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Fun, but a lot of work

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 19 / 21
Date: March 14, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I just recently got this game in preperation for B&W 2. When I first started playing it, I absolutely loved it and would have easily given it 5 stars. After playing it for a while, I got annoyed and overwhelmed at the micro management and would have reviewed it probably at about 2 stars. But now after getting used to it and 30 plus hours of play, I think 4 is right.

The game starts out with a very helpful tutorial that shows you the basic controls, how to cast spells, and taking care of the people. You later pick the creature you want and it helps you in training him and taking care of him also. After you get through that, you then go to a town where you will need to start your own civilization. This is where you may get frustrated because your people always need food, homes, children, and buildings. A smart thing to do is build plenty farms before bulding homes or children no matter how much they complain because eventually there will not be enough food in the few farms to supply the villige store (where the food and wood is stocked) so you will be constantly hovering over the store supplying food (very annoying). With the Deluxe version of B&W, it comes with several patches that fixes a ton of problems. One major issue that it will fix is that your wirshippers will not eat like horses any more so you will get to pay less attention to them. Install these before playing the game because it comes in as a HUGE help.

There are 2 things that kept me from giving this game 5 stars even after disliking it so much at first.
One is that it crashes every few times I play. Sometimes it will go for hours on end without a jitter but sometimes it will crash twice within 5 minutes. I am running it on a Windows 98 PC with 512MB RAM and an old NVIDIA Video card. The game is from 2001 so it does OK. I also installed it on my newer Dell PC that has 1.5 Gigs of RAM, Windows XP, and the newest ATI graphics card. I started an evil god on it and it has not crashed once. Some are saying that the game does not run on XP, but it does fine with me.
The second thing that kept me from giving 5 stars is the part of the game I am on now. I'm not going to say much to keep from ruining the game for some of you but this level of the game is really ticking me off. Every time I get a few buildings built they get burned!!! I dont have enough villigers to give me enough prayer power to constantly cast shield miracles because my people are getting stolen!!! I don't know what to do. Maybe I'm doing something wrong or not doiing something I should but it is really making me mad. Earlier in the game on another level, I had just gotten a big enough population to start to convert another village ( you have a realm of influence based on the amount of people that you have in your town. You connot do anything outside that realm. Therefore, the more people you have the bigger your influence realm will be). I was performing miriacles for them when I started hearing the word "death" and my conscience guy said that we were being attacked. I went back to my villiage and there was a lightning storm stricking my town center. Every time the lighting would hit it, it would catch on fire. My villiagers would run to put it out when another lighting bolt would hit, catching everyone around it on fire. They would die so more people would run to the fire to put it out and they to would be set aflame! It finally stopped dtorming but I ended up losing about 70% of my population with my influence realm very small again. After that I went to the setup menu in the game and downloaded the realtime weather that was happening outside my own home (it was snowing) so that did not happen again. This is a cool feature to use if you want to make the weather in the game be more realistic to what you are seeing out your own window.

This game has a very steep learning curve. It has a lot of micromanagement to deal with so you will never be sitting back watching things take place. I reccommend this game to one who has a lot of time and a ton of patience. So if you decide to get the game, have fun and good luck.

One of a Kind

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 10 / 10
Date: September 18, 2005
Author: Amazon User

While the graphics cannot equal those of upcoming Black&White 2's, they were ahead of their time and have aged very well. Some complain of a need to micromanage their creatures or townships and depending on what your personal goals are, this can be true. However the degree of management is up to the player and more noble, or ignoble, long-term strategies require more effort and attention to detail --as they should. Black&White will reward those who take pleasure in detail, the wheres, whys and hows, and will frustrate or bore those who are looking for a fast-paced romp.

It's rewarding to discover what actions precipitate which results although there are so many variables, important variables, that players would benefit from at least a little more comprehensive detail than the manual provides. Fortunately 3rd party websites still present an overwhelming amount of information to draw upon.

Some have trouble running Black&White and/or the Creature Island expansion on Windows XP. SP2, hotfixes, Athlon processors and nVidia cards are blamed (perhaps rightly so) for their trouble, but my system incorporates all of these elements and I've yet to experience the slightest problem. Be aware that the v1.3 patch is ONLY for use with the peripheral P5 glove. This patch WILL break the game if you don't have this glove. If v1.3 was inappropriately installed, download the patch uninstaller utility, use it and install patch v1.2 instead.

All in all, I give it five stars for invention, creativity, execution and standing the test (so far) of time.

Thank God!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 13 / 17
Date: August 01, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I installed XP last week and I've been trying out a lot of games. Black & White always wowed me and now on XP with the 1.2 patch it works mighty fine. I had not problems whatsoever. In fact, it runs better than Win98SE because I was unable to alter the graphic options. Now I can play in higher res and with more detail with XP going and a ATI 9700 video card. I'm using an older version of the game and don't have the add on yet. Another patch, 1.3, is for people who have this special glove that really looks as if it would enhance the game. This game designer almost never disappoints me. Since my Amiga days I've bought most of his games from Populous to this. Keep em coming! :)

XP?This is how.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 7 / 7
Date: December 30, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This game is very fun. To get it to run you should install these 2 things:Service pack 2 and Black and White patch 1.2. Also I would recomend on XP that you have 192MEGS of RAM instead of 64. Now the game: You play as a god. You quickly see a angel and monster hanging around that are your good and evil consinese. They provide some advice. Basiclly you help people or scare/kill them. You quickly choose from a creature.You can choose from a nurturing cow, a smart ape,and a strong tiger. No matter what creature you choose you will probally want to train it to be violent or peacefull. In the game you come across several sidequests. Yet later in the game you can learn miracles, which your creature can learn to. My 2 problems are: The creatures take forever to grow, and gestures(a way of casting miracles)are hard to cast.

Not with XP

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 9 / 12
Date: December 26, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Will not run on XP no matter what I did. I give up! It's going back! I was really excited when I got this as a Christmas gift as it was one of the things I really wanted. However, it WOULD NOT install on XP. I have a kickin' vidcard, tons of memory and hard drive space. :P~ *sigh*

If you have Windows98/ME and A LOT of Ram, you need see this

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 11 / 20
Date: February 07, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I saw some people have problems running this game. If your system is Windows98/ME and you have more than 512 MB memory in stalled, you need to see this ... otherwise you will get game crashes more frequently ... not just in Black & White, but other games as well. You need to follow the workaround method as follows.

I first come across this knowledge from www.nvidia.com FAQ : Windows 98 and ME were based on the original Windows 95 kernel which was never designed for handling a lot of memory. These systems will experience various operational difficulties if more than 512MB physical memory is installed. These problems are due to how the 32-bit protected-mode cache driver (VCache) for Windows 9x/ME reserves memory. With more than 512MB memory, VCache may reserve most of the virtual addresses available. This issue does not affect Microsoft Windows XP or Windows 2000. Directions for correcting this problem are outlined in Microsoft's Knowledge Base article number 253912: [...]

CAUSE :
The Windows 32-bit protected-mode cache driver (Vcache) determines the maximum cache size based on the amount of RAM that is present when Windows starts, or 800MB, whichever is less. Vcache then reserves enough memory addresses to permit it to access a cache of the maximum size so that it can increase the cache to that size if needed.. These addresses are allocated in a range of virtual addresses from 0xC0000000 through 0xFFFFFFFF (virtual address occupy between 3 gigabyte and 4 gigabyte area - a space of only 1 gigabytes) known as the system arena.

On computers with large amounts of RAM, the maximum cache size can be large enough that Vcache consumes nearly all of the addresses in the system arena, leaving little virtual memory addresses available for other system process.

This problem may occur more readily with Advanced Graphics Port (AGP) video adapters because the AGP aperture is also mapped to addresses in the system arena. For example, if Vcache is using a maximum cache size of 800 MB and an AGP video adapter has a 128-MB aperture mapped, there is very little address space remaining for the other system code and data that must occupy this range of virtual addresses.

WORKAROUND :

- Add the MaxFileCache line as follows in the System.ini file to reduce the maximum cache size that Vcache uses to 512 MB (512x1024 =524288 KB. Note: The value for these settings are in kilobytes) or less :
[VCache]
MaxFileCache=524288

- Then reboot computer to have setting take effect. You should suffer FAR LESS crashes in many games. Your game can still crash, though. But it will be due to other problems - game bugs, drivers too old, etc.

Totally ruined my hopes

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: April 14, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I have the original version of Black and White, it was a compelling game with great graphics at the time it was made. When I got my new PC loaded with XP. It would not work. The box (which I saved for some reason) did not indicate XP as a compatible OS. I was upset but kept it anyway, just in case. Then the Deluxe was offered and I read the box carefully; XP compatible it said. I was excited to get home only to be disappointed once again. They say they are going to fix it but I think not as B&W2 is due out this year. Save your money. Then wait, don't buy B&W 2 until you read the beta reviews to ensure you wont be disappointed again by Lion Head Studios (EA is not to blame, they just finance the operation the programming is done at Lion Head Studios. DONT BE SNOOKERED OUT OF $15

It should NOT be stated that this operates on XP...

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: March 12, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This absolutely should not be considered to work on xp...there are sound issues, mouse issues...what a friggin mess. I finally got the original to work...it would still switch to desktop after one click but I could alt+tab back into it with success. Don't have 5.1 turned on...you won't get any sound. As for creature isle....no matter what I've tried it will always crash back to the desktop after clicking within the game...terrible compatibility issues.

Does not work with XP

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: April 11, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This game does is not compatible with XP although the box states that it is. After several tries with EA Tech support I was able to get disk one Black & White running after downloading patch 1.2. I was not successful with Creature Island though and have not managed to play it. I do not recommend buying this game if you have Windows XP as your operating system; it is a waste of money and time.

a useful review...

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: December 08, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Black and White is a great game in that at the time, there was nothing quite like it. It does seem very much like Populous, but with more of a feeling of being deity-like, in that you can take more control over a lot of the environment.

You can play 'skip the person' across expanses of water, or with most anything else. Sacrificing people to bolster your power, having them worship you, and toppling the other deity's worship base by flinging fire at their towns until they feel that worshipping you would be better.

Now, the game gives you a pet that you can beat, torture, starve, or have torment the population.

This may all seem fun and good, but it does have consequences. Your pet becomes darker, your people fear you so they will worship, and the tone of the game just goes more towards... well, you know.

The overall mission of the game is to gather followers, which will involve granting them food, making it rain, gathering wood, etc. Your followers will make demands of you, which if you grant will have their loyalty not diminish.

You will be given powers eventually(make rain, food, you get it) which you can teach your pet. This will enable it to use the powers in positive ways, and if it uses them poorly you can punish it. Sometimes this involves a painful leash, or you can be more corporal with your punishment by slapping it around.

Now enters your rival will come to make your day unhappy by stealing your followers, and in doing so taking some of your power. Now is the time for your pet to shine, as it can be told to attack the other town, or the other pet.

It does give a fair amount of control with the environment, and this just makes for an amount of fun. For some, like me, the temptation to just play with everything is just too overwhelming that as you get a few levels into it(each level will take an hour minimum), it begins to become like a tricky game. Now, there are enough variations across the different levels(like an 'unkillable' person, which is very important) that it does not become old very quickly.

I only came by to re-buy a copy as I've lost my license key...

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