Sound: 9
Gameplay: 4
Replay Value: 0
Reviewer's Tilt: 5
Overall: 4.7
The gameplay might seem like a good idea at first. You play as a god who controls several lands. You can choose to be bad or good by your actions. You can throw people, drown them, whatever you want, or you could perform miracles and be nice, if you're into that sort of thing. Your people will eventually worship you, build statues in your honor, and beg for mercy whenever you threaten your land. At first, the gameplay is actually quite fun. Then, the suck factor starts to set in. The gameplay is too focused on feeding your land, performing miracles, growing forests and saving people that the game just starts to suck. Even when you're being evil, you can't just sit there and torture people all day, because it does get boring after a while. There are way too many things to do at once that it just becomes overwhelming. Then in the second land, you have other gods who act as competition. Competition for what, I ask. What kind of competition are we doing, and what prize do we seek? Is there a point to this snorefest of a game? Of course not.
If you want to see some pretty graphics, you'll have to check out the game. The entire island is in your command, and you can see views from a mile above the earth, even down to a centimeter off the ground--and the game never loses its detail. Water isn't that pretty looking, but oh well, you'll hardly care. There's lots of trees, rocks, people, and other things to pick up off the ground and throw.
The sounds are insane. You'll hear lots of talking among characters, environmental sounds like birds singing or cows mooing, and some really nice music. For a game like B&W, you would think that the voice acting would be over-the-top for such subject matter, but actually it's quite believeable. You'll find that the ambient sounds, combined with sweet graphical eye candy really are basically just frosting on a very bland cake.
I'm also quite angry about the control scheme. It may be customizable (barely), but it still lacks the right "feel". Playing Black and White with a mouse may seem like a good idea, until you found out that everything can be done with the mouse. Everything. It's especially hard dragging the hand across the land with other, pressing another button to flip the camera around, then grabbing an object that you're after. Wait until you see how complicated throwing is at first. I'm just going to come out and say it. Black and White's controls suck.
So what is B&W, exactly? Well, it would take a very long time for me to explain what it is, but I'll try. It's fantasy, yet it's The Sims. But it's more like Riven....and yet...I really can't say. You'll see some of The Sims combined with Final Fantasy, but the game is really what you make of it. If you play evil, you can terrorize your village to the point of aggrivation. Your village believes in you, and some of them don't. If you perform miracles, or pick them up and shake them around in the air to make them desciples, then they'll believe in you, and eventually worship you.
But the game's subject matter can get a little intense at times. This is when you throw a cow in the air and see it rolling down a hill slowly but surely, until it hits the bottom of the hill and dies. When an entire village is bowing before you, praying for mercy, then you know that the game has some rather controversial elements. Personally, I think that the initial shock of the game is great, but it wears off quickly just like the rest of the cumbersome experience.
I've seen this game run on crummy computers, so don't worry if you think that your computer can't play this game, unless it's older than 1999. Even with the graphics set on the highest level, B&W ran smoothly on my 64 MB GeForce 2, which is saying something. A game this pretty looking seems like you would need a Hal 9000, but in reality you don't. That is one reason why I congratulate Black and White. But for no other reason. A game this terrible should be avoided if you're not looking for a substitute for sleeping pills.
