Black & White

Unusually, Black & White lacks any form of standard user interface. The only icon you'll see on screen is a giant hand (yours) with which you do your godly tasks. Complex actions are governed by mouse movements, and as the game progresses it requires greater mouse dexterity to cast spells and the like. While this interface can be daunting at first, it becomes second nature after some practice.

As the game progresses there are a number of quests to complete, and you're also responsible for looking after a creature. It's here that Black and White excels. The creature's artificial intelligence is superb. Treat it nicely and it will amble around the countryside performing good deeds to the delight of the populace. Treat it harshly and woe betide anyone who gets in the way of its giant feet and hands.

The visual landscapes are equally impressive, as is the detail of the inhabitants or "helpers" as they guide you across the rolling hills and surrounding oceans of your island. But the scenery, like the creature, morphs with your gameplay. Evil empires appear black and scorched, while a happier atmosphere breeds an open, warm environment for your worshippers. Combat comes in the form of one-to-one stand-up fights between the creatures. The fighting can verge on the surreal-for example, a kickboxing cow squares up to a boxing ape in the middle of a forest as worshippers chant praise all around.

With Black and White, UK games designer Peter Molyneux has taken AI to new levels and created a game that's bound to be imitated. Do note, however, that this is not an ideal game for the casual RTS or shoot 'em up fan. There are long periods of inactivity, and the general pace can feel sedate as you take in the beautiful graphics and calming soundtrack. Even after playing for 10 hours you'll still be scratching the surface of this intense gaming experience. --Stuart Miles

Black & White is not a game for people who don't like to read the manual. There are some wise guys here at Daily Radar who regard the manual in the same way they regarded the apple in their lunch boxes at school -- that is, as sheer junk. But if gamers are to succeed in a game as unorthodox as Black & White, they will need some patience and a willingness to learn. The manual is only so much help on this score, and the Good in us thinks that's because the game is so deep -- but the Bad in us suspects that it's so they can sell more strategy guides. But no matter what the reason, on the other side of the learning curve is a fantastic experience.

The comparisons to Populous are immediate and obvious. Peter Molyneux has taken the inspiration from his god-building game (in fact, there's a little taken from all of his earlier games here, from Magic Carpet to Dungeon Keeper) and turned it 3D. The goal is still the same: Players must encourage their believers to worship them so that they may in turn smite the non-believers. The single-player campaign features a battle against the current god-in-residence, Nemesis. Players must gather their strength, manage their villagers, cast some miracles and generally knock the other deities out of the god business. However, there is one thing in Black & White that is genuinely new.

The addition of learning, complex AI creatures is a brilliant addition to strategy games for several reasons. First of all, it brings some personality and a face to games that are often fought between tiny little units on a tiny battlefield. Second, most strategy games have bumped up against a technological limit in terms of sheer numbers. Both 2D and 3D fighting games reach their maximum number of units well before the end of the game. There are, after all, only so many things the computer can keep track of. But Black & White defuses that problem by having a single unit, your creature, grow and become more powerful as the game progresses.

But beyond the strategic importance of a single, massive unit is the fact that these little buggers are just so... endearing. There's nothing quite like taking your little baby tiger out for his first raw villager, his first tipped cow, his first crap in the neighbor's yard. And seeing mommy's little snookums grow up into an enormous black-eyed beast of remorseless evil that strides the land like death incarnate is just so, well, heartwarming. It is also possible to play the game on the side of Good, creating powerful versions of Ned Flanders that bring happiness to the other villages and help them water their crops and gather their wood. And, golly gee, that's swell too.

Even if Black & White did nothing more, it would earn its place on your shelf just as a monster creator. Without exaggeration, the learning AI in this game is simply beyond what has ever been attempted before. In the coming months and years, Black & White will remain the standard by which all AI is judged. Just as Half-Life is the bar over which all shooters must jump, Black & White simply raises the bar for intelligence over every other game ever made. You can teach your creature to do just about anything, and it will learn and imitate. There are even stories of advanced creatures that will play tricks on each other -- without being told to do so.

But even if molding a creature in your own image isn't sufficiently god-like for you, the strategy elements are deep and interesting. Players must encourage belief, either love or fear, in the little villagers. And the more villagers believe in them and worship them, the more power players have to convert the unfaithful. B&W uses a sphere-of-influence system that limits the realm in which the player can interact with the world. Move outside the sphere of influence, and your hand can only move, not grab or touch anything. Your creature thus becomes your ambassador, trained by you to be good, evil or something pragmatically in between.

Getting those villagers to survive and flourish can be tricky, though, and players not keen on micromanaging may have a tough go with Black & White. Desktop gods need to constantly keep an eye on their villagers, and sometimes satisfying those needs can be frustrating and distracting. Evil gods can naturally ignore the suffering of their denizens, but risk eroding their own power base in doing so. We played two different scenarios at the same time, one as good and one as evil. And to Lionhead's credit, we weren't able to find a significant advantage in playing one side over the other.

There is a significant advantage, however, in having a decent system to appreciate the game's visuals. In addition to the AI, B&W boasts a simply incredible engine. Players can zoom all the way out to see the entire island, or zoom all the way in to see individual villagers blinking. The streamlined interface takes some getting used to, but gamers who never grow comfortable with the default can remap the keys to a more comfortable WASD setup. Even the inside of the temple uses an entirely different engine where players can check on mission progress, save or load games, get help, or go to their creature cave to read up on the little guy (or put their own custom-made tattoos on him).

And your creature will sport those nifty tats when you take it online. Once you have registered at Black & White's homepage, you can take your creature online and play several different multiplayer games, including cooperative mode and clan play. Or you can play a quick skirmish game against the computer or a buddy over a LAN.

There are so many little features in Black & White that we could go on and on talking about them. For example, the game can be synched with your mail program so that it names your villagers from your contact list, and if you get some mail from someone on that contact list while playing the game, the little villager will let you know. When you register at Black & White's homepage you can tell it to match the weather in the game to the weather in your part of the world. It also supports the Immersion TouchSense technology, so with a compatible force-feedback mouse you can feel the creatures rumble when you pet them, or the trees snap when you grab them out of the ground.

We could ramble on about the millions of tiny details in this game that make it so unique, such as the fact that the eight differentethnic villages (Japanese, Aztec, Norse, etc.) have their own cultural dances and music. Or the fact that your creature can blush or break dance. Or that if you get close to your village in the morning, you'll hear the roosters crow at the sun. Or even the fact that unlike most videogames, Black & White is the sort of thoughtful and intelligent game that recognizes that actions really do have consequences. It is for these and a lot of other reasons that we think Black & White will likely be the best PC game we will play this year. --From DailyRadar.com