Black & White

Black & White looks to be one of the most intriguing real-time strategy games in many moons.

Supreme Being or Supreme Pain in the Neck?
By creating a beautiful and complex world where you use your godly powers to in?uence events instead of directly controlling them, Black & White looks to be one of the most intriguing real-time strategy games in many moons. After you use your powers to save a small boy, a primitive village builds a temple to worship you?and allows you to meddle as much as you want in their affairs. Put a man next to some trees, and he becomes a forester; put him next to a woman, and they fall in love and make babies.

Each of the game?s 400 single-player mini-quests have multiple methods, including a ?good? one and an ?evil? one. To obtain a special stone from a woman, for example, you can either save her brother or smash her house and take it. Your supernatural in?uence isn?t limited to one village. By terrifying or helping other villages with miracles?44 of them, including creating food, causing storms, and hurling ?reballs?you can convert them to your persuasion, expand your in?uence, and become the most powerful god.

A Deity?With or Without Piety
Hapless humanoids aside, you?ll also control a worldly embodiment?one of 16 giant beasts, including a rhino, ape, lion, or cow. Using complex A.I., your pet will learn elaborate tasks and even to ?think? on his own, doing things never designed by you or the game?s programmers.

In the preview version, using the mouse, it was possible to zip around the domain with ease, even panning back to see the whole world at once. The 3D world was as detailed as anything yet seen on a PC, and incredibly lifelike. It was possible to pile uprooted trees, light them on ?re, put a boulder on the ?re until it became red-hot, then use it to light new ?res elsewhere. When Black & White manifests itself to wannabe deities this month, many hours of gleeful, supernatural meddling is foreseen.

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