A relatively old game released in 2001, this game got a 9.7/10 rating on IGN, and more than 9 on other review websites. Bored with nothing to play during the holidays, I decided to give the game a go.
Simply addictive. This game gets you hooked from your very first minute of playing. With entirely no menu at all, you are thrown into the game’s first movie after creating a player name. An interesting starting, a child has fallen into the sea and his parents are calling for help. Your godly hand immediately comes to the rescue. Then two amusing things come into the screen. Whitey, your good conscience, and Blackie, your evil conscience. These two start guiding you to the game, and from time to time make amusing and silly comments.
This game has a tutorial that I didn’t get bored of. From the beginning till the end, I never got sick of it. In fact, the tutorial is somewhat blended in together with the main story of the game. You start off as a relatively new god who just came into the land of Eden, and on the first island, you are in peace and you slowly learn there. Slowly as you advance, you’ll learn about an evil god, Nemesis, who is determined to be the one and only god in the land of Eden. One of Nemesis’s betrayer teaches you some things, and Nemesis gets angry and starts to attack you.
You are transported to the second island. This game divides the game into five different islands, all with different objectives. Ultimately, your goal is to get rid of Nemesis and be the only god in Eden. An ally god helps you in the second island, but he isn’t there for long.
This game also has some mini quests around the island, which will usually reward you with some interesting miracles to cast or maybe some other form of help. As god, expect to do some very fun things. Cast miracles ranging from blessings like food or wood, and also destructive miracles like fireball and lightning bolt. This game has the unique mouse movement recognition technology. This means that to activate a miracle, all you have to do is right click, then draw with your mouse the picture representing the miracle. For example, drawing a “w” activates the water miracle, and drawing a heart activates the heal miracle.
You operate in the game with a mighty floating hand. Pick up trees, rocks and people, and do anything you want with them. Throw them into a faraway mountain, smash a rock against a building, drop a tree into the village store for wood, or even drop a tree into the worship site to sacrifice him for prayer energy.
Every god also has a creature. This creature has a mind of its own, and I have to say the AI for the creature is pretty good for a 2001 game. This creature can learn things by itself simply by watching the process of doing it. Get the creature to watch your villagers dancing, and the creature will eventually learn how to dance. Get it to watch you casting a miracle, and it’ll learn how to cast a miracle itself. If your creature does something wrong, slap him, and he won’t do it again. The creature versus creature battles aren’t very well designed though. I won’t comment on its simplicity - all you do is click on the enemy creature to attack it, click on yourself to defend, and click on the land to move there. What I’m irritated about is the way the camera moves. Firstly, the camera angle is bad such that you won’t be able to see both creatures some times. Secondly, the unpredictable camera movements cause you to click the wrong things. Thirdly, clicking on my creature somethings doesn’t cause it to defend.
Some issues I have is that the game becomes rather repetitive in the third island onwards. Each village has a circle of influence, and your hand will not be able to work outside this circle. To be able to increase the size of this circle, your village needs to grow. To grow, you’ll need food. To get food, you need farms. To get farms, you need wood. The problem is, the villages gather wood way too slowly, and the houses require a lot of wood. So, you’ll spend a lot of time uprooting trees by yourself and supplying wood. Not my idea of being god.
If you choose to convert the enemies village, it’ll not be easy, but you’ll get its circle of influence, enabling you to advance faster. If you choose to destroy it, there’s going to be a really huge uninfluenced gap in between your village and the enemies village.
Speaking of this, you make what the villages and land will become. You do it entirely your way, the good way, or the evil way.
On to the graphics. I have to commend the way you can zoom in right up to a person’s face, and zoom all the way out till you see the clouds. Very functional and friendly. However, as it is released in 2001, the model graphics are not very good. The facial features are pretty botched up, and the land is not very detailed. I haven’t met with any graphical bugs, and that’s a good thing.
The sound and voice-acting is pretty good though. Rarely do you hear fake screams for help when something bad happens. I don’t remember what I did once, but I actually felt remorseful and guilty when I did something bad to a villager. I stopped what I was doing immediately.
The music is pretty well suited to the environment to the game. Usually ancient tribal music, it suits rather well with your job of being god. Pretty soft when balanced with game effect sounds though.
Overall, this game is rather well made and it brings the essence of being god to you. Its always fun to be evil once in a while, though I don’t recommend it. Supplying wood and expanding your circle of influence is too tedious though.
Black and White E3 Trailer (3:06)
Graphics: 7.2
Sound: 8.7
Gameplay: 9.3
Lasting appeal: 8.6
Overall: 8.8
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