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Black And White 2 Preview
Eurogamer has up a preview of the sequel to Black and White, imaginatively named Black and White 2. In the article Peter Molyneux, the game's designer, admits to some faults with the original title: "'It had really, really really terrible, awful tutorials,' he admits. 'The creature itself was broken, you couldn't really build things and people really wanted to build things, there weren't enough objectives in the game, the story couldn't reflect what you'd like. The list goes on.' As designer, programmer, co-founder of Lionhead Studios and even now OBE, Molyneux can afford this sort of candid admission, especially when there have been several years of retrospection. But that doesn't stop it from being a surprising admission, smiling openly as he talks to us about his newest foray into the god/strategy genre, Black & White 2. And it's clear that for this sequel, he isn't prepared to make the same mistakes twice."
Please, no gestures in B&W 2.
They make my hands hurt.
I can't do them fast enough to keep up with the pace of the game, and I can't do them well enough not to make mistakes and send the wrong thing to the wrong place.
I have carpel tunnel and try to minimize mouse motions, having to do wide screen-sweeping motions hurts my wrists.
I know some people like doing them, let them continue to do them, but please add in keyboard shortcuts for people like me who get intense throbbing pain in their hands and wrists.
Tepp
Level 1 and 2 were tutorial, and not really fun until toward the end of level 2. In level 3, in a ridiculous game design decision, your creature is stolen, taking the best part of the game away right as it gets fun. Level 4 is just hell, with fire raining from the sky and everything dying. At this point, the game goes from not fun, to just frustrating, and I stopped playing. Its unfortunate, somewhere between level 2 and 3 you got the hint that there was a really great game here.
B&W2 looks cool...but this presents me (and a few others out there) with a problem... It's published by EA. How am I supposed to boycott EA and buy B&W2 at the same time :/
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
will it run on Windows Vista Home? (The first B&W wouldn't run on XP Home.)
The list goes on.'
Exactly -- the list went on and on for the mistakes in B&W, which is exactly why I won't go anywhere near this game. That game was just awful.
One man's Funny is another man's Offtopic.
The main problem I had with the game was...it was impossible to win if you were playing 'white'! I couldnt get more than 10 minutes into level 3 as a good guy. Am I just [i]really[/i] bad at this game and just don't know it, or were there some serious balance issues between the two sides.
The Braying and Neighing of Barnyard Animals Follows.
You play a game designer where you use your imagination to come up with the most amazing games possible. Then, the games you finally release fall far short of what you had planned. You then spend the rest of the game giving interviews to online media apologizing that your game sucked.
The only thing I hate more than hypocrites are people who hate hypocrites.
My main problem with Peter Molyneux is the fact that he has to relese a sequels to fix the problems he admits to, heres an idea: admit these problems to yourself during production the first time.
This didnt happen only with black and white but also with fable (it also should be noted that they are releasing another version of fable for PC and x-box that expands on the original, and *surpirse* a sequal) that game had great potential only to be brought on by a re-realse.
Either he has to get his own affairs in order,or he needs a new publisher.
Sure, he's admitting it was deeply flawed now, with a sequel on the way, but back then, he was telling everybody that it was the dog's danglies. Now he's telling everybody that the sequel is great. What's the betting he's going to be admitting that B&W2 is deeply flawed when he's selling B&W3?
Peter Molyneux has a reputation for promsing features and concepts that he can't deliver. Personally, I don't mind. He's not doing it because he's a sleezy salesman - he does it because he's a gaming visionary.
B&W had the same effect that Fable had on me - you almost feel like you're playing something magical. Sounds lame, I know, but its true. Despite all the broken promises of Fable, the game truly sucked you in.
Same thing happened with B&W. The entire time I played it, you almost feel like you're intruding on a whole other universe. It had a mystical feeling to it. As you you explored your island, you always had the feeling that anything could happen.
I'm looking forward to Black and White 2, but I would still like to give props to the original.
Interesting. That post mimics exactly my experiences with the game. I played it for about 3 days then stopped.
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
God that game pissed me off when they took the creature away. I stopped playing after that point, and spent all my time in the "playground" playing with the creature again. What the hell were they thinking, adding in one of the most fun game elements in years, and then TAKING IT AWAY?
Comment of the year
He forgot to mention that the game was confused. Was the goal a traditional RTS, or were you supposed to use your monster all the time? I think about level 2 I couldn't progress any further as the glowy edge of my area was butting against others, and I could not figure out how to do more forward progress. Put it back on the shelf, cursed that I also had bought the expansion pack, and moved on with life.
By the way, I also got the giant sheep, so I'm not completely dense about the game.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Sure, if you can say anything about Peter Molyneux it is that with every game he releases he makes completely NEW mistakes.
Which is probably a good thing...
"MUST BUILD HOMES"
and yes, it does need to be capitalized in order to show the emotion involved.
now multiply that by 640 times, then you have a crappy game.
it was a thinly veiled rts game in a genre-busting package.
i also never managed to get past land 3. taking away your creature made it very difficult to expand your territories. it was also too limiting most of the time.
peter should stick with what he knows best... old dos games. stop making modern ones until you know what the heck it takes to make a good game.
Science : Proprietary , Knowledge : Open Source
The stylings of this game (and others, like KOTOR and Fable) are based on a false dichotomy. Just look at a popular god, like "Yahweh" in the Bible, and compare him against the above description: Yahweh was a benevolent God who created prosperous societies and improved the quality of life for its people, and also venegefully formed armies to smite anyone obstructing his conquest. Just think about Canaanites, Midianites, or especially Sodomites.
Fix the premise, please! I know that's a highly difficult request, but Molyneux is supposed to be some kind of genius, so he could give it the college try.
I loved Populous. Great game. Took forever to get through anything, and man did I enjoy calling Armageddon.
Heard about B&W from some friends who had been playing it about 5 hours and were frothing at the mouth about how cool it was, and how pretty it was. So, I bought it. 20 hours later, I quit. In addition to the stuff mentioned above, what really got me was the voices. Those had to be the most over the top Brits working in game voicing EVER. It didn't help much hearing the old guy giving helpful advice (the same helpful advice) over. And over. And OVER again.
So I said no thank you to the expansion pack, and gave away my copy of the game.
Fast forward to last summer. Everyone's hollering about Fable, so I start reading up on it, and instantly am thinking "ugh, here he is again, promising the sun and moon. Should I get fooled again?" Well, I bought Fable. Again, very pretty game, so much potential, some rather funny stuff. But still the things I hated: Over the top Brit voicing, and an old man saying "Try to get your combat modifier even HIGHER" every 30 seconds.
Sold the game 16 hours after I bought it (having beat it in that same amount of time).
Won't get fooled again. Populous has come, writ, and moved on, never to be repeated.
Why do I M2 everything negatively?
Oh yeah, he missed the game flaw where the game FUCKING CRASHED ALL THE TIME. I didn't even get past the stupid first level, what with all of Black and White's stability problems. And don't give me crap about video drivers or Windows or whatever. That same system played other games like UT2003 or AAO just fine, thank you very much.
I'm proud of my Northern Tibetian Heritage
Who cares about that... Will it run on my Gentoo and Ubuntu systems??? ;)
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
Does anyone here have any favorite tricks to share?
My favorite trick was the combination of crates and burning rocks. Once I discovered that I could hurl the crates used to construct new villages outside my scope of influence and then use the limited influence around the yet-to-be-built village to hurl more crates, I found that I could very quickly get close enough to the enemy tower to demolish the opponent with a pile of burning rocks.
I hope the new game uses the same scripting engine. I had lots of fun changing the initial conditions of the higher levels by hacking the configuration scripts. I probably would not have played it as much had I not discovered it could be hacked this way.
sing along boys and girls:
...
.... sheep have many uses"
.. er, Fable, a game that would itself be described as a flaw were it not too insipid and dull to deserve any other epithets.
Oooooh, we've got this notion
That we'd quite like to sail the ocean
So we're building a big boat to leave here for good
We're not keen on sinkin
So we're all sittin here a-thinkin
that we're going nowhere till we get some wood
Eiii-del-eii-del-eeeee
Eiii-del-eii-del-eeeee
We simply can't leave til we get some more wood
"Sheep
This was a great game with great flaws. Not like Feeble
I am no longer wasting my time with slashdot
I also hated how you needed to pull your population from level to level but there was no ability to move large numbers of people into the vortex at once. I amassed a *huge* population on Level 3. At the end of the level I was expected to eiter drag hundreds of people to the vortex one at a time or start Level 4 with a small population.
I chose the third option, I uninstalled the game and never looked back.
Say what you want about Black and White, but I got freaked the hell out when the game starting SAYING MY NAME if I played too late at night. Not my character's name, either. My real name.
n "
"beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeennnnnnnnnnnnn
B&W looks up your name via an Outlook API call.
OddManIn: A Game of guns and game theory.
It has been statistically proven somewhere that MS needs 4 iterations to get something just about right.
Every version after that just adds bloat and useless "features" that end up destroying the initial usefulness.
Now that Peter has officially declared that Black & White was a really shitty game (that I never played), I'm interested in just one thing : how can he be sure that he's not foisting another steaming pile on us all ? Is he going to ask forgiveness for all the hype he made around his buggy code ?
I agree with the posts above on Populous. THAT was a revolutionary game, visionary and innovative. But it's also the best game he made. Too bad that was back in 1989.
Also reminds me of a Murphy's Law : each person rises in competence until reaching the point where they become incompetent, then they stay there.
Well, looks like Peter hit the mark in 1990.
The gestures were frustratingly difficult because they were interpreted relative to the game world when they should have been interpreted relative to the screen. (Or the other way 'round, I forget, it's been a little while since I've played.) Such a simple, stupid mistake screwed up something that could have been great. It was nearly impossible to gesture around buildings and rough terrain in B&W, but I've seen gesture systems in other programs that are simple and intuitive.