Black & White 2

Review from Jess - Tuesday, 25 April 2006 @ 12:00am

I?m not generally a pacifist. In fact, I sometimes like a bit of violence in my games. However, offering a non-violent way to win Lionhead Studios' Black & White 2 was a nice change from the usual ?make your army as big as you can and annihilate everyone? RTS style that I?m used to.
The Story is not too complicated - just a simple revenge and conquer theme, it leaves a lot of room for you to do what you want and explore its possibilities. You basically play as God which gives you a reason as to why you are controlling the lives of your followers resulting in a much more immersive RTS.

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In the beginning you are introduced to your conscience - one side (a cheeky red devil) is telling you to be bad and the other side (a little Greek philosopher) telling you to be good. You have the choice to be evil and go on the offensive by adopting the traditional RTS approach by building up your army and attacking. Alternatively, you can take a more passive stance and build up an impressive city to attract your opponent?s villagers to your side destroying the opponent?s economy. It is possible to win either way, although the game does seem slightly geared towards being good as the available resources in the environment support building up a city rather than feeding an army. There are also lots of mini games to help you gain upgrades for you and your creature.

One of the features of playing as God is your ability to assign your followers to certain tasks which they take as divine influence and become one of your disciples. Along with the usual resource gathering roles, such as ore collectors, food and wood gathers, there are more in-depth roles such as disciple breeders who help to increase the population, disciple builders who build and repair structures, and disciple refiners who process raw grain, ore and wood. It?s very enjoyable at times just to sit back watch your villagers lead their own little lives in the world you created ? zooming in to see the breeders playing happy families and the joy of the builders completing another house. If your villagers need something badly enough they?ll eventually go and get it for themselves which is nice when you have thousands of them eating themselves out of house and home, and you?re too busy staving off the Aztec invasion to get their dinner for them! However, this cannot be sustained for too long because allowing this to occur causes mass depression and an eventual decrease in productivity. (An instance of this occurred when I attempted to colonize a remote settlement which I then forgot about. They got so depressed that they stopped looking for food and starved to death, poor little dears.)

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Another distinguishing feature of Black & White 2 is your giant creature, which becomes very useful for stomping down enemy platoons if you don?t have much of an army. During the tutorial stages you must choose between a baby lion, gorilla, dog or a cow. Although these choices were fine, it would have been nicer to have had more creatures to choose from, however this is only a very minor problem and doesn?t effect the playability of the game. Throughout the game the creature grows into an adult and it?s your responsibility to exercise and train him ? almost like having Tamagotchi that can kill - very nice. You can discipline your creature by zooming in and giving him a slap with your mouse pointer if he?s being naughty or a nice pat if he?s been good.

A graphically rich game, with loads of interactivity as far as RTS games go, possessing wonderfully smooth and expressive character animations and a highly interactive environment. Unfortunately though, experiencing the full potential of Black & White 2 tends to create a lot of demand on your PC.

The sound design is good, however, more time could have been spent on the transitions between ambience tracks. And anyone with a subwoofer should be aware that during the whole game there is a repetitive sub frequency heartbeat sound that seems cool at first but after several hours of playing becomes quite irritating. The music, on the other hand, was well done and blended tastefully into the game. Voice acting varied from the excellently done conscience characters to very dodgy for the mini-games.

Summary

Stylized with loads of charm, a hint of humor and offering a choice of paths, Black & White 2 is a very enjoyable well rounded game with many wonderful aspects setting it apart from other RTS titles.

Pros

Offers choice on how you play the game, Excellent animations, graphics and AI, Cute furry creatures to care for, Lots of fun mini-games

Cons

Annoying heartbeat sound, Needed more creatures to choose from, PC intensive