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Plot. Unfortunately, I cant give a lot of detail here because my playtime was cut short. Basically, you are a god, and it is in your best interests to have as many worshipers as possible. You can do this by helping them produce food and the like, and by founding new villages. To make this a tad more difficult, there are other gods out there that more than likely will have different views than you, and of course, their own Creature. (Creatures will be covered in Spiffy Stuff, in case you were wondering. This is my pathetic attempt to entice you into finishing this review.) The plot is advanced by floating gold scrolls that appear in various places from time to time. The first set of scrolls sends you on a quest to find your Creature. Completing the scrolls is not necessary, but they are the only way to experience the plot. There are multiple ways of completing the gold scrolls. Your first quest sends you looking for a special rock. One of your believers has it in her house, and will give it to you if you help find a missing relative. As a good god, you can locate the relative and return him. As an evil god, you can destroy the villagers house and take the rock. Secondary quests are indicated by silver scrolls. These are entirely optional, but completing them will generally result in some type of reward or benefit later on. The first silver scroll you encounter leaves you throwing large rocks at another large rock, trying to knock it down so that you demonstrate your power as god. As the game advances, your power base grows, and you can perform miracles, and fight with other gods to defend your self, or claim other lands. Graphics. The graphics in the game are very nice, but one must have a fairly powerful video card to play it. The landscape is gorgeously constructed and detailed, and the people and creatures are very smoothly drawn. The game allows you full range of movement in the land, traversing forward and back, side to side, rotating, looking from different pitches, and zooming, and all the while the picture scrolls smoothly. Other interesting effects involve logging on to a server and downloading your local weather conditions outside your window into the game. i.e. if its raining in real life outside your window, then it is raining in the game. Same thing goes for snowing, fog, and who knows, maybe even hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, and volcanoes. Sound. I cant say a whole lot here, as Im having soundcard problems not related to the game, and in short, every time I played, the sound would die after about 5 minutes. But from what I did hear, all or most of the villages have voices that you can listen to, and/or read the transcript at the bottom, and the game has many sound effects, also random ones like birds chirping or waves on the beach. As far as I can tell, this game is very sound rich. Gameplay. The creators of Black & White were going for a new style in control, and I believe they achieved it. The game has no buttons for selection, like in most other games, but instead you control things by how you move the mouse (there are keyboard shortcuts, of course). The first mouse button is generally used for movement, and the second one for actions. Double clicking will do certain things, as will jerking the mouse sharply, or moving it smoothly. You can also draw figures in the dirt to cast miracles. It is a very unique system. The game also features support for Immersion TouchSense . . . which is a feature on some newer mice. TouchSense is supposed to add tactile feedback to your game, so that you can feel villagers squirming in your hand, etc. As for manuvering about, it is a good system, but the one thing I found annoying about it was that Im used to moving the mouse to the edge of the screen to move, and either clicking there, or having the game auto-scroll. In this game, pitch and rotation are activated at the edge of the screen, and when I was trying to advance forward or wherever, I instead ended up rotating or changing my angle. Im sure some practice would cure me of this, but it was a tad annoying (there, Ive said something bad about the game now, so you can't say I always rate everything about a game good. Maybe I should go rent a bad game sometime, just so I can thrash it and complain about how bad it is . . . ) Difficulty. No clue, I only got to play for a short time. This game strikes me as similar to SimCity though, in that there is no time limit, and you can do whatever you like. Im pretty sure you can die though, if another god attacks and conquers your village, if thats any help. Spiffy Stuff. Creatures! (Also the weather updates, the control style interface, and the touch feedback mouse, but Ive already talked about those). And now you get to find out about these Creatures Ive been going on about. A Creature is your minion, and is kinda like a Tamagachi, or one of those other little digital pet things, whatever they are called. When you first get a Creature, you get to choose between a Wildcat, an Ape, and a Cow. (I chose the cow, of course.) Once you get a pet, you have to feed them and exercise them, and play with them, etc. Your Creature is an extension of you. You can train them to be good or bad, by giving them positive and negative feedback for what they do. For example, if my cow were to randomly eat one of my believers, I could pet and scratch him to reinforce such behavior, or I can smack him around and teach him a lesson. (It is possible to beat the poor creature to death.) A bug in the 1.0 release of the game lets you punish your creature for using the restroom, and results in the creature being constipated. Anyway, the Creature is an extension of yourself. It has a complex AI and will do as you do. Your Creature can also do godly things, and cast miracles, and you can send your Creature out to defend yourself or attack other gods' creatures. You can get another Creature later in the game (14 or so to choose from) and all of your current Creatures knowledge will be transferred so you dont have to retrain them. Another amusing aspect of the game that I havent mentioned yet is your consciences. You have a good one, and an evil one, and both give useful advice, and make suggestions . . . they also bicker with each other a little; its amusing. The game also supports a multiplayer co-op and competitive versions, and you can also do stuff with your creature online, but I was unable to experiment with these aspects. Replay Value. Like I said, this is similar to SimCity, in that you can do whatever you like. Be good one time, evil the next, and so on . . . Summary. OK, this is a short, short version of summary. Creatures good, sound good, graphics good, Creatures rock, kinda like SimCity, requires a more powerful computer to play, and I have to study for a test now. Final Ratings:
Graphics: 9 Sound: 9 Gameplay: 9 Difficulty: 7 Replay: 8 Spiffyness: 10 Study for test -4.37*10^42 Overall: 8.43
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