Black & White

[Merovingian 0]

Does anyone still play this? I recently dug this out and started playing it again about a week ago. I completely forgot how enthralling this game is! I stopped playing during university as I was getting too obsessed with it! Its also quite funny how when I last played, I was good but always seem to end up evil by about the 3rd-4th land. I was also going to ask if the second version was any good? I know it had more battle theme running through it.

[Mordent 0]

Ah, fond memories...I'm seriously tempted to go dig it out myself, now. Anyway, I haven't played it in ages but it's still a brilliant game. I've also played B&W2, and you'd be right that there's more of a battle theme. Basically, rather than having your creature do all of the general destruction you can train your villagers up as soldiers etc.

 

I never got past the first few lands in the second one, mainly because it's not actually my game so I didn't get to spend all that much time on it. They also took out the multiplayer element, which I figure was a bad bad move. There's nothing quite like trashing the villages of your friends or, even more entertaining, watching their villages convert to you as their reign of terror makes your utopian society look tempting indeed. It's always embarrassing when they lose to a pacifist.

 

Still, definite fun times with the original, the second isn't as revolutionary as the first (obviously), so although it's a good bit of fun to play I tend to prefer the multiplayer aspect of the original. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to go rummage through some boxes of old games.

[Merovingian 0]

I've never played multipayer in Black & White. That's something I should look into perhaps? Maybe when you have got established, we could have a game together and you could show me the ropes for playing online? Anyway, I'm sorry if I have now just ruined your work flow now for bringing up the game

Edited August 19, 2008 by Merovingian (see edit history)

[Mordent 0]

Well, just dug it out and spent pretty much all of yesterday playing it. Yeah, this looks like it could well be a rapidly worsening trend.

 

So anywho, aside from the fact that my ape's pretty small and useless at the moment, I haven't played online for a long time. I've restrained myself to cease playing it all today as well, so much the better, but we'll see how well my will holds out. The main problem I have with the game is that it takes forever to get your creature to any appreciable size. I remember when I used to play it online (and this is after a good few solid weeks of playing) that everyone else's creature was the maximum size, simply because the creature never shrinks. Once the veterans have got their creature huge, they can pretty much trash anything they like with it.

 

One variation I had great fun with is agreeing to play with entirely new creatures. Namely we did the very first part of the tutorial until the creature selection and then went straight to an online game. You wouldn't believe how much I yelled at my computer screen when my... I think it was a tiger, started trashing my village of his own accord. Of course, glancing over at my opponent he was having about as much fun as me trying to control his little blighter. The creature's a great way to convert villages outside of your influence, but damned if he can be a stubborn bugger at the start.

 

But anywho, once I'm back from my holiday (headed away for two weeks) and got settled back in to uni I'll give you a game sometime. I notice you're from London, which saves the timezone trouble a little.

 

This all assumes I don't manage to get annoyed with the irritating little ape in the meantime. It's so hard to be good, I'd have to agree. Curse the temptation of the fireball!

[Merovingian 0]

I am from London. Where you based at?

[Mordent 0]

Technically Portsmouth (south coast), but anywho...the only reason I pointed it out was because online games can take an absolute age to get through, so being in the same timezone helps one heck of a lot. It takes even longer if both players try and go about it the Good way. There's only so many nice things you can do to each others' villages!

 

I'm tempted to restart the game again (deleting my profile and my creature) and going through so that I'm personally Good, while my creature is a thing from the deepest pits of Hell. It's a pretty nice combo, your creature trashes everything (getting you Belief) and you put it back together again (getting yet more Belief). The problems start when you have to train your little critter up, though, as to teach him the, say, Fireball miracle and what you want him to use it on you've got to torch a few villages yourself.

 

Still, you can always win back your Good status by applying liberal Heals afterwards, if you care so much about that. I just get all annoyed when I'm trying to play a good deity and end up accidentally killing some random villager to have my Good conscience have a rant at me. "Oh come on, it's not like I did it on purpose!" I might just tell both of my consciences to go stuff it, letting me do what I feel like at the time.

[Feelay 0]

hmm.. I used to play black&white.. but then, I found Black&white 2.. but my computer couldn't play that becaue of old hardware :DSo I stopped Black and White too, because I got mad at the second one :oThe time I was playing black and white 1, was acctauly very fun The graphics wasn't the best, but it was the funniest game I ever played.. The story, was fun :mellow:I tryed to be a good guy, but some of them were mean. what wa I supposed to do

[Merovingian 0]

I might have a play in a few weeks time. I'm currently messing with linux and thus don't have much time for it. I'm also trying to sell my house! When I've sorted out windows (I need to do a new install to clear out all the rubbish) I'll replace my saved files and continue with the game! If I kept playing, I'd never sell my house and probably upset my partner!

[Mordent 0]

Just as a comment to anyone thinking of installing Black & White (the original), I'd definitely recommend getting the v1.1 patch (available in loads of places, such as here). While I've never encountered any of the problems with the bugs it apparently fixes, having the option of skipping the tutorial once you've gone through it once is an absolute godsend. That alone makes it worthwhile, in my opinion.

Edited August 23, 2008 by Mordent (see edit history)

[Merovingian 0]

Jesus... I wish I knew about that! I hate doing that tutorial!!! Every time...GAAAA! I once made my beast eat Sabel the creature trainer as I was so annoyed!

[Running With Scissors1405241561 0]

I don't own Black&White but I own Black&White 2 and I love it. Funny thing is I bought it in a strategy pack because I wanted the other games in it but it turned out I played B&W2 more than all the other combined.

[FelixMercer 0]

I played black and white 2 and it was fun for a bit. After awhile the game gets lonely since there's no multiplayer at all( Not even LAN ). Its fighting system isn't that great, my troops constantly didn't know how to get from point A to point B, and there isn't a way to peacefully take cities. If your peaceful and "good" you get one city and people migrate to you instead of joining your empire. You can still go any conquer the empty city, but this is considered evil and you start turning bad. All in all the game isn't that great and its not being helped by not having multiplayer which is a big thing for me.