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Black And White Sequel Previewed
An anonymous reader points out that TotalVideoGames has a first look preview of Black And White 2, the sequel to Lionhead's creature-poking 'god' game from a couple of years back. The preview comes complete with 16 rather attractive screenshots, and mentions that "the world now is much more chaotic and destructive" - in other words, there's lots more stopping and creating wars with your giant pet creature. Black And White 2 is due to ship for PC close to Xmas 2003.
First of all it seemed a blatant rehash of Populous 3. Except Populous 3 was more fun!
So much for "innovation". The lack of direct control over what was going on frustrated the crap outta me.
You couldnt so much as fart without being instantly considered evil. It was nearly impossible to play as good!
So many times I just wished there was a friggin button!! Innovation is not about being different for difference's sake, its about doing something that's actually better.
What's the usability of a gesture interface? None.
No interface can be considered good if there is a major chance of failing to issue a command to the system.
Am I alone in hating this game?
I bought that game based on sheer hype -- the concept behind it was revolutionary, and everything about it sounded amazing.
And then I played it.
Five levels. The game had only five levels. Five, in case you missed it the first two times.
The "Hollywood scriptwriter" they brought in to help with the script turned out to be a Speak & Spell with failing batteries.
The "200 side-quests" (I think that was how many they promised) turned out to be "Follow this stupid guy down the mountain. The only interesting part about this is the fact that if the controls didn't suck, it would be simple, but they do, so it's not." There were no "real" quests throughout the entire game.
The choice between good and evil turned out to be "You can either play as good, or win the game. Pick one."
In fact, I lied about that. As first shipped, the game was unwinnable.
The "drastic changes" to the landscape that occurred when I turned soul-suckingly evil turned out to be so subtle that I honestly thought the landscape morphing wasn't working at first.
Your stupendous, godly powers turned out to mainly involve throwing rocks. Oh, and you can make artifacts, too. Just make them out of rocks.
Never again. I will never buy another game by Lionhead Studios without playing it first. Fuckers.
ZFS: because love is never having to say fsck
For those that haven't played, this was the biggest flaw in the entire game -- micromanagement of resource delivery.
Yes, you drop a guy on a field, and he becomes a little farmer to carry the food back to the store. And you drop a peon on a tree, and he becomes a little logger to carry wood back to the store. (And if you drop a little guy next to a little gal, they become lovers, and hump till they die, but that's besides the point)
And when people are hungry, do they go to the store and eat the food? Yes, unless they happen to be doing other jobs -- the most important of which was dancing around your temple to generate the mana that you use to do all your god-like stuff. Without mana, you can't water your fields to grow more food, or throw fireballs to burn the food store of your enemies.
You see, once they became a worshiper, they have this little OTHER food storage next to their alter that they go and eat from. Oh, and the two food stores aren't linked, you have to stop what you're doing, drag the food out of the main storage, and drop it by the temple. Plus every new alter you build (you can have up to 6 if I recall) has its own food store, so you're refilling 6 separate groups of peons. And if you don't drop food on it like every 90 seconds, they don't eat and die. All the while, you hear soft little pleadings out of your speakers "We need food!" Eventually you hear this soft "Deaaaath" south, followed by "We need more worshipers"...
All the micromanagement in the game could have been solved by creating a Teamster peon who's job is to carry resource between all your buildings. Carry the food to the temple, carry the wood to the workshop, carry the wood to the damaged buildings (yes, villagers won't repair their own houses unless there is wood placed on the house first). You would think that having ultimate godly powers would mean you don't have to do grocery runs for your peons anymore.
And don't even get me started on the pet....
If consumers bash every game that tries new things, just because it doesn't do everything perfectly first time, what hope is there for the Command and Conquers and Dooms of the future.
Wolf 3d didn't interest me at all when I first tried it on the PC. I thought it looked like a very crude game with one interesting new trick. Many people disagreed with me though.
Dune 2.. I enjoyed that one more, but thought that it was really flawed compared to other strategy games of its time like the Settlers and Civilisation.