Black & White

Publisher: EA Games
Developer: Lionhead Studios
Genre: Real-Time Strategy
Release Date: Mar 26, 2001 (more)
ESRB: TEEN
ESRB Descriptors: Comic Mischief, Violence

After three years in the making, Lionhead Studios' first game manages to live up to the extremely high expectations after all. It's a massive game about lofty concepts--gods and miracles--and yet the game is genuinely funny. The scope of Black & White is so far in excess of a typical game design that it seems surprising that the finished product turned out so polished and so playable. Still, its many different elements require a lot of explanation--the game has lots of mainstream appeal, but its sophisticated mechanics may quickly confound more casual players. Black & White is clearly a labor of love by designer Peter Molyneux and his staff. While some aspects of it take getting used to, and can even be frustrating, there's just so much to see and experience in Black & White that its shortcomings should not turn you away from this incredible game.

Because so much about Black & White seems so unusual, it's only natural to be curious about exactly how the game plays. It's definitely true that some aspects of the game simply defy categorization--however, it's also the case that, at its core, Black & White is a strategy game that's reminiscent of several of Peter Molyneux's previous games from when he was at Bullfrog Productions. You play as a god, depicted throughout the game merely as a disembodied hand, and your object is to gain the worship of villages throughout the world. You have complete control over the 3D perspective of the game and complete control over more or less everything else in the world. You can personally see to making villagers work more efficiently. As you gain more followers, your sphere of influence grows over the land, eventually encompassing other outlying villages, which you'll have to convert to your faith. Their belief in you is quantified within the game, and the more faithful villagers you have, the greater the territory you control, and the more potential you have for creating miracles--which are essentially magic spells.
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Minimum System Requirements
System: PII 333 or equivalent
RAM: 64 MB
Video Memory: 8 MB
Hard Drive Space: 600 MB

Screen Shots

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