s Black & White begins, each player assumes the role of a newly formed deity, given power by the need of a small group of worshipers. Players guide their groups of villagers, expand their influence to other groups and control and train powerful creatures to serve as their avatars. Guiding the civilization is an exercise in managing the needs of its members. Monitoring and managing the civilization's resources feels at times much like playing a real-time strategy game. Black & White stays true to its divine theme by including special followers, called disciples, that do only one thing but do it extremely well. Each player makes different disciples as the game progresses, and managing the ever-changing mix of disciples is the key to guiding the civilization.
Black & White is ultimately a game about leading a small civilization, but most of each player's power rests in the form of a powerful avatar creature. How players choose and train their creatures shapes
the civilizations they control, and gives Black & White its name. Interacting with a creature involves rewarding it for desirable behavior and punishing it when it does something wrong. Guiding the creature in this fashion ultimately guides the civilization, as the more mundane followers will either grow to fear or revere the creature and the player behind it.
Black & White is about the choice between good and evil, and each of the game's elements (managing a small civilization and training a giant, intelligent creature) reflects different aspects of the choice. Throughout the game, representatives of each choice (elements of each deity's conscience) urge the player to make choices that are either good or evil, black or white. These choices affect many parts of the game, including how the villagers
and the creature act, how the civilization grows and even how the world
looks on screen.
It's a glorious thing to be a god
Black & White breaks new ground though a combination of overall solid design and one astounding game feature--the creature you train and teach throughout the game. Hours of repeat gameplay are the most telling testament of a game's quality, and Black & White delivers. If Black & White has a flaw, it's in the single-player campaign's story. Between forgettable lines about fighting an evil deity called Nemesis, however, lies some of the most engrossing gameplay to hit the PC. Interacting with your creature alone is worth playing the game, and the rest of the game's features, if a bit overshadowed by the creature, are consistently well designed.
The sound, graphics and gameplay in Black & White are all solid, and in places excellent. The game's breakthrough, however, comes in the form of one amazing element--the avatar creature that each player chooses. The creatures grow from relatively small, simple things to powerful representatives of the player's divine will. Teaching the creature is engrossing, rewarding and at times simply amazing. Each creature has an amazing facility to learn from the rewards and punishments meted out for various behaviors, and a tremendous ability to act on its own. Without a doubt, the creatures steal the show, even amidst the other excellent game elements.
The game's quality extends to its tutorial elements, which blend nicely into the first parts of the single-player game. The representatives of good and evil have good, consistent voice acting behind them, and guide new players through the game with short, engaging advice. To top all this off, Black & White offers a light touch of humor that is almost always successful. Overall, the game's few faults are easily ignored, and its one grand achievement, the lifelike avatar creatures, offers varied and engaging gameplay.
Easily one of the best games of the past year, Black & White seamlessly lets you do what all gamers secretly want to do--play god.
-- Jesse
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