Black and White 2
We heard Nick Haywood likes to spank his monkey… Perfect for reviewing Black and White 2 then.
If ever there was a game that polarised the gaming community, Black and White was it. It was the ‘Marmite’ of the gaming world. You either loved it or you hated it. I’ve yet to meet anyone who found it ‘ok’ or ‘not bad’… There were those who saw it as a set of levels to be completed and then whinged like crazy about how they finished the game in under 4 hours, then there was the other side of the camp full of players loving the open-ended nature of the game with it’s freedom to do pretty much what you wanted when you wanted to do it.
I have to say that I fell firmly into the second set of players and absolutely loved the first game. The freedom, the sheer number of things to do and the choice to ignore all of that and just do my own thing had me totally hooked. That’s not to say that I couldn’t see the flaws in the game, such as the intro sequence having to be played through again with no skipping if you started a new game (though that was fixed with the first patch) and the finnickety good/evil system meaning you spent more time pandering to your villagers than being a god, especially if you wanted to play as good god. But even given its flaws, Black and White was a brave effort, exploring exactly how we play games and how we could affect a persistent world… It was a classic then and still is now.
Click for larger imageSo now the sequel, Black and White 2, is here. Lionhead have been working on it since they finished work on Creature Isles and you’ve got to wonder just what they’ve got in store for us that could be any better than the original and what cool new and totally unheard treats they’ve got in store this time… read on and find out.