If my time with The Sims is anything to go by, then you'll know that God games don't exactly appeal to me, and Black & White is as literal a God game as you can get. Manipulating the world via a disembodied hand and an animal avatar, will you be naughty or nice to the blobby inhabitants whose belief in you is the only reason you're here at all?
Frustrations
I began my time with Black & White by praying to the software Gods to allow runblack.exe to run at all. The hoops I had to jump through to get this game going on modern systems... I have a disc that seemed to install the game, but couldn't run it. It had a patch that couldn't find the game. I went to fansites to download new patches, and that didn't solve anything. I downloaded an ISO to no avail, then a fan-made patch, and finally a no-cd crack patch and somewhere amongst all that I stumbled on a working version of Black & White.
Great. Let's see what all these giant cows mean.
Little Timmy, or whoever he is, has run off into the water. His parents know that this is quite a bad thing to do, but haven't drummed that into Little Timmy's head enough, so their last resort to saving him from being eaten alive by sharks is to collapse to the floor and pray someone will just do the thing.
That's where we come in, hurtling from outside of time and space, in the place between Universes, all the way down through the cosmos to this beach to pluck Little Timmy out of the water. Thus, I am born, a God.
I can think of more urgent situations that could necessitate the creation of a deity, but whatever. Let's see where this goes.
Our conscience is represented by a wise old man and a grotesque little devil, and I already know which of the two I want to side with in any decision of note. Before any of that, though, we need to learn how to move around the world and in turn meet some more of these locals.
These folks were in the process of building a temple to someone who I suppose technically didn't exist at that point, and now that Little Timmy has gone swimming with the fishes and summoned me to this mortal realm, some prophecy has been fulfilled, and they're able to finish building the temple. What do they need help with?
Manual labour? You need me to move the wood to build my own temple? I hope you're happy with 15 thousand units of timber...
Yes, yes, well-done tribe, well done... To say it's all made from wood is impressive, actually. Anyway, this temple serves as a kind of situation room come menu, and it seems overly elaborate for what it is. There's an entire library modelled to show you the controls (which I didn't even show me), and a challenge room full of empty spaces for where the completion certificates would be hung, I guess. The only place that interested me was the creature room, but it's blocked off. Hmm. Better go outside and see what's what.
Signposts or story progression? Hmmmmmmmmmmm...
So, let me get this straight. I'm a God, a kind of 'go anywhere, do anything' sort of being. And this giant wooden gate is impeding my movement, demanding three stones be placed in front of it before opening? The first stone I literally plucked from the countryside and dollop in front of the door, such is my immense power.
The second stone is in some woman's house. Why? How did she get it in there? What does she want with a Gate stone? She's done what most of these idiot villagers do in times of crisis - pray for someone else to do the thing, rather than do it themselves. The thing, in this case, is to find a sick brother and return him to the safety of the village.
I like your style, dude. What's your name, anyway? Sadly, I couldn't find a way to smash this house open. I could tap on the door, but that did nothing. I guess I'll have to scroll the map, pluck a brother, scroll the map again and dollop him in front of his sister for a reward.
Are you kidding me? This bloody gate wants three carved stones but doesn't care where they come from. I could have just dumped a rock that looked vaguely like something. Hell, I'm a God, I could have made the damn stones out of thin air, but noooo, carve a new bloody gate stone it is.
I bet I've got to pluck it from the other side of the map, as well.
Whatever is behind here better be worth it.
Ok, where do we start? This is the creature select screen, then. One of these delightful fellows is going to be me incarnate, I suppose. Who do I identify with the most? Who can I see unleashing hell upon unsuspecting villagers? Who can accurately channel my wrath? It's gonna be the Orangutan.
I don't know what he has to be frightened of. He's multiple times the size of any other living creature in this village and has the backing of me, a God. The guy can do almost anything it wants and get away with it. He wants to get scratched though, which is a bit beneath me as a damn deity. Scratch a little too eagerly, however, and you can end up slapping your chosen creature, leading to some interesting animation and a disgruntled avatar.
Fun Times
Being able to slap this chap was the highlight of my time with Black & White. It was short-lived, however. I got bored soon afterwards. Told to feed him, I instead went to investigate something else that was behind the gate.
Further Frustrations
Is my soul purpose in this bloody place to move crap from one spot to another? Can you not figure out how to transport wood yourselves? I hope you want thousands of units of wood for your precious boat.
Ah, get lost. I'm not your personal servant, I'm your God damn God.
Final Word
And that's when I finally got fed up with Black & White - I didn't even make it far enough to let my Orangutan go ape-shit on the populace. So what did I miss?
I have no idea. I'm vaguely aware of what Black & White offers, and can guess what it provides from what little I've played, but I don't know how deep the whole 'be the kind of God you want to be' nature of the game goes.
As I gather, you can build up your tribe to worship you eternally, or you can treat them like crap and beat them into submission. Or maybe you should do that for the unbelievers of the neighbouring tribes, and then 'peacefully' convert them into your belief system. Yeah...
I don't have time for that rubbish. I don't have time for religion full stop, but this isn't strictly speaking about religion. As games go, is Black & White an interesting game? Yes. A technological one? Yes. A noteworthy one to play? Yyyeaauhh? No? I don't know.
It was met with critical acclaim and awards aplenty, but I'm not attracted to it at all. If I wanted a Tamagotchi, I'd buy a Tamagotchi. If I wanted a game where I could manage worlds, I'd get one that didn't involve stupid whiny villagers. If I wanted a game where I could slap a cow across the face... well I might just have to concede that Black & White would be that game.
But this game just hasn't gripped me, and so the cow will remain unslapped - unless that's what you choose to do.
Fun Facts
There is an option for the in-game weather to match the real world weather, provided of course you're all hooked up to the Internet to enable such technological marvels.
Black & White, developed by Lionhead Studios, first released in 2001.
Version played: PC, 2001.