Does Lionhead Studio's intensely hyped PC game compare to the glowing previews and PR blather? Read on.
When a game in development is hyped intensely for years leading up to its release, it's always interesting to see how the final product compares to the previews and PR blather. Black & White has been a long time in the making, and the subject of heavy buzz for much of its development life. We've been hearing revolutionary AI this, incredible engine that, and immersive world the other thing for some time; now that the game has finally reached store shelves, the question can finally be answered: does it live up to the hype? Well... it does and it doesn't. The artificial intelligence, interface, and 3D engine are certainly amazing. B&W takes a huge step forward in each of these categories, and will likely have your jaw planted firmly in the dirt for the first few hours of gameplay. However, once I made it past that initial stage of astonishment, I made an unfortunate discovery: the single-player game, as designed, just isn't much fun in the long term.
Black & White, at its core, is a "god game", the same genre basically invented by Peter Molyneux and co. in Populous. Its premise and goals aren't terribly different from that distant predecessor; you portray a god, represented in B&W by a disembodied hand, and your mission is to expand your influence by winning and managing your followers until you're officially the baddest supreme being on the celestial block. In Black & White, this is accomplished by impressing mortals with your heavenly (or hellish) powers, e.g. replenishing their food supplies or smiting them with lightning. The more you impress a village, the more it believes in you; the more belief you inspire, the more power you have to draw on.
While having the choice of playing a "good guy" or "bad guy" is nothing new under the gaming sun, Black & White handles this decision in a rather interesting and innovative way. Instead of choosing your alignment outright, you determine your good or evil alignment through your actions. For example, if you treat your flock kindly, looking after their needs and ensuring their prosperity, your temple and the lands under your control will be bright and noble in appearance. However, if you rule your followers through fear and destruction, you'll soon find your lands dark and foreboding, and your temple will take on a style to make Vlad the Impaler green with envy.
Being a god in Black & White, however, doesn't mean you're omnipotent. Your sphere of influence is determined by how many villages you control, and the strength of their belief in you; within this area, you can do practically anything you want, but outside of it, you can hardly affect anything. Say you need to take over a village, but it's much too far beyond your territory to impress firsthand. What then?
That's where your Creature comes in. These towering were-beasts are the most interesting and impressive part of Black & White. Every god has one, and they're capable of freely performing miracles and feats of strength outside your sphere of influence. The problem is, you don't have direct, specific control over their actions, and a new Creature is relatively dim and capricious. You'll need to give yours some training.
Naturally inquisitive, Creatures will want to experiment with their surroundings, and will also imitate what they see; you can reward or punish them for doing so, and they'll react accordingly. For example, if your Creature gets hungry and eats a villager, you can slap the taste out of his mouth, and he'll think twice before chewing on your followers again. On the other hand, if you want to encourage that sort of thing, you can pet him for it; he'll know you approve, and cheerfully go on munching humans when the mood strikes. Creatures can learn to perform almost any action, and even semi-complex sequences of actions. You want a crap-flinging monkey? You got a crap-flinging monkey. You can also guide your Creature by using one of three Leashes: one for Learning, one for Compassion, and one for Aggression. These allow you to tether your Creature to specific objects or lead him around, and also affect his behaviour. If you have your Creature on the Learning leash, he'll be more inclined to watch and absorb what you do, for example.
Creatures are not only useful, but fascinating to watch. As you influence their behaviour and stats through conditioning, rest and exercise, they'll grow to colossal sizes and gradually take on an angelic or menacing appearance. Their learning and pathfinding AI is amazing, and through excellent modelling and animation, they're loaded with personality. A kind-hearted tiger might wander around petting villagers and respond to your attention with a friendly grin and wave, whereas one with a violent disposition is more likely to snarl at the citizens and defiantly flip you off.
B&W's visuals are uniformly spectacular. The engine supports a massive level of detail, and the textures are outstanding. GeForce owners will be happy to know that hardware T&L is supported, and the benefits are obvious. The world's physics are quite good as well, if not entirely earth-like; objects bounce, roll, and topple as appropriate. The sound and music are similarly excellent, and very well matched to the visuals and activity in the game. I do have one complaint, though: some of the villagers' voice samples get really repetitive and annoying... "We need more homes! We need more homes! Worshippers need food! We need more homes!"... and you'll be hearing a LOT of them. More on that in a moment.
While training your Creature and exploring the world is a lot of fun, actually trying to complete the single-player game is much less so, if you want to try a good path. If you're playing as an evil deity, it's not as bad, but being a good god requires almost constant micromanagement. The villagers are dumber than a sack of hammers when it comes to taking care of themselves; I can't get them to supply food to the temple worshippers or wood to the workshops at all, leaving the Creature and I to tend to those critical elements in each village. They also tend to fall behind on their basic needs if not watched closely. It isn't that I disagree with resource management as an important part of the game, but the humans really burn through supplies and housing at blockbuster speed, to the point that keeping your villages out of trouble stops being a challenge and becomes mindless, repetitive WORK. Furthermore, if you let any of the villagers' needs go unattended for too long, the game apparently interprets this as ignoring the mortals' suffering, and pushes you toward an evil alignment. This is very, very annoying and cripples the single-player campaign badly.
So, if the main part of the game is so heavily flawed, why do I consider the overall package worthy of a still-respectable C+? Well, for one, multiplayer is actually quite addictive. Whether cooperative or competitive, Black & White feels like far less of a chore when you have other players to share the load with or just beat up on. Everything that happens to your Creature carries over from single-player to multiplayer and vice-versa, which makes good training meaningful both online and off. Skirmish, a quick and dirty mode in which the object is to wipe all opposition from the face of the planet, is also a very enjoyable way to burn some time.
It's hard to recommend or warn against Black & White outright. The overly dependent and resource-devouring villagers, and the obsessive micromanagement they require, make the offline campaign feel like a real lost opportunity. The Creatures and world interaction are such fascinating and revolutionary elements, and so well executed, I desperately wanted to like the meat of the gameplay; it really hurts to watch the story mode degenerate into a stultifying "wood and grain sim". Online gaming enthusiasts may be perfectly happy with the multiplayer and Skirmish modes, which do much to redeem the deeply troubled main game; for such players, the single-player mode can simply function as a Creature training ground. Except for dedicated micromanagers, however, those looking for a truly satisfying solo gaming experience should give Black & White a pass.
One final note: The following is entirely speculation and wishing on my part, and should not be interpreted as having anything to do with my evaluation of the product as it exists, but it seems to me that B&W's problems could easily be addressed with a little post-release editing. A patch or user mod to make the villagers more self-sufficient in non-crisis situations would help immensely. Also, if a "sandbox/workbench" scenario were added, giving players a well-stocked land in which to play around with villages and Creatures, free from resource and opposition concerns, I might never put this game down. These relatively small, optional fixes would go a long way toward making Black & White more accessible and fun; hopefully Lionhead or the modifier community will rise to the challenge.
