Black & White 2 (PC DVD)

Let's start with the best part: the graphics. Black and White 2 is certainly pretty, with impressive landscapes that you can view both up close (complete with grass that you can brush aside with your godly hand) and from a long, long way away. The creatures are all unique and quite loveable in their own way (I'm particularly fond of the cow), and will take on a more good or evil appearance depending on how you raise them. The various sparkles, miracle effects, buildings and such also look rather nice; in particular, the volcano miracle is certainly a joy to behold. On the whole, you really can't fault the game's looks.

So what went wrong? The biggest and easiest thing to point out is the distinct lack of play options. There is the single player campaign... and that's it. No multiplayer, no skirmish mode against AI gods, no sandbox mode and, just to rub salt into the wound, there isn't even a difficulty option for the campaign -- so, once you've beaten it (and it is incredibly easy to beat), there really isn't anything else to do. Six months after release and there's still no sign of any modding tools, which might have helped increase the longevity slightly. Not great value for money.

Black and White 2 makes a big deal out of letting you play as good or evil: "Be a god of war or a god of peace." The problem is that neither approach is particularly satisfying. When taking the "peace" approach, you build up your town in order to "impress" the nearby neutral villages. Sadly, this approach feels like a poor-man's version of SimCity. When taking the "war" approach, you take neutral villages by force and use your armies to overwhelm the enemy, and this approach makes the game feel like a particularly poor real-time strategy game, especially because there are so few unit types -- soldiers, archers and catapults, and that's it. The enemy AI doesn't help here either, being entirely predictable and extremely unchallenging as it is content to simply send wave after wave of its brainless troops to their deaths at the hands of your army/creature.

The creature also seems more "robotic" now, in that the activities it can perform are listed within one of the game's menus. It looks like a sequence of on/off switches; to flip a switch to "on" (i.e. to encourage it do perform that activity), you stroke the creature; to flip a switch to "off", you slap the creature. There doesn't seem to be any of the teaching by demonstration that there was in the first game, where you could get your creature to learn miracles or activities by performing them within its gaze. This feeling is compounded by the fact that you buy "upgrades" for the creatures to enable it to do things like water crops, throw fireballs, etc.

Despite negative feedback from the first game, the second game still features the same (unskippable, although the huge patches fix this) style of tutorial; namely, one which treats the player like a simpleton. "Well done, you've moved the camera to the right," the advisor notifies you, "...now let's move it to the left!" Meanwhile, a number of important game concepts that are considerably less obvious are completely ignored, both by the built-in tutorials and the game's manual.

The tutorial also introduces you to the somewhat inaccurate controls, whereby you'll try to click on something (either to pick up a particular object, or simply to move/rotate the camera around a given point), only to realise that the game thinks you've clicked in a different spot. This results in the tutorial becoming upset and treating you like even more of an idiot or, later in the game, the wrong objects ending up carried in your hand, which can become highly frustrating.

And, of course, the game's graphics come at a cost; you'll need a decent machine to play the game acceptably. In particular, ensure that your graphics card supports pixel shader 1.1, as the game won't run at all without it. A number of users have also complained of performance issues when using GeForce 6600/6800 cards, and to my knowledge these issues are still unresolved.

There are persistent rumours of an upcoming expansion for the game, and perhaps the best advice I can give is to wait for it to be released before deciding whether to purchase this title. At the moment it feels incomplete and underwhelming, and you'll probably end up wishing that you'd waited for the game and its expansion to be bundled together at a lower price.

The creature is still one of the main attractions to the game, but while we've gained the ability to tell what he's thinking at any point in the game (which prevents him picking up bad habits we didn't notice), we've lost any notion of creativity and surprise from the creature.

The largest flaw in the game in my opinion is the various AI. The enemies you face seem to be almost entirely scripted - they throw troops at you in the same, mindless way every time - if you then build a wall or something similar to prevent one of these scripted attacks, they just give up! You can then happily build up your city and basically ignore the enemy until you wish to attack, or win by influence (you can win a land by building a larger city).

Further, the troops your create and your creature seem entirely unable to navigate effectively - if there's a closed gate house in the way - they'll be unable to pass (which means you have to run around opening and closing doors for them) - and the number of times my creature got stuck in between some buildings had me tearing my hair out: "You're four times the size of the house, step over it!!". And at some point you'll watch your creature be killed by some archers while he stands there thinking about what to do with them while you scream "Throw a fireball!" and throw your mouse across the room.

All in all, the deficits in the AI and the monotonously scripted lands make this a disappointment. Although I still hope that Lionhead fix the problems and make what could be an astounding game rather than give up on the series.