Ever wonder what it would be like if you were a god? (Editor's Note: All the time!) What would the world be like if you were its deity? Would you be good or evil? Lionhead Studios' innovative game Black and White, those questions can finally be answered as the opportunity to assume the role of a mighty deity is now a reality.

The game offers an extremely unique experience taking on the role of an omnipotent being in which you acquire your power from the faith of your people and your ultimate goal is to spread your influence to other peoples and cultures. Black and White contains several different cultures that include the Aztecs, the Japanese, the Tibetans, the Native Americans, the Norse, the Celts, and the Egyptians. Though there aren't a lot of cultural aspects featured, each culture has unique architecture, wonders, and dance rituals that they perform while worshipping at a temple.

Miracles are one of the most interesting and spectacular aspects of the game. You can perform a multitude of miracles like creating rain to help grow trees and crops, creating wood or food to supply the villagers, or even blast those damned little maggots with a fun-filled fireball and watch the people scream and run frantically with an evil grin. Playing evil can be loads of fun when you're armed with super-destructive miracles. Striking houses and brutally frying people with bolts of lightning are quite a funny yet sadistic sight (*evil grin*). A lot of the objects are interactive as well. You can carry and throw stones, trees, animals, and even villagers. You can also grab fish from the ocean and grain from the fields. If you're a wannabe Diablo, then you would use this to throw villagers into the sea or off a cliff (whichever way is still loads of sadistic fun), throw stones at people's houses (Armageddon!), or make animals fall from the sky on villager's homes, which interestingly causes people to believe in you more.

The creature is another extremely important aspect. It could be thought of as those old Japanese Tamagotchis taken to a higher level. An extremely higher level. You could train your creatures to do a plethora of tasks. If trained properly, the creature could learn how to fish, supply village storehouses with food and wood, maintain the village, perform miracles, and even dance. For examples, the tiger creature can break dance, the cow creature can do a Riverdance (?), and the monkey creature can do the Macarena (!?!). The creature can also be trained to be as good as a saint, trained to maintain villages and impress the people, or he can even become a demon incarnate, trained to massacre and destroy.

The main problem with the game is the tedious micromanagement. Though food and wood are the only resources in the game, the management of the towns and the villagers can get extremely frustrating. Though you're a god, you always have to do everything for the people. The people don't seem to do anything themselves. It seems like either they're lazy or they're far too stupid. You have to command them to cut down trees, farm, fish, build, and even breed. Food is rarely a problem, but the villagers tend to deforest the entire place rather quickly before you can even re-grow the forests. Overpopulation easily becomes a problem. The solution would either be to massacre the damned little ungrateful villagers or tell them to stop breeding. But when you end up with 100+ villagers, you have to move your mouse pointer to every one of them to see which one's the horny little bastard. The people also demand far too much. The micromanagement can get so frustrating that a lot of times I purposely hurl fireballs at the village children and smash the houses to smithereens with boulders or lightning *big evil grin* when the people "are annoyed". But even if you use evil tactics, which seem very simple, you still need to worry about being receiving power from your worshippers.

Black and White has extremely gorgeous landscapes and intense sound. The backgrounds are so well done that it almost looks real. The clouds and the storm miracle especially look extremely realistic. Everything, even something as simple as a rock, has a lot of detail. The sound is equally as spectacular as the visuals. When you hurl a lightning bolt, the sounds of thunder sounds real as well as the satisfying screams of panicking people.

Despite the tedious micromanagement and the apparent stupidity and indolence of the villagers, Black and White is still an extremely superb game with its innovation, beautiful graphics, and wondrous sound. The gameplay is extremely deep and it would get you hooked onto the game for hours. It was so addicting that I ended up playing for six hours without even noticing the time. Black and White most definitely earns top marks. There's nothing else quite like it.

· · · Kane