The box says it all “What kind of god will you be?” and this defines the whole of Black And White. If you’ve been oblivious to this title for the last 6 months, then the game is a god simulator. You fight other gods to win influence over a land of tribes, using whatever godly powers you so wish. It has a story, which despite its non-linear soundings you do have to follow to get anywhere in the game. This pits you against an evil god called Nemesis, the most powerful god in the world of Eden. And as the quote I gave above signifies (and the title on the box), you can be a good or an evil god.
So what do you do as ‘god’? You have the whole of an island (each level or ‘lands’) to explore. Well, to gain power you need belief. The more that believe in you the greater ‘influence’ you have. The greater influence and the more worshippers you have the more powerful you become.
With your two sides of your conscience (yes you get a talking good guy and bad guy) you strive to take over villages with your presence by making the inhabitants believe in you and worship you. If they really believe in you they may align themselves to you, in which case you gain more influence and more freedom to move around the level.
So what else is there apart from that? Well you get a creature to command. This creature is a giant oversized beast in which you have to teach (almost like a tamagotchi type thing), and use in your bidding. This adds a nice touch to the game (in theory, see below) as it makes the game a lot more interesting and is certainly different to other gods games. Other gods of course have creatures and battles between beasts become inevitable.
Combined with other godly features like spells and the ability to physically interact with the land you have a lot of different aspects to the game.
Sounds good so far doesn’t it? But does it deliver? I have played many god and strategy games (at one time they were my favourite type of genre), and I must say that for a godly presence you are pretty pathetic! Your powers are hardly divine and impressing villagers with ‘flocks of birds’ is not very inspiring. Considering conjuring a fireball and hurtling it towards a village, or picking up a villager and throwing him across the level has less an effect on their belief than parlour tricks like the ‘flock’ just doesn’t make sense (yes evil is fun. In fact note the first screenshot where you can just see a child being thrown into the sea! LOL)! Taking over a village seems more a case of doing tricks and giving them exactly what they want. Thus this makes playing Evil very difficult and the game is meant to be equal so you can play as either side! But for gaining influence being ‘good’ to them is the only real practical way forward.
The micro-management of these villagers’ lives is also tedious to the extreme. When you start you have one village under your control. Even then the demands they give are 1) Unrealistic and 2) Incredibly infuriating. So you think what happens when you have 6 towns under your control (like the later levels)!
So why is it unrealistic and infuriating? Well the Villages AI is so very poor for starters. They sit on their butts and would rather DIE than do anything about anything for themselves. So you give them an order to chop some wood, or grow some food. You come back in five minutes and you hear “Need Food!” and low and behold the buggers are sitting around again! They are simply not self-sufficient! True, the godly influence should provide additional supplies for them to make them happy, but they can’t even keep the bare necessities! They occasionally build structures for themselves, but only rarely. Again you are given the menial tasks and it greatly prevents you doing much else in the game.
So why you could be using your godly powers, you’re too busy most of the time trying to keep your little villagers happy. Even if you’re playing as ‘good’ that’s near impossible as you have other things that need to be done if you want to win. Like expanding, trying to stop the other gods from gaining ground, or tending to your creature.
This is the ONE major aspect of Black And White that puts me off. Lots of people I know love the game at first when they begin. Why? The first level has one village to control, and is fairly self-sufficient. But then, as you progress people start to realise these faults as more villages come under your control and resources quickly diminish for them. Most change their tune real quick.
