in order to solve at least two of the puzzles. You can progress through the game without solving these two puzzles in particular, but you get extra rewards for completing them.

If you zoom in closely over a village, you'll hear different music depending on the culture. Nicely done! The only problem I ran into was that the background music sometimes interfered with solving puzzles that required listening to notes played in sequence.

Banshee says:
The sound is of decent quality, though the villager voices can get a bit repetitive. These days, I hear "Must build homes!" and "Wow, food!" in my sleep. :) I do like the flavor the different musical styles add to the various peoples, but then again, this is a touch I've almost come to expect in games that deal with different cultures. Overall, it is appropriately atmospheric, especially the very creepy "Death" whisper.

Gameplay:

IceWolf says:
You are a god. Technically, you can be good or evil, and win. However, rumor on the message boards says that you pretty much have to be good. That doesn't bother me so much: I kind of like being a benevolent despot.

In the game, you have two consciences, or "Advisors." One is good; the other, evil. Both provide tutoring, hints, and sometimes annoying comments. When starting a new game, the advisors will begin by showing you how to move around. This initial training is fixed, so you'll have to suffer through it each time you choose to start a new game.

After mastering movement, you are taught how to pick up and carry things. Your people are building you a temple, and you need to bring them food and wood so they can complete it. Still pretty simple. Once your temple is built, you begin to get more options. Scattered around the world are silver and gold scrolls. The gold scrolls advance the story line, and are required to get through the game. The silver scrolls are optional, but completing the puzzles that they trigger results in bonuses of different kinds.

You'll soon click on a gold scroll, which begins the quest to attain your creature. This first quest is in stages and provides a lot of practice in moving around the land of Eden. When you complete it, you'll be given a choice of creatures: the cow, the ape, or the tiger. Each has advantages and disadvantages, though this is not apparent at first; I gave them all a try. Having a creature is essential to winning the game. Raising a creature - for you must train him - is much like dealing with a child at first. Your creature learns from what you do. As he learns, he becomes much easier to manage. Also, the more attention you pay to your creature, the more obedient he becomes. You learn to manage your creature in three or four short lessons.

So, you have a creature. Now what? Well, for one thing, all of a sudden, there are several more silver scrolls available. At least one of these requires that you apply what you've learned about creature management. From what I've gathered, there are generally two endings for each of these silver quests, one good and one evil. (There appear to be neutral results as well. - Banshee) Your reward will differ depending on which ending plays out. Many of them have time limits: if your quest is to rescue someone who's drowning, you must act quickly or they will die.

The game is not completely stable on my Windows 98 system. I've had it crash out to desktop several times, with no pattern that I could discern. Also, it has convinced my computer that its system files need updating every time it boots, which is a major annoyance. According to some of the unofficial message boards, these problems are exacerbated under Windows 2000.

One of the cool things in this game is the ability to cast spells by making gestures: the player can move the mouse in certain specified patterns to produce an effect. The experience is quite different from clicking on a button to cast spells, or selecting a spell from a dropdown list, or any of the usual methods. Unfortunately, sometimes the game doesn't recognize what you're trying to trace, and you'll wind up with a miracle you didn't need. A drawback to the gesture recognition technology is that it is very unfriendly to trackball jockeys like myself.

Banshee says:
Black & White disappointed me here. It seemed like a can't-miss game that was full of potential. Unfortunately, my opinion seems to match the pulse of the other players I've spoken with.

Why? One frequently-cited complaint is that the game is chock-full of micromanagement, to the point of being unenjoyable. I agree with this statement, and I am speaking as someone who was teasingly referred to as "the Goddess of Micromanagement" in my college debate society. Truth be told, to some degree I enjoy the level of control and detail that's typical of strategy games. However, the babysitting was too much even for me in this game, in part because the resource management seems a bit skewed, off-kilter and imbalanced. Particularly in the second area, even if one has built the Norse wonder early on and is attentive to watering forests, getting enough wood to sustain growth seems nearly impossible. I recall one dissatisfied gamer expressing disgust with his people: "They're like locusts!" After playing the game, I can understand his complaint.

The pacing of the game is also frustrating. Although, as stated, the advisors are good about offering help (particularly in the beginning), they often go through things that are important for the player to know only once, so you'd better hope you catch it the first time. Of course the manual can help counterbalance this problem, but since the game offers so much on the job training, as it were, I think it's a fair criticism. In contrast, other things that are not such a priority are repeated ad nauseum. Certain quests also suffer from this "catch it before it disappears" syndrome. Additionally, since it's easy to click scrolls out of order, the game can seem pushy about moving the plot along.

Furthermore, I found the much-touted creature AI to be something of a disappointment. Again, the vox populi of the online community that I've witnessed appears to agree with me on this. I've heard complaints about creatures forgetting learned information far too easily so that you have to go through the hassle of retraining them again and again. Unfortunately, this is a particular weakness of Black & White's tiger: although he's strong, he's somewhat stupid. I had to retrain my tiger repeatedly on how to use the village store. Also, it's too easy to reinforce (or negate) a behavior or action unintentionally. If the player isn't right on the creature at the very moment the animal has completed an action, it's likely that s/he will end up validating or punishing a different action, because the AI has already moved on. Although I had more success with the creature learning things when I took it off the learning leash, I encountered problems when it wandered off into enemy territory and picked a fight with a creature it wasn't ready to face. Not only did it come back scarred, it actually died before I could help it. It regenerated, but seemed damaged by the whole experience.

There are also certain "features" that may bother some readers. As I do not use Microsoft Outlook, I was unable to test this for myself. However, I can at least cite page 64 of the April 2001 issue of Computer Games Magazine as the source for this excerpt:

During installation, the program will scan your Outlook contact list and use names from your address book for some of the villagers. If you are online during game play, when one of your contacts e-mails you, the little villager named after him or her will look for you and wave a letter in his or her hand indicating that you have mail.

Call me paranoid, but I don't like this idea for several reasons. It's not just the uncomfortably-invasive concept of programs hobnobbing that don't rightfully have anything to do with one another. No, it's also the separation of leisure time from productive time. Most of us get enough of the outside world impinging on our recreational gaming time as it is, and we really don't need the game itself forcing the external world into the game sphere's suspension of reality. It's the gaming equivalent of an onstage wall or set piece falling over in the middle of a play: it yanks the player out of his or her immersion in the game setting. Also, programs these days often work poorly enough without commingling with other programs, and indeed, Black & White caused a full system crash on several occasions.

Enjoyment:

IceWolf says:
I admit it: I'm a megalomaniac. I like being a god! Black & White feeds my power-mad tendencies in bucket loads. I also love city-building games (Caesar and that ilk); the game provides that as well. I like puzzle games such as Myst; again, Black & White delivers. So the title appeals to me on many fronts. I liked teaching my creature how to do things, for example, not to eat the villagers.

Unfortunately, in single player mode, replayability is low to nil. Once you've solved a quest, you know the solution. Once you know where to find "X", "X" will always be there, in that spot. True, you may want to try out different creatures, but you'll find it tedious at best to get through the initial training time. Speaking of quests, I strongly recommend saving the game right before triggering a quest. Otherwise, you may find yourself facing something you simply don't know how to resolve, or something that you want to try a different approach with. (IceWolf grumbles something about straying cattle under his breath.)

Saving games is another can of worms. I realize the complexity of Black & White, but it takes an awfully long time to save the game. Furthermore, the Autosave function comes up at the worst possible times. If you are moving your mouse when the "Saving" screen comes up, you can plan on having to zoom out to figure out where you ended up. Sometimes, if you are holding something, that item will be lost or dropped. It seems that the time taken to save the game goes up exponentially as you progress.

Banshee says:
I enjoyed playing with the creature, but didn't find it especially helpful or useful in assisting me with caring for the villages. I wish I'd had more time to play with the tiger, but I had to spend far too much time micromanaging the tribes.

Also, as IceWolf points out above, the game takes a tremendously long time to save and load. No, really, we're not exaggerating. As in, time enough to go to the kitchen and fix yourself a little snack and come back. Perhaps enough time to go over to a friend's kitchen and fix a snack, if the friend lives close by and is willing (okay, now I am exaggerating). This may be okay if you have the autosave turned off, but if a save is happening at those timed intervals . . . well, one can only fix so many snacks. I'm not worried about the issue of replayability, I'm just hoping players have enough patience with the saves to make it through the game once, much less a second time. Of course, I suppose they could amuse themselves by improving their literacy and reading the rather useful manual in the interim, as this helps with some of the non-intuitive aspects of the game. Still, I suspect that most would rather be playing than reading, as that's what they paid their money to do.

Multiplayer:

IceWolf says:
Multiplayer is what will make or break the game, since the single player game has so little replay value. I rated it as a 6 due to the problems I experienced with online play, as indicated below.

Black & White supports LAN and internet multiplayer. LAN play worked fairly well on my 10-Megabit Ethernet LAN, but internet play was another story. I have a cable modem connection, and I expected better performance than what I got. The game would often freeze for several seconds while it was synchronizing with the other players, generally during combat or other periods of high data transfer. I speculate that the problem is not my connection but my system, despite the fact that it meets the recommended specifications. Often, by the time the game unfroze, those few seconds had turned into catastrophic losses: one of my villages had been destroyed, or my creature almost killed, or something equally bad.

Furthermore, there is my pet peeve with most internet play. At my age (I'll be 40 next year), I don't put up with "d00dspeak" or other displays of immaturity that pervade many online games. I cannot stand using "r" as a substitute for are, "plz" for please, and the like. Perhaps it is because my father was an English professor, but that sort of thing drives me stark raving mad!

Multiplayer does work, but I would want a system that far exceeds the recommended specifications before trying it again.

Marketing Efforts Towards Women:

IceWolf says:
Nil. Throughout the game, the creature is referred to as male. Most of the voices are male, with a few villagers being the exception. The manual states that creatures and gods transcend gender, which means that they didn't want to have to write "he or she" a thousand times.

Banshee says:
I really regret having to say this, because I'm sure the team probably meant well. As IceWolf mentioned, the creatures are referred to as male throughout the game. This is a minor point, I suppose, but, frankly, it really bugged me because it would have been so very simple to correct. Its very simplicity, the ease with which it could have been rectified . . . after all that complex AI for the creature, they couldn't fix a simple bit of text? For example, in rewarding your creature with petting, it says "Good boy!" It would have been almost effortless to adjust it to say "Good job!" or "Well done!" or "Good tiger!" and so on. For that matter, if they really wanted to insert gender, a basic string variable that all programmers learn in their first programming class would have been a straightforward solution.

From page 11 of the instruction manual:

Note: Both the game and this manual refer to all creatures as male. Worry not, the true nature of creatures transcends gender, but, being bound by the limitations of language, we refer to the creature as "he" and "him." It's fair to say that since you mold your creature's personality, perhaps in your image, it is likely to be whatever gender you wish it to be.

I'm wondering why they even bothered inserting this bit of text in the manual. Considering the ease with which gender, or lack thereof, could have been handled, to me this paragraph feels like a weak sop acknowledging the issue.

In my interview with designer Peter Molyneux, he stated:

Actually I really wanted the creatures to have no sex at all and the game never refers to them in terms of gender so a lion can be a lion or lioness. I felt it was more powerful for the creature to [be] given a gender by the player.

It seems that someone on the team didn't want this stated goal very badly, in light of the fact that the lion in the game has a mane (only male lions have manes), the less than tactful wording here and there, and the complete and utter lack of any ability to customize the creature's gender.

I realize I am bringing up minor points, but I do so because the amount of effort to fix them would have been just as minor. With that in mind, it honestly seems like blatant and deliberate disregard. After all, with the statement in the manual they clearly realize it was an issue, so why didn't they correct it?

As I said earlier, I am sure the designers meant well; in the brief interaction I had with the Lionhead staffers, they seemed quite nice. It was likely an oversight. Unfortunately, that really seems to typify and summarize all of the problems I had with Black & White. The pacing, the micromanagement . . . likely oversights that could have been resolved with just a bit more effort and time. I don't like criticizing something that was clearly someone's dream, it's just a bit painful to play Black & White and see rough spots that could have been fixed, bits that could have been much better with just a bit more attention and time. The dream could have been better realized.

Overall Impression:

IceWolf says:
I can't decide if I'm disappointed or not. I am enjoying the game very much, yes. I think it's got excellent graphics, and a great story line. I would've loved to see more replayability, more flexibility. After reading some interviews with Molyneux and hearing descriptions of the last hours before the game went gold, I've gotten the impression that the folks at Lionhead got so close to the game that they couldn't see the problems.

Banshee says:
Although Molyneux has been labeled as a Peter Pan figure capable of getting the press and his team to share his enthusiasm at an early point for the ephemeral bits and bytes in his head, it's not entirely Lionhead's fault that the game has been hyped to the moon. Keep in mind that many members of the press followed merrily along. With a bit less cheerleading and press buildup, Black & White might have surprised us with how good it is rather than how much less it has actually turned out to be. After all, it's not all bad, nor am I trying to intimate that this is the case. The game does have some appeal: for example, a very cute moment occurred when I noticed that my tiger was decorating its sleeping space with rocks and planting little trees inside the area. Unfortunately, the animal was a better interior decorator than village manager. Ultimately, I have to agree with IceWolf: with a bit more time and a bit more objectivity from the team members, it likely would have been a better game than it is.

It's ironic: ideally, Black & White should force us to ask questions about ourselves, about good and evil, and about finding solutions both easy and difficult to problems. One of my college majors was philosophy: I get into this stuff. Unfortunately, it's likely that players will find themselves far too busy gathering wood and watering crops to do much more than wonder why their followers aren't self-sufficient enough to allow them time to muse upon more godly matters. No, unfortunately, the only philosophical question it really inspired was one perhaps befitting existentialist Albert Camus. When I put the game down, the question in my mind was not the nature of humanity or myself, but rather: "Is that all there is?"

Links of Interest

The Final Hours of Black & White (GameSpot)