Reviews / previews
It's not easy being a god. But that's exactly the position gamers will find themselves in Black & White, a 3D-strategy game that anoints you as supreme being. You'll begin in Eden, a peaceful land inhabited by eight races like the Egyptians, Japanese, and Greeks. Villagers worshipping you will give you mystic energy to cast spells like Shield and Storm, and what you do affects the game and its environment dramatically. Developer Lionhead Studios is working on "Gesture Recognition" technology used in B&W for a unique control method. For example, to cast a firewall spell you'll move the mouse in a circular motion. GR will recognize this movement and determine how strong and accurate it was and cast the spell. If it works, GR technology may mean a whole new way of interacting with games. Look for the colorful Black & White later this year.
-- Danny Lam / GamePro
Supreme Being or Supreme Pain in the Neck?
By creating a beautiful and complex world where you use your godly powers to in?uence events instead of directly controlling them, Black & White looks to be one of the most intriguing real-time strategy games in many moons. After you use your powers to save a small boy, a primitive village builds a temple to worship youand allows you to meddle as much as you want in their affairs. Put a man next to some trees, and he becomes a forester; put him next to a woman, and they fall in love and make babies.
Each of the games 400 single-player mini-quests have multiple methods, including a good one and an evil one. To obtain a special stone from a woman, for example, you can either save her brother or smash her house and take it. Your supernatural in?uence isnt limited to one village. By terrifying or helping other villages with miracles44 of them, including creating food, causing storms, and hurling ?reballsyou can convert them to your persuasion, expand your in?uence, and become the most powerful god.
A DeityWith or Without Piety
Hapless humanoids aside, youll also control a worldly embodimentone of 16 giant beasts, including a rhino, ape, lion, or cow. Using complex A.I., your pet will learn elaborate tasks and even to think on his own, doing things never designed by you or the games programmers.
In the preview version, using the mouse, it was possible to zip around the domain with ease, even panning back to see the whole world at once. The 3D world was as detailed as anything yet seen on a PC, and incredibly lifelike. It was possible to pile uprooted trees, light them on ?re, put a boulder on the ?re until it became red-hot, then use it to light new ?res elsewhere. When Black & White manifests itself to wannabe deities this month, many hours of gleeful, supernatural meddling is foreseen.-- 0 / GamePro
By creating a beautiful living world in which you can do almost anythinggood, bad, or in betweenBlack & White miraculously pulls you in and doesnt let go until youve sacrificed many hours.
The heart of the game is expanding your influence by converting villages with miraclesfireballs, lightning, rain, food, and more. You also have a giant creatureat first a gorilla, cow, or tigerwhom you teach to be your physical surrogate. Thanks to impressive A.I., your creature grows incredibly smart and powerful depending on how you respond to his actions (with slapping or stroking), and it does some surprising things without your prompting.
What makes Black & White so impressive is the feeling it gives of tinkering with a real world. The islands have forests of individual trees; oceans filled with fish; fields of cows and sheep; changing weather and daylight; and you can view it all from almost any angle.
So clear your calendar and dust off your dormant megalomania. Its time to show the people whos boss.-- 0 / GamePro
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