Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

40 to 100 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Ambitious"

The strategy genre had seen players taking on the role of various player characters with the ability to command all kinds of subjects, be they armies of destruction, the public workers responsible for the well-being of a city and worshippers who see the player character as a god (or at least his/her representative). The last statement is of course referring to Peter Molyneux's past work, Populous, which appeared to have established the "god-game" subcategory of the strategy/simulation genre.

Black & White appears to be an extension of what Populous was, but it has plenty of unique intricacies, the most attractive of which are Creatures, the divine 'pets' of gods. There will be a section on them later in this review.

The game starts with what appears to be a CGI cutscene that seamlessly transits into an in-game level – a surprise that would suggest good things about the technical competencies of the game designers. (This suggestion would be quite, somewhat dashed later.)

The introduction concerns the origins of gods in the Black & White universe, in which deities are borne from the hopes and desperation of mortals. These deities are then free to pursue whatever ways to approach their subjects (within the limits of the game designs of course), regardless of the reason for their coming into existence in the first place.

The graphics are the first aspect of the game that the player would experience. The game engine allows the creation of large land masses, complete with terrain features like lagoons (with their own special textures to boot), waterfalls, mountains and forests. All of them are quite competently drawn, well-animated and pleasant to look at – assuming that the camera stays at the optimal distances shown when it is taken over by event scripts. Zooming up close would reveal that the game designers had not included higher resolution textures for close-up examinations.

On the other hand, there will not be many reasons that the player would want to view things very up-close, as will be apparent later in this review.

The skybox texture is perhaps the most impressive of the graphical designs for this game. They give the illusion of vast horizons, including speckles representing far-away landmasses. It also changes in appearance in accordance with the progress of time in a level, and quite seamlessly so as well. (However, reloading a level would show that the game resorts to a default time, and changes the time and the skybox accordingly to the time of day recorded in the saved game.)

Breath-taking views aside, the next aspect of the game that the player will be introduced to are the visual appearance of the player character's subjects. Most of them appear to be vaguely human, e.g. 4 limbs, one torso, and a head. However, this is where any similarities with real humans end. They are animated in a whimsical manner: a running human in this game looks like he/she is running pell-mell as if their well-being depends on it (as usually would be the case); a human trying to get some attention would hop in a goofy and cartoonish (but appropriately practical) manner; they emote their feelings and expression with very obvious, almost-comical gestures.

On the other hand, all of these animations were designed to catch the eye of the player, and they are quite effective at doing so (except at very high-up camera zooms). There will be more on these virtual mortals later.

The next aspect of the game that the player will know first-hand is the controls designs for the game: They are almost completely dependent on mouse motion input. The player would find such control designs to be unique enough to differentiate Black & White from other games of its subgenre (of strategy games).

The basics of the controls include the standards used for games of the strategy genre, or at least those that have been used in other games before: the player can scroll the view by holding the left mouse button and dragging the mouse, tilt the camera by using the right mouse button and use the mouse wheel for zooming.

However, even these mundane actions are reflected in the "cursor" that the player uses. The cursor that the player has is actually a model of a hand that is present in-game. To elaborate, it can actually be seen by in-game entities, which is much unlike cursors in other games. Whatever action that the player takes, including manipulating the camera, will be accompanied by animations of this hand.

The game designers had wanted to give the impression that the player character, as a deity, has control over the game world, e.g. it is re-oriented according to the perspective of a static camera, instead of the other way around.

(The player is however reminded that this is an illusion when he/she finds out that he/she may not alter the progression of the day/night cycle.)

There are not a lot of keyboard hotkeys to be had in this game – and even so, many of these have an alternative that can be executed via the mouse.

The player is however given the option to 'bookmark' locations in the map in play. There are also other handy options that allow the player to change views of the map very quickly.

The camera controls for this game may feel somewhat different from those in other games of the strategy/simulation genre because of their insistence on making sure that the player feels that he/she is really looking at a world (nominally) under his/her dominion instead of being reminded that he/she is playing yet another strategy/simulation game.

Fortunately, the game has an entire map dedicated to tutorials for the controls of the game. This map is very, very quick to load and have clearly labelled locations which are dedicated to specific controls.

(The first map in the story mode also has tutorials, though these are executed with the themes of the player character being a god instead of being presented in a documentary manner.)

The player will also be taught how to use his/her disembodied hand to interact with actual entities that are present in the game world; these include mortals (both human and animal), inanimate objects like rocks, detritus and other doodads and plants (trees, mostly). Even if the object appears to be noxious, white-hot or dangerous to touch in any way, it can still be handled without much of a hassle.

Most of these interactions involve picking them up and releasing them in various manners. This would appear mundane, at least until the player realizes that the size and shape of his/her godly hand/cursor is not a factor in what can be picked up. The player can pick up the smallest of pebbles that can be seen, as well as gigantic rocks that can crush an entire building. The inertia of the object being handled is completely negated while it is being hauled by godly powers, so the player will not have any issue transferring things around, conveniently enough.

(However, other properties of the object are not suspended. Time will still affect them, assuming that the player chooses to haul them around in real-time.)

While the player appears to have to shift the cursor around while moving the viewpoint about the map in real-time - together with anything that the player has in hand - the player can choose to circumvent this game design by making use of a time-pausing feature. Coupled with liberal use of bookmarks, the player can zip across maps quickly with any kind of stuff in tow in mere moments.

Any time-dependent properties of the objects being hauled around are also handily suspended. Furthermore, collision physics for them are also suspended, allowing the player to haul huge, hard things like boulders through villages without knocking down anything fragile.

(It is worth noting here too that the game-pausing option can be exploited to gain leverage over opposing deities - more on these later - which appear to have the advantage of moving about the map with tremendous speed and immediacy, but whose AI is otherwise suspended when the game is paused.)

Yet, this time-circumventing option is not all handy (pun not intended). When the game is paused, the player may not perform anything other than moving around the map and changing the camera perspective. The latter cannot be performed too if the player has something in his/her hand.

It is unfortunate that the game appears to have no significant documentation about the game-pausing option, other than a statement saying that it is for the player's convenience when he/she has to do something other than playing God. The lack of documentation also extends to any disclosure of the limitations to the time-pausing feature.

Depending on the assigned characteristics of the object to be interacted with, the player may be able to perform other things other than moving them around.

For example, rocks appear to have the most scripting, and also coincidentally (or consequently) are the sort of inanimate objects that the player will interact with the most. Tapping rocks causes them to break into equivalently massed halves (though not identically shaped ones), and they can also be placed on heat sources to be heated glowing-hot.

Unscrupulous players would be using these in an offensive manner against opposing deities and any mortals under their dominion, e.g. throwing/dropping them on top of villages of unbelievers or hitting enemy Creatures with them. This is especially so if rocks can still land within the player character's domain of influence.

Speaking of domains of influence, every deity's reach is only as far as the extent of the belief that he/she has among mortals. Every village under the dominion of a deity has a village centre of sorts that emanates a hemisphere of influence in which the player can interact with anything within it that is not outright divine, i.e. directly belonging to another deity (including their cursors).

Going outside the domain will sap the corporeal presence of the player's cursor away, canonically speaking; in-game, the player only has a limited amount of time outside his/her domain of influence before his/her cursor loses the ability to do anything. Going even further away from the domain of influence will exponentially decrease this amount of time even more, until eventually there is a 'cut-off' distance of sorts where the player cannot do anything at all (even if he/she attempts to exploit the game-pausing option).

In other words, restrictions have been deliberately introduced to balance the otherwise next-to-omnipotent capabilities of the player/deity.

Extending the domain of influence of the player/deity is where the role of the mortals in this game comes in.

Every deity will need to have a handful of mortals who have faith in him/her. The number of mortals is not important, but the amount of 'belief' that these mortals have are more instrumental. Of course, there are still benefits to having a large number of followers, as the effort of mining them for additional belief is made more efficient if there happens to be more mortals to be subjected to the experiencing of such divine acts.

To extract belief from mortals, the player will have to perform acts that cannot be enacted by mortals themselves, understandably enough. This include casting Miracles (more on this later), or handling things that cannot be handled by mere mortals within proximity of them, e.g. picking up big rocks and dropping them perilously close to mortals.

Encouraging belief in the player/deity is also the only way to convert followers of other gods over to his/her dominion. The threshold for the amount of belief that is needed to convert an opposing village is governed by a percentage of belief that the particular village has for their patron. This percentage is in turn dependent on how much attention that their patron has lavished on the village.

The less attention that the opposing deity has invested in that village, the lower the percentage is. The same rule also applies to villages under the player, so the player has to keep an eye on villages that he/she already owns, lest their neglect leads to an opposing deity taking over them instead.

When a village is converted, there is much visual fanfares as the villagers stop whatever they are doing momentarily in order to celebrate their conversion with dances and cheers. The atmosphere will always be amusingly festive - even if the player has resorted to rather heinous methods to gain their belief, e.g. terrorizing them with acts of harm. (The fireworks do get replaced by swarms of bats though.)

The mortals themselves are only semi-autonomous when it comes to undergoing their daily lives and taking care of their villages. The mortals will collect whatever resources that they need for self-sustenance, will breed and will also build several homes on their own - at least until they reach a certain population number (nominally 50).

However, if there are any occurrences outside of their control, e.g. external factors such as interference from opposing deities and the rampage of hostile Creatures, they are often rendered incapable of picking themselves up. This is where the player has to intervene to save them from eventual doom. To grow these villages, the player also has to actively participate in such efforts.

To grow and sustain villages, the player will have to manage the resources that they need: wood and food. The mortals and their state of civilization appear to be modelled after the Stone Ages and pre-Metal Ages of real-life history, so their needs are simple, though not easy to fulfil.

Wood can be extracted from sources that produce wood, obviously. Trees are the most apparent source, though the player may also conjure wood via spells known as "miracles" (more on this later).

Food can be derived from more diverse sources, which range from animals both wild and domesticated, grain from grain fields and fish from fish shoals living in bodies of water. Food can also be conjured the divine way.

The game designs for resources may appear to be deceptively simple, but their sophistication lies in how they are specifically obtained.

The player/deity may extract wood or food from sources of these directly, but to simulate the (often-disastrous) effects of having the divine interacting directly with those that are mortal, the amount of resources obtained this way is lower than it would be if they have been extracted by mortals themselves.

For example, uprooting and dropping a tree into village stores to instantly convert it into wood is less efficient than having villagers going over to chop and render it down into lumber.

The player may opt to strike down two birds with one stone by casting miracles instead to both conjure resources and obtain belief from any mortals that are awed by such divine gifts.

Villagers can also be assigned by the player to the tasks of gathering resources, simply by picking them up and dropping them close to resources or any object that concerns said resources. They will be bestowed the status of Disciples, and will generally work faster and more efficiently than the regular villager, in return for being able to perform that kind of work only. Disciples are also gifted with longer-than-normal lives.

As a bonus, having Disciples doing the hard work also ensures that sources of food and wood would not exhaust themselves so quickly, as compared to the waste-inducing vagaries of divine intervention.

The player can also steal resources from other villages not under his/her dominion, provided that their domain of influence covers their stores. The player will learn of this through goading by the manifestation of the player character's evil conscience - more on this later - or through having the enemy deity doing this unto him/her.

With enough resources in its store, the village can have more buildings and residents, which will then indirectly lead to growth of the player's domain.

As a village grows in size, it will want more sophisticated buildings, e.g. Graveyards for burying their dead (otherwise, the newly deceased will continue to cause the living to mourn and thus waste time), Creches for bringing up children in and Workshops for creating scaffolds. The Workshop will be the most important building, as it will be the one that builds the other buildings, albeit indirectly.

By feeding the Workshop with wood and assigning villagers to it, the Workshop will produce a bunch of scaffolds. The default scaffold can only produce small abodes to support additional residents for the village (or house the ones that are yet to have roofs of their own). However, the player can stack scaffolds together to combine them into bigger scaffolds, which can then be used to build other buildings.

Scaffolds of different sizes can form other buildings, the silhouette/image of which can be seen when the player moves the scaffold around. The bigger the scaffold, the higher tiered the buildings that it can be used to set the foundation for. Yet, settling down a large scaffold to build a lower-tiered building does not expend the scaffold completely; the player is conveniently left with a smaller scaffold in the hand/cursor.

Scaffolds are also needed to establish new villages, if the player does not have any villages nearby his/her domain to take over in order to expand his/her dominion. Conveniently, residents from other villages of the same race (more on this soon) will migrate over to the new village to populate it, though the player can speed up this process by dropping them over at abodes that have been built at the new village.

The biggest of scaffolds can also be used to set the foundations for Wonders, which has the power to bolster certain spells depending on the race that built them. Wonders also project huge radii of influence; they are an alternative to setting up new villages and growing them, if the player wishes to expand his/her domain, provided that the player has access to a lot of wood.

Setting foundations does not erect the building right away. They have to be supplied with wood, and built by Villagers or a Creature to completion. (Again, the player can choose to intervene to build the building faster, at the expense of some wasted resources.)

At first glance, setting foundations for buildings using scaffolds that have to be manufactured and stacked together first seems very inefficient compared to the conventional building systems in other games of the strategy/simulation genre. However, it is an elegant solution for having the building system adhering to Lionhead's policy of keeping user interfaces to as low a minimum as possible.

Once the player has established villages for his/her followers to live out their lives in, they can contribute to another aspect of fuelling a god's power: worshipping.

Before worshipping can be described however, this review will have to elaborate on the designs of Temples.

On every map, the player will have a Temple that is his/her source of power. In-game, the Temple acts like an interactive main menu, with chambers pertaining to just about every category of game options that can be found in just about every other game. There are also chambers that are dedicated to actual gameplay, such as a map room, a fortune-telling room (which usually stays silent and unhelpful unless there is an incoming scripted event) and a Creature chamber for detailing all the achievements that the Creature has obtained and the effort that the player has invested in it. (The player can also give the Creature cosmetic changes in this chamber.)

It would appear that having the interiors of the Temple representing standard game features like loading and saving games is a novel game design, but these inadvertently introduce loading times into accessing what is supposed to be a main menu. The Temple is the anchor of the player/deity's presence in the game world, so it is fitting that it is a large and grand structure in the map in play. Yet, losing the Temple is as good as losing the game, so it would appear that having a large structure that can be seen across the map can be a disadvantage. However, any damage that the Temple incurs is transferred to the nearest village; for example, if the Temple is attacked by fire, it will transfer the damage over to a nearby village's buildings (and immolate them).

(The game, however, does not appear to document this feature.)

The Temple will continue to transfer any damage that it incurs, until there are no more villages to transfer damage to. Therefore, to completely and surely defeat an opposing deity in the map in play, the player will have to take over every village under the dominion of the deity and assault his/her/its Temple (unless there are mission scripts that do not need require the player to undertake this hassle.).

Returning to the aspect of worshipping, the exterior of the Temple will be used to house compounds for worshippers to perform their ceremonies in. Each compound also holds a bunch of spells, which are powered by the energy that the compound has collected. One compound is reserved for every one race that is available to be lorded over in the map in play.

There is an altar for every compound; its visual effects will change according to the amount of miracle energy that the player has amassed for that particular compound. The altar also has a function, which is to receive any sacrifices which will be eliminated in exchange for energy.

As a rule of thumb in estimating the amount of energy reward that is assigned to an in-game entity that can be sacrificed, the energy provided depends on the potential life-force that the sacrificial object has. Trees give the least energy, followed by animals. Mortals provide the most.

If the player prefers to amass energy the hard, honest way instead, then he/she will be informed that every village centre will have a totem of sorts that can be manipulated to dictate the proportion of the residents of that village who will have to go to the Temple to worship.

Worshipping villagers can be a sight to watch. Depending on the race of the worshippers, they may have different dances that they will perform to the tunes of different soundtracks (which have appropriate, if a bit stereotypical, themes). The animations for these dances can be very entertaining to watch, especially for the first time.

Worshippers do however require some logistical management. They will indefinitely stay at the Temple, not needing to sleep or perform any other day-to-day activities. (Disciples also arrive to worship if the player selects a high enough proportion that practically empties out the village that the Disciples belong to.)

They, however, need to eat. The player will have to supply their compounds with food, or they simply starve (while moaning aloud that they need food). This is a huge hassle that could have been avoided if there are village-based altars.

Energy that has been amassed in any way will be used to power the casting of miracles, which are practically spells.

There is a large variety of Miracles in the entire game, though there are restrictions according to the design of the map in play. These restrictions can be seen during the starting moments of a map in play; the player can surf the entire map to examine each pre-existing village, and whatever Miracles that are attached to its village centre are the Miracles that the player may be able to obtain (by taking over that village).

To cast Miracles, the player has to use either of two options: clicking on the models representing these spells that reside at village centers or the Temple, or using the gesture-based system. Apparently, the latter is a much more interesting option, though both ultimately lead to the same outcome - the casting of a Miracles, with no differences whatsoever.

For the latter method, the player will have to hold the left mouse button (while not having anything being held in the cursor/hand) and then draw out a gesture. A trail of sparkly effects will follow the pattern that the player traces, for the purpose of visual aid. Once a gesture has been completed, the cursor/hand will change appearance to one that appears to be 'holding' a corporeal form of the Miracles.

There is a generous window of seven seconds or so for the player to perform a gesture, though the player can also use the time-pausing option to give himself/herself as much time as needed. (However, pausing time will not compensate for any mistakes made.) There is also a row of icons for Miracles and their corresponding patterns of gestures that appear when the left mouse button is held, if the player would like to refresh his/her memory of the latter.

The use of a gesture-based system is not expedient, though it elegantly adheres to the aforementioned design policy of minimizing user interfaces. Nevertheless, the player is likely to yearn for more convenient alternatives, such as hotkeys for certain spells, when he/she faces situations that require the prompt casting of a miracle, such as the need for the casting of Miracle Rain to douse a vicious fire that is spreading through a tightly packed village.

If the player has enough energy to fulfil the amount required by the Miracle being cast, the Miracle will automatically form in the player's cursor/hand. If not, the player will have to wait for the energy to be collected (though the wait is accompanied by visual effects that can be exciting to watch).

Miracles can also be cast by breaking so-called "Miracle Bubbles". Certain maps have altars that periodically generate bubbles, which are self-contained Miracles. The player can break these, have the cursor/hand absorb the Miracle and then cast these like regular Miracles.

Breaking bubbles to cast Miracles would appear to be a bit troublesome. Furthermore, these bubbles act exactly like bouncy rubber balls, which can easily bounce and roll towards some place that even the player's cursor/hand cannot reach. They also cannot contain empowered versions of Miracles (more details on these soon).

However, there are merits for these bubbles. The player can create special altars, which can be a receptacle for a Miracle cast on them. These altars will convert the Miracle to a regular-powered version of itself, contained within a bubble. This allows the player to store Miracles for later use (provided the player can store them somewhere without them spilling all over the place). Miracle bubbles are also handy for making use of a feature in the story campaign, as will be described later.

Miracle bubbles are also the most reliable way to teach Creatures spells; this will also be described later.

As for the kinds of Miracles in this game, there are plenty, and each one has a benefit that is practical and apparent. Resource-producing Miracles are the ones that the player will use the most, followed by offensive spells that keep pesky threats to the player's villages at bay (if the more economical rocks are not good enough) and least of all, Miracles which only produce visual effects but are otherwise very potent at impressing mortals.

Impressing mortals is not a simple matter; they have memories, and repeated use of the same tactic will eventually bore them. This also extends to tactics that murder them outright. (Apparently, mortals can get use to a very, very cruel god.) The player will have to balance in between actively impressing them and looking after their demands. If all that has been written thus far in this review is all there is to the game, Black & White would have been quite dull. The player would have only one main goal: expanding his/her dominion. He/she would do that by growing existing villages, taking over nearby ones or establishing new ones, grow these, and then repeat the process all over again until he/she has complete dominion over the map in play (often at the expense of competing deities).

Such repetition would ironically bring about the curse that afflicts every self-aware, omnipotent being: ennui. The curse is made even more acute when there are mortals who bother said player with laments and moans for more stuff.

Thankfully, there are a few aspects of this game that staves the tedium. These are the story-based campaign itself, the side quests and other distractions in the campaign-associated maps and perhaps the most important feature of this game, the Creature.

As a prelude to the campaign and as an introduction to the privileges that a god has in the universe of Black & White, the player is given (and must take) the opportunity to select one of three animal-like bipedal critters, and anoint him as the player's vassal.

(Canonically speaking, there is not any evidence whatsoever that the Creature is a male in the original Black & White. Later instalments in the franchise conclude that he is masculine in gender.)

After having done so, the Creature will receive a portion of the abilities available to the player/deity, the most obvious of which is their ability to cast Miracles. They are also rendered virtually immortal, and can indefinitely grow in size as time passes. However, unlike the player/deity, the Creature is a self-sufficient entity - or at least capable of being one, as it has to be taught (and reminded) to be so.

In the game, there are three animal archetypes: the smart one, which learns things quickly; the aggressive one, which is generally more punishing in combat; and the durable one, whose statistics are harder to degrade.

The initial trio of Creatures available for the player's anointment appear to have some default attitudes and behaviours, but whichever Creature that the player picks, its personality and habits are completely malleable. This is where the beauty of the Creature feature lies.

The player can interact with the Creature in manners not unlike digital pet simulators available on the desktop platforms. The player can caress him to give him comfort and affection, or slap and punch him to elicit sadness and regret. These two extremes of interaction will be the tools that the player uses to encourage or dissuade certain actions that the Creature has recently taken, and turn these actions into a habit, or make the Creature averse to performing them.

There does not appear to be any way to know what the Creature has recently done without monitoring the Creature all the time. Therefore, reinforcement or discouragement may affect the adoption - or rejection - of a bunch of actions that the Creature has just recently done, not just a specific one.

Fortunately, the player can resort to other, more actively executed methods to mould the Creature into how he/she wants him to be.

Many of these can be performed via the leash system. Being a god with a similarly divine vassal/pet, the player can attach one of a few types of magical leashes to him, all of which have infinite length (though this is only an illusion as the game simply draws the polygons required to represent the leash between its ends, wherever they are attached to).

The rainbow-textured "Happy" leash encourages him to be nice to whatever is attached to the other end of the leash. The hemmed-textured "Learning" leash encourages him to be more inquisitive with what is on the other end and experiment with it. The third, the "Aggression" leash, encourages him to be hostile towards anyone or anything on the other end.

Regardless of the leash used, the leashes are the only way for the deity to get his attention, short of interacting with him directly using the cursor/hand. Demonstrating some action using the cursor/hand and having the Creature watch it is made possible via simply having the leash attached to the cursor/hand.

By default, the Learning leash is the best to be used when attempting to teach him something by demonstrating it; however, the other two can be used to reinforce the notion that the player is trying to impart, e.g. throwing a rock at opposing villages while having the Aggression leash active is more likely to inform the Creature that the player wants him to be very nasty towards that village while playing with rocks than with other leashes. This does not appear to be documented by the game, for it is a pleasantly undiscovered exploit.

Nonetheless, the Creature is, after all, an animal-like entity, and this is reflected in its less-than-stellar AI scripts for learning, unwittingly made so by the game designers. The Creature can be terrifically stubborn, and its attention span can be very, very short especially if there are many things around it to distract its easily amused mind.

Yet, it is these very flaws that make teaching the Creature a very rewarding endeavour. He can also end up learning gleefully entertaining things, including things that the player did not intend for him to learn.

One of the Creature's abilities that are more useful to the other aspects of gameplay, namely expanding the domain of the player/deity, is its power to cast Miracles. Unlike the player/deity who has to derive energy from worshipping/sacrifices, the Creature can tap into its own energy reserves to cast Miracles.

The player will need to teach the Creature some Miracles first before it can cast them. Fortunately, doing so is quite easy; the player needs only to cast the spell in view of the Creature, or give him a Miracle bubble, in which case he will break it and automatically attempt to cast it. Either way, he will earn a few percentage points towards the complete learning of that Miracle.

Sadly, due to reasons that may be due to either gameplay balance considerations or limitations to the Creature's learning scripts (but most likely both), the Creature may only learn up to four Miracles at a time; he simply forgets the previous ones, which can be a disappointment.

Learning how to interact with the Creature can be a handful to learn. Therefore, like the map which is dedicated to controls, there is also a map that is dedicated to the tutorials for the care-taking of the Creature. It is aptly called the Playground; the player can practice the various interaction options with the Creature, assisted by tip-containing signboards liberally sprinkled throughout the island.

In addition to learning things and interacting with objects in the game world, the Creature can also battle other Creatures. The campaign will have its first level containing a repeatable fighting tutorial of sorts that is also quite forgiving, so the player will have enough opportunities to get used to the fighting system in this game.

Two Creatures who want to fight each other will have to mutually agree to a duel; they make the decision, not their owning deities (which is by itself an interesting game design). Once a duel has been enacted, the player will be alerted to the duel, and a simple tap of the Spacebar sends him/her to the site of the duel.

The difference between the sizes of the Creatures does not appear to matter when a duel has been agreed on; the bigger Creature shrinks in size to match his opponent. Both enter a ring of sorts, and it is up to their owning deities to suggest to them what they should do in combat.

By default, both Creatures would engage each other in hand-to-hand combat. Depending on their archetype, they have different attacks that deal varying amounts of damage and staggering effects. Generally, the aggressive archetypes have the fastest and most impressive moves, thus giving them an offensive advantage. The durable archetypes are less agile, but they land harder hits and appear to stagger and stumble less. The smart archetypes are somewhere in the middle.

Clicking on the opposing Creature would indicate to the player's Creature that he should hit that location (with the appropriate combat move); clicking on the Creature himself would indicate to him that he should defend against the next few blows from his opponent.

In addition, Creatures can resort to casting offensive Miracles, if they have enough distance from their opponents. By making gestures on the ground on which the duel takes places, the player can indicate to his/her Creature to cast the appropriate Miracle. This can be quite devastating if the opposing Creature does not have Miracles of its own. Yet, Miracles do not appear to stagger the opponent a lot even if they hit squarely, so the player will have to strike a balance between using Miracles and honest close-combat scuffling.

The duel ends when one Creature has been beaten (to death), or when one of them gets so shaken that he autonomously concedes defeat. There is not much to be gained from winning duels, so they are generally only there for the player's gratuitous entertainment.

Regardless of how far the Creature has come since the player has adopted him, his activities will always be governed by certain statistics that limit what he can do and also remind the player that he is still a (virtual) living entity with time-to-time needs. He has to eat to regain nutrition and sleep to regain divine energy (that he will lose over time, even if he does not do anything that actively expends it). He also has a health meter to monitor if he happens to get into harmful situations.

The Creature is usually autonomous enough to seek out the fulfilment of his needs on his own, though the player can intervene to accelerate this process.

Having any one of these statistics dropping to zero kills him. Upon death, his body is rendered inert for a full minute before it is sent back to the Creature Pen for reconstitution. Consequently, he loses a bit of his size, which can be a frustrating affair as changes to the Creature are effectively permanent as his statistics are stored in different directories of the game.

Speaking of size, the Creature's size is an obvious visual indicator of his capabilities. A bigger creature can move across maps faster (due to having a longer stride), carry bigger things and generally scare/impress smaller things more easily.

There are also other less-critical statistics that he has. Strength is one such example, and it is apparently gained by having the Creature haul around heavy things and is of benefit in combat with other Creatures. There are also very minor statistics, such as Flatulence (which governs how often he farts and how much he defecates).

Almost all of these statistics (even those like Flatulence) will be reflected in the visual designs of the Creature. For example, a strong Creature will appear to be muscular, while a fat one will be, well, fat.

The endearing qualities of the Creature are not just restricted to in-game occurrences. Lionhead Studios has also scripted the game to automatically fetch information from the Creature's data folder and generate a blog of sorts, which looks as if made by the Creature itself. This blog can be shared online in the Black & White community, much to the entertainment of others who are very enamoured with Creatures.

One other aspect of Black & White that gives it its defining qualities is the story campaign. Much of the story is used to present the gameplay designs, especially the first two levels. There are only four levels in the game, though each can take an astonishingly long time to win and has more than enough twists and turns to draw out the plot.

The campaign also makes use of the technical designs that Lionhead had crafted for the management of memory and the physics engine in this game; the player is able to transfer resources, mortal followers, and many other objects from one level to the next. He/She can apparently transfer as many as he/she wants, but the availability of memory does appear to crimp this otherwise entertaining activity (which is facilitated via a plot device that conveniently allows this feature).

The Creature and others of its kind appear to play pivotal roles in the story, and their segments are the ones that shine during the exposition of the story. Otherwise, the plot devices in the story are those that have been used many times before - especially the one concerning the vanquishing of ancient, evil overlords.

Fortunately, these ages-old themes are made more palatable by the presence of the two halves of the player/deity's conscience, the so-called Advisors. These Advisors give the player hints and suggestions on completing segments of the main quest, as well as side quests (more on these soon). They float about the screen, pointing things out that the camera is looking at in a manner that almost breaks the fourth wall. They also have a variety of antics, which can be seen if the player attempts to push them around using the hand/cursor while they (and the cursor) are on-screen. They are some of the most memorable characters in the game, after the Creatures, of course.

The third aspect of the game that makes it fun is the tremendous number of side quests, Easter eggs and simply hidden pleasantries in the game's four campaign maps. Many of these offer very amusing side-tracking from the main story; the particularly significant ones are visually identified by models of silver scrolls floating above the locations where they take place. (Gold scrolls are used for the advancement of the main story.)

Yet, there are several side quests and many mini-games that will only be made available after the player has extended his/her dominion over the locations that play host to these, so there is an incentive of sorts to perform this otherwise tedious task.

These quests make use of the physics engine, the divine options available to a player/deity, the Creature and even the camera controls. Most of them are hits, and even the misses still provide what each one of them gives when the challenge it offers has been overcome: rewards. Rewards usually take the form of something that helps the achievement of the next main objective in the current campaign map. Miracle bubble altars are the most common, but there are many other kinds of gifts to be obtained, like toys that especially grab the interest of Creatures.

As mentioned earlier, the graphics of the game can be breath-taking to watch if the player switches to panoramic views; the game designers appear to realize this too, for there is a shortcut key that brings the camera to an angle above the current map that gives the best scenery. Of course, a strong machine is required to eke the most visual splendour out of the game. Yet, even on weaker machines, there is still some eye-candy to be looked at, such as the ever-pretty and efficiently produced skybox textures.

The sound designs of the game are perhaps the more interesting of the two halves of this game's aesthetics. As mentioned earlier, mortal followers make a lot of music, as well as other sounds like children playing in creches, workmen harvesting wood and grain and villagers socializing with each other (that is, gossiping). Listening to a peaceful village going about its business can be pleasant - if not for the incessant pleas for this and that stuff that the mortals cannot provide for themselves.

If a player prefers to have the mortals uttering noises that come from being terrified and scared silly, then there are plenty of these to be listened to as well. There is a sadistic sense of joy to be had when a player deliberately brings destruction to an otherwise serene village, especially if it is one that is under the sway of another god; the screams of terror, yelps of horror and shrieks of sheer fright would be enough to sate any virtual bloodlust that the player has at the time.

Hearing the mortals' pleas for mercy and salvation may also bring a wicked smile to any player who has no qualms about causing mayhem.

The musical soundtracks of the game are as pleasing to listen as its visuals are to be looked at. During times of relative peace, the soundtracks that play are peaceful melodies that emphasize the tranquillity that the mortals currently have. When calamities occur however, the soundtracks switch over to suspenseful orchestra.

There are not a lot of official soundtracks to listen to, but whatever there are that have been packaged into the game would suit its thematic qualities.

It would appear that Black & White is a splendid game with a simplistic exterior but a rich interior, but all is not well with it.

The biggest theme of Black & White, as purported by Lionhead Studios, is the struggle of good versus evil - specifically that of the internal sort, where the player character has to consider decisions that may be inherently good-natured or diabolical, and the consequences of these decisions.

This theme appears to be most apparent in how the game governs the visual appearance of the player/deity, his/her Temple and the outward appearance of the Creature. A player/deity that had been resorting to a lot of heinous measures to get his/her own way would soon find the cursor/hand changing into an insidious demonic parody, while the Temple would become squatter and darker while simultaneously sprouting huge spikes that rise up to the heavens like they are making insulting gestures.

Conversely, a god who had been consistently beneficent would have a Temple that reaches the skies proudly and all-bright, while the cursor/hand turns sparkly and sprinkles fairy dust with every action.

Similar changes are also incurred by the Creature, depending on his actions and attitudes.

Unfortunately, that is pretty much the extent of the theme in this game. Being visually good or evil does not appear to affect gameplay by much. Mortals will still perform what they are told to do regardless of how fiendish or virtuous their god is, and the Creature still ultimately does what he likes to do at the moment when he is not being led around by the player.

Moreover, there is not much in the way of consequences for decisions both good and evil. There are some plot twists in the game that make use of the decision that the player has made earlier in the campaign, but the ultimate ending will still remain the same, regardless.

A player who is intent on playing the game most expediently will also not likely appreciate that the game designers have deemed expedient decisions to be evil. For example, a player who prefers to have enough energy for Miracles as soon as possible to save a village under assault, or for taking over another in a benign manner, would likely sacrifice the closest sacrificial object that he/she can find - which is a worshipper (or two) of course. Unfortunately, the game deems this a heinous act, and the dip in alignment is too far to be redeemed by the beneficent acts that the player would perform shortly.

The theme of good-versus-evil is salvaged somewhat by the banter between the aforementioned Advisors, who inadvertently personify this theme better than anything else in the game. Still, a player given to deep scrutiny would not be able to shake off the impression that this theme has not been effectively expressed in this game.

The gameplay element of Creatures is also somewhat marred by design oversights.

The Creature can only sleep in the Creature Pen (at the Temple), and not anywhere else. Considering that the Creature can get very large to the point that a lot of obstacles impede his movement and that maps can be huge, getting him to return to the Pen in time before he collapses due to exhaustion can be a constant worry especially if the player has him casting a lot of Miracles.

He is also too easily distracted by a lot of things, such that he sometimes simply forgets to look after himself. The player would be alerted to this when he/she gets a message that the Creature has expired, often next to something that the player knows to be a huge distraction for his/her vassal.

Picking up large amounts of resources can be a tedious affair. The player will have to hold the cursor/hand over a stack of resources (such as a village store) while it retrieves wood or food from said stack. There is scripting to accelerate the retrieval over time, but there is no option whatsoever to collect a specific amount. The player has to collect an amount that is more than enough, dump it where it is needed, and retrieve the leftover to be sent elsewhere or returned to stores.

(Villagers or the Creature will eventually make use of leftovers or return them to stores autonomously, but leftover resources do decay over time if they are not stored. It can be a long while before anyone notices leftover resources if there are other things attracting their attention.)

The game has been touted as a successor of sorts to Populous, though it lacks one defining aspect of the latter: the ability for the player to warp terrain to his/her liking. It also lacks many other qualities of Populous, such as an actual presence of clergy dedicated to the player/deity. These flaws somewhat negate the fulfilment of the promise of Black & White being a god game, and makes the player feel more like he/she is taking care of a colony of hapless beings, e.g. an ant farm.

That the feature of Creatures appears to be a stronger one than the other elements of the game also lends credence to criticism that Black & White had been unwittingly designed to be a pet simulator.

(A later expansion to the main game that concerns the lore of the Creatures as a race further strengthens such impressions.)

This game also has some issues that are not easily addressed without complete reworking of the game designs concerned. For example, rocks have to be both tapped into halves and picked up using the left mouse button. A less-than-good mouse, or jittery fingers, can easily cause the player to break rocks instead of picking them up, or vice versa. Another example is the player unwittingly throwing objects instead of gently setting them down due to a slight, unconscious movement of his/her wrist.

The worst things about the game are matters concerning its stability and the scripting for its main quests and side quests.

The player has to be informed that there is plenty of computing that this game does. It can gobble up a lot of memory while running and some of its game files can expand and decompress so much that several gigabytes of hard disk space can be taken in under a week of play. Coupled with astonishingly long loading times when the game is launched for the first time after the computer has been booted, Black & White gives an impression of very inefficient programming for its processing tasks.

There were computer rigs that managed to run the game sweetly, but for each that does, there is at least one that does not.

Unfortunately, the woes with the technical competency of the game do not end there. There are plenty of bugs in how the game handles the enormous amounts of information that is shuttled to and fro among the hard disk, memory and CPU. Certain rigs - especially those that do not run on Intel's chips – suffer random crashes with widely varying frequencies.

The scripting for main quests and side quests is also riddled with glitches. Quests wouldn't complete, rewards would not appear and other minor complaints were rife during the several months from the launch of the game. The most damning glitch, however, is one that concerns a plot twist in the story campaign and which affects the Creature in a very adverse and frustrating way.

(The user-made solution to that one was to make a back-up of the Creature's game files - a solution that shatters the immersion factor of the game.)

Nonetheless, the game designs that are affected by these flaws are still plenty entertaining despite the flaws. The Creature is especially so, as the flaws that he has, namely hiccups in his behavioral programming, made him all the more unforgettable.

In conclusion, Black & White is a refreshingly different game, even if some of its game designs may have already been done before in the strategy/simulation genre. It also has plenty of technical and scripting flaws, but all of these would not discourage the player from savouring the otherwise well-implemented ideas in this game, chief of which is the Creature, which has become the unique signature of the Black & White franchise.