Black & White 2 Review

The basic concept of being a good god or a bad god is somewhat flawed. Knights of the Old Republic might stand as the best implementation of this concept to date. (If we're talking in terms of "black and white" moral values, then yes. - 2Lions) Playing as evil god just doesn't have a huge effect on the overall play of the game in Black and White, as opposed to Knights of the Old Republic, which actually had change as a player fell towards the light side or the dark side. Playing as a good god or an evil god doesn't change things that much. You could always play as a good god for the start of a level, and then once you've won, just destroy everything. There are never any choices (apart from the silver scrolls, but as we've covered before, IGNORE THOSE) because the game is set up so that you always have the choice. As a result, it makes it easy to do good things, and easy to do bad things, so there's no real moral limitation. You can play either side of the fence.

I bet you are! Somewhere in that tall grass, there is a poop the size of a Buick.

Reaping time, kiddies!

And this game is easy to play too. Every island plays mostly the same way. You build a city, and impress people until you become bored with that, and you build an army to go conquer cities. Rinse, lather, repeat. Sometimes I kill most of my villagers at the start of an island, just so that the game is that much harder. Of course, that just makes it slower, as you'll win using the same techniques. There's no strategy involved here at all.

Often times I devote a lot of time in my review towards discussing a game's story. Black and White 2 has no real story. You're a Greek god, and you need to avenge the Greeks against their enemy, the Aztecs, who own everything and every other tribe loves them. That's it. That's the story. Of all the awesome places they could have gone with this, they chose that. There's no reason to plow through the boring gameplay for the story even.

I am playing the 1.00 version of the game, because if you upgrade to the 1.01 you can't play your past save games. That's quality programming right there.

(We should probably alert you to the fact that Lionhead has already issued a massive, 100MB+ patch for the game that is supposed to take care of some of the game's many issues, as well as introduce a few gameplay tweaks. You can grab the patch here. - Ed)

Black and White 2 might be one of the shallowest games I have ever played. In fact, I am depressed that a developer like Molyneux has been able to continually botch up awesome-sounding ideas so thoroughly for so long. Fable should have been a much more open game, and Black and White 2 should be much deeper. I am cringing about what is going to happen with The Movies. Maybe it is just the taint of EA that made this title so insipid. Or maybe Peter should just retire. Either way, I don't recommend buying Black and White 2. Better yet, take the fifty bucks and go do something unsavory with it. It'll be more entertaining and make for a much better story.

Of course, if you do want a game, go buy Knights of the Old Republic for a moral dilemma (buy it if you haven't anyways, it is the best game in years) or go buy something Total War if you want strategy and combat. Pass on Black and White 2 unless you are absolutely desperate to play it.