ou know, I can think of something and make it real ... how cool is that?" These are the words of Lionhead founder and cosmos-carpenting crackerjack Peter Molyneux, the creative impetus behind some of the most eclectic "games" the entertainment industry's seen. His Black & White 2 is the sequel to everyone's 2001 strategy game of the year, a morality simulation that posed players as a god whose job was to "inspire" various island populations to prosperity through either beneficent or menacing acts.
That's still the gist of things the second time around. Instead of using Neolithic tribes, Black & White 2 loosely incorporates history's Greek, Aztec, Norse and Japanese civilizations. Players control the Greeks through eight island scenarios culminating in a confrontation with the warmongering Aztecs (who, it will shock modern historians to learn, were apparently behind the Greek's initial decline all those millennia ago). Each island has dozens of mini-goals, represented by glowing scrolls that, when completed, generate tribute. Tribute is then used to purchase better buildings, embellishments and god powers that let players water fields, toss meteors and eventually create epic events like earthquakes and hurricanes. The overarching goal is to win control of an island by either building an awe-inspiring city and impressing the population into affiliation, or assaulting the town centers with siege weapons and troops.
Central to Black & White was the player's creature, a tamagotchi-style pet that could be tickled or slapped (literally, with a virtual hand) to induce it to acts of kindness (caring for villagers, helping them build and defending them) or bestial insanity (stomping on, juggling and eating them). Over time, the creature's actions—good or evil—would cause it to assume either a radiant or a diabolical physique. The main complaint, however, was that the interface hid too much from players, making the game's modus operandi impenetrable and success too serendipitous. In Black & White 2, the creature (you pick—lion, wolf, monkey or cow) is back, but the player-as-god is now armed with a sim-like diagnostic readout that provides text feedback about what the creature is doing and why. This concept extends through the entire game, and a player's town center now reveals numerical city demographics and indicates which buildings or resources citizens desire, while an alignment plinth denotes overall progress toward good (a whitish fountain) or evil (yellow flames).
Black & White 2 is played exclusively with the mouse and a few function-key shortcuts tossed in to access a new menu bar where players can make structural purchases, check mission objectives and assign creature roles. Left-clicking executes an action, while right-clicking is used to "grab" the terrain and drag the camera around. The middle button/wheel is used to scroll-zoom in/out, or to pitch the camera up, down and in a circle by clicking, holding and dragging in the desired direction. There is no multiplayer or online ladder mode, and no sandbox or skirmishing option.
You choose, you win
Molyneux's games have been accused of being fun, insipid, brainless, brilliant, fun to play, boring as hell and most auspiciously "like poking an anthill with a stick." Black & White 2 quashes the negative half of those reactions by peeling back the design layers and giving players a thorough look at the gremlins under the hood. The result is a much better and accessible overall game experience than Black & White's abiding guesswork, but sometimes at the expense of the original's charming inscrutability.
Getting things done in Black & White took patience, experimentation and a willingness to ponder philosophical enigmas like "Why won't my creature poop?" Black & White 2 eliminates much of the "huh?" factor by injecting pop-up balloons that explain exactly what's causing what and how to adjust it. If your creature is ranging about and ripping trees from the ground (evil), a quick click-and-slap can eliminate that behavior forever; likewise, if your creature is too vegan for your liking, a tender belly rub while he's hungry and holding a terrified citizen will incite him to begin popping fleshy snacks. There are all kinds of creature behaviors to tweak, and the upside of these new precision controls is that your creature is a far more reliable expression of your will as god. The downside, however, is that the creature never seems to fall back into bad habits when it gets depressed, making it less a pet than a pet robot.
As such, after hitting the proper switches with the creature, you can pretty much leave it alone and focus on Black & White 2's new core gameplay: city-building. In the early islands, the easiest way to win is by building an impressive city, placing temples, graveyards, altars, columns, etc. in optimal spots and luring villagers from without to your side. As the enemy AI gets more aggressive, it becomes necessary to juggle city audacity with military prowess, though combat units are limited to melee, ranged and siege, and battles have limited tactical depth. Being evil is pretty easy, too, compared to being good, and makes the game feel a tad biased (you'll want to play as good for the real challenge). While nothing feels broken, the game's simplicity in these areas makes some of its ideas seem unfinished.
Visually, Black & White 2 soars, and each island is its own awesome "microtopia," whether zoomed out to spot a patch of rumbling rainclouds coalescing over a valley or down in the gently billowing grass as little black creep-crawlies scurry in chaotic droves. Audio design splendidly meshes with the visual: Wind swirls around mountaintops, and people converse casually along lamplit streets, against a backdrop of chirruping crickets. Altogether Black & White 2 exudes atmosphere up to its divine armpits.
With a sandbox mode, multiplayer, a creature that can misbehave even after being "locked in," more hitches to playing as "evil" and a more sophisticated combat system, Black & White 2's mechanics would finally live up to its "would-be" great ideas. Don't let that stop you from giving it a shot, however, if novelty grounded in solid real-time gaming is enough to float your boat.
You could accuse Peter Molyneux of being a modern-day Rube Goldberg, but that would be too shallow. What he has are bold ideas that never quite come together seamlessly, but are sure as heck cool to play with ... for a while, anyway.
—Matt
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