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Shades of gray turn blood red . . .B&W hits the floor hard.


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I just revisited the game Black an White.

Then I remembered why I stopped playing. How many people have played the game and would have rather the developers waited even just one more month or so . . .?

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well, I bought the game when it came out and it constantly crashed. it didn't even recognize the latest ATI drivers (I was shocked at that). But when the (official) patch was released, everything seems to run just great. it's a phenomenal game.

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Guest Hellbinder[CE]

I bought B&W, and returned it 2 days later.

Just not enough single player gameplay for my tastes. It gets very old and very repetative very fast. It claims to have all this amazing "stuff" but really its just a bunch of scripted events, that are the exact same every single time. The creature fighting is pointless and a waste of time. There is never enough resources to really accomplish anything.

It was just not my thing.

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It ran fine on my system, but it got REALLY monotonous after a few days, the creature's more of a pain in the a** than any real help, and being good is WAY to hard because the villager AI is so bad. They can't do anything for themselves. Its more computer art than a game.

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Well, actually it all depends on how you play the game. I tought my creature a lot of spells and since I point it out to him that it's good to cast those spells on villagers he helps out a lot. As for the villagers, if you do everything for them then they will get lazy and just sit around waiting for you to get them food and wood and all that stuff, you gotta let them harvest their own food and just build fields for them, then they will be self sufficient, otherwise you WILL get tired looking after them all the time. So it all depends, you can make the game enjoyable or you can make it the biggest drag and hate it later, when after all it's your own fault.

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also, the really funny thing is that you can actually take over the entire map of a game and THEN do the gold story scrolls...that's one thing I didn't really like, for example you can go as fast or as slow as you want in the game, but it doesn't actually affect the outcome until you progress through the story. I would have thought that the gold story scrolls would activate automatically if you have started something that would eventually take place within that scroll. For example in Land 2, when you take over the first village. I took over nearly the entire map, completed most of the silver scroll puzzles and then activated the gold story scroll and then had to take over the villages again....weird.

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good question...I really don't know much about the Sims, although I do know that it is insanely popular...seemingly far moreso than Black and White. But Black and White isn't a 'bad' game in my opinion. The Sims is more of a 'life simulator' than Black and White, and I think that it may offer more 'fiddly things' to do.

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Well...Since I have both The Sims and B&W, I think I can answer that question....

B&W: Strategic game where you play a god competing against another god (or two or three). Decent game play. Okay story line. Rather linear. Some replayability. Multiplayer possible. Game survivability on my HD, dropping (and it's a new game).

The Sims (plus expansions): You directly control the lives of people. You are not a "god", just a controller. "Sim" environment. Open ended. No story line, you write your own story. Excellent game play. MASSIVE replayability. Extreme customization options. NOT multiplayer (yet, see Sims Online). Game survivability on my HD, still high after a couple years.

If you do get The Sims. Get BOTH expansions. The first is an absolute must. The second is just good stuff.

Stability of both games:

On my system, B&W never really exhibited the major problems that it did on other people's. I did crash now and again. But nothing horrible. Nothing unplayable. But then again, my system also supported Windows ME flawlessly. Another fluke of nature. There HAVE been a number of reports of instability.

The Sims doesn't crash. It's Maxis. Maxis makes the world's most stable games.

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Hehe. It's a pity there are no demos of The Sims or Black & White, but the reviewers seem to give The Sims their unanimous high praise (it won several Game of the Year awards), while Black & White is loved by some (GameSpot, 9.3/10), liked by some (Avault, 4/5) and moderately respected by some (CGO, 3/5), not to mention disliked by others (every player review in Mobygames).

There seems to be a high regard for B&W's achievements (advanced creature AI, visuals changing relative to good/evil status), even among those who dislike the game, but there is a lot of debate over whether these achievements translated into a good game (reminds me of the mixed response that Blade Runner received).

Anyway, I'm leaning towards The Sims. If I ever feel the itch for a "god sim", I can always get Populous somewhere.

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I'd be leaning towards The Sims, more as well. It's perfectly open-ended, and if you add the expansions, it's perfect. Get both expansions if you can; and if you can't, then at least get the second one (House Party).

Also, Maxis's Sims website has lots of downloads, and tons of user-submitted 'households' to add to your neighborhood, for lots of strange 'sim-talk' interactions.

quote:

Posted by Menchise:

If I ever feel the itch for a "god sim", I can always get Populous somewhere.

Wow! I haven't played that game in years! I even still have the first SNES version of it. Never tried the newer, 3D (I think) PC ones...

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I have both the Sims and Black and White. I would get black and white. The Sims get kinda boring after 3 or 4 days. It gets to be the same everyday, get up, eat, go to work, come back, invite guests, work out, sleep, and then the same. Once you get enough money, purchase new stuff for the house, and then what? Although in your case the best thing is to wait and get the other Sim game that's coming out, I forget the name. The major draw back in current Sims game is that it's on a small scale, you can only be inside your (block) and that's where the action is. The new one that's coming out is more like the Sims on a small town setting. So wait and get that one, but if you need something right now, I would recommend Black and White.

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  • 3 years later...

quote:

Originally posted by Supreme Cmdr:

quote:

Originally posted by jamotto:

To revive and old thread. Black & White 2 is expected to be released on Feb. 15 1995. Here are some screen shots over at gamespy


Well gee, it looks like I need to go polish up the olde' time machine then.


grabs keys, and goes back to 1995. Heh, at least gas is cheaper now

ok, supposed to be 2005 Feb 15

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quote:

Originally posted by jamotto:

quote:

Originally posted by Tac:

man populous is a better game than bw1 and 2 will ever be.

and populous is like, from the times of win95

So why is populous better than BW1 and 2?


Armageddon!!! Is your answer.

That was a fun game. Tac the game was DOS 1989. I spent many an hour playing the original populous. Even Populous: The Begining I really enjoyed and still do from time to time. GAMESPOT: Populous: The Beginning has enough innovation to make it more than just a run-of-the-mill real-time strategy game. It isn't really Populous, but it's a solid game with some interesting twists and features.

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  • 1 year later...

Time to dig up an old thread....

I got Black and White 2 a few days ago, and aside from the great graphics I have to say I'm disappointed so far.

In the original B&W, I actually felt like I was a god. I could supply food and wood, water fields, plant forests, heal the sick, cause storms, create tornado's and lightning, rain fire down from above, destroy entire villages with large beams of energy, impress people by creating flocks of birds, scare them by creating packs of wolves, gain influence by throwing rocks, animals, trees, dropping a rock in your village to let people charge up with faith then flinging it into the enemy city, etc, etc, etc.

Most of this is gone in B&W2. They took away most of the miracles and made it into a sim-city type game. Throwing a flaming tree over an enemy village no longer effects your influence. You now gain influence by creating nice cities instead of impressing people with your power. If you impress them enough they will leave their cities and request to join yours. If you don't want to do this, you can just build up an army (which I think is a good addition) and go in and take a city by force. I feel more like a mayor now than I do a god.

Another thing I think they messed up some is the addition of tribute. Tribute is basically spending points you get for doing certain tasks that can then be spent on new technologies (e.g. better buildings) and abilities (e.g. miracles). This is actually a pretty good idea, except for the fact that they seem to have made it so EVERYTHING has to be bought using tribute. If you want to use a miracle, you first must purchase the knowledge using tribute. You then can cast it using mana. If you want to cast it by drawing a symbol on the ground with your finger (which they also messed up), you have to BUY that ability too.

O.K., so now you've bought the miracle and you want to teach it to your creature by having it observe you doing it. Right? Sorry, no longer works that way. You now have to buy his ability to do it also. Not only that, but he only has 4 miracles he can perform (although you only have 6). I loved the ability in the first game to teach my creature any miracle I could do (out of the dozens, not just 6 ) I spent hours in the first B&W teaching him how to destroy villages using the miracle that causes a large beam to come down from the sky. Now all I can BUY for him is heal, lightning, water, and fireball. That's it. I can't even buy him the shield or meteor miracles (the other 2 I can do).

They've also made some changes to the creature that I think are a big mistake. First of all is his size. In the first game your creature could get HUGE. I'm guessing 100+ feet. Now I think he maxes out at about 25 feet (although you can get around this using a game cheat/trainer program). The second one is they added thought bubbles to the creature so you can see what he is thinking of doing before he actually does it. I thought at first that this would be a great addition, but in reality it turns your creature into a mindless robot instead of an semi-intelligent being. For example, in the first game your creature would pick one of your villagers and look at them. You would never be sure if he was going to put him down, throw him, or eat him. Depending on what he finally ended up doing you could reward or punish him, depending on what action you wanted him to take in the future. It works in a similar way now, but you can see him thinking what he will do before he does it. For example, he picks up a person that he wants to eat, you can punish or reward him before he does it. There as a slider bar that get's put above his head while you're disciplining him, showing you how inclined he is to do one action or the other. You can also go in at any time and see what he has learned and adjust any of them just by clicking on them. This seems to take away any real mystery and individually my creature used to have and I miss it .

One of the nice things they did add, though, are epic miracles. These are basically huge, land altering miracles. They require you to buy the technology, but then you can build a tower for each one. When the tower is built, you can create deciples to dance around it and charge it up. Once it is charged up (I guess it takes around 20-30 minutes, don't know because I was using a cheat to get unlimited use) you can cast it somewhere on the map. The four available epics are the Siren, Volcano, Earthquake, and Hurricaine. The Siren creates a huge magical woman that floats above the enemy and converts a large number of them to your tribe. The Volcano causes a large volcano to rise up out of the ground, then lava comes out and burns most everything around it. The earthquake causes a large fissure to open up on the ground, swallowing entire villages, and the hurricaine causes a large tornado-like storm to suck up everything in it's path. All are VERY cool!!!

I paid $10 for B&W1 with the Creature Isle expansion pack, and I love it. It is a great game that had a few flaws but the rest of the game made up for them. I paid $50 for B&W2, and I have to say that is is a disappointment. They gave it gorgeous graphics, armies, and better cities, but they took took away a lot of the stuff that made the first one so unique and enjoyable in the first place.

Hopefully in a future patch they will give us more miracles, allow us to give the creature back his free will, and give us the ability teach the creature rather than just buy him knowledge. Until they do that, I wouldn't recommend this game to anybody who has played the original unless they can get it for around $20. If you haven't played the original, then I would recommend you get the original first for $10 and play it to death. It really is an enjoyable game. After that, you hopefully will realize why I don't recommend the 2nd one (in it's current state) for such a high price.

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I also got B&W2 and I do agree on what seems to be your biggest point: less miracles.

However, the interaction of these miracles on the land and on the objects is far better than it was in B&W1, but still: more would certainly make this game better...

In the new game everything is influenced by the game's physics. You can pile objects on top of eachother, roll then, nudge them. You can even smash them with your hand!

The creature is so much more intelligent now and is easier to put to good (figuratively speaking ) use.

Also the tribute thing is exactly one of the things I agree upon. It's a bit over the top having to play for every single thing.

But all in all a nice game, but still loosing interest quite quickly eventhough the interview with the creators seems to claim lots of replay value... I don't think I will return to it after I've finished the story...

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The game does get kind a of dull rather quickly if you play it as pure..or mostly good. But play it as ebil incarnate and it's a lot of fun ^_^

Anyhoo, I rather prefer the tribute system in respect to the creature as opposed to the BW 1. WHile it felt more realistic to teaching your creature how to do and when to miracles, it was enormous pain in the arse. Especially if you had the misfortune of picking one of the dumber creatures. (Leopard...Cow.. etc)

Spending several hours just trying to get thing to get skill on the Increase level miracles is just too slow. That's even assuming you 'cheated' a bit and used the custom training maps... Lord knows how you could stand it on the regular isles.

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