FutureFive New Zealand - Consumer technology news & reviews from the future
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Tue, 1st Nov 2005
FYI, this story is more than a year old

When it was launched almost four years ago, Black And White was a sort of real-time strategy game (RTS) where you didn’t quite know where to start. Having more advanced graphics than the majority of strategy games were offering at the time, just as the name suggests, Black and White was under no circumstances an average game. You either loved it or hated it to death.

The basic idea in Black And White 2 is no different from the initial one. You can either be a God of Peace or one of War and once you divinely rule one of the five nations in the game, Greeks, Japanese, Egyptians or Norse, you can start giving them “divine” tasks. If you have decided to be a God of Peace (the good guy that gets the woman and the money in the American movies), your task is to transform your village with a handful of people into the biggest metropolis. For those who are suckers for the bad guys, Black And White 2 will be as captivating as the first game as you’ll be using brute force to expand, and building an army of terror is your priority. In the end, the purpose is the same: expanding your sphere of influence and having as many citizens as possible in your empire. Just as the first game, every aspect will require your fullest attention. Either during peace or war, you will have to give your people tasks. For example, the citizens will become farmers or masons should you decide going for peace, or archers, halberdiers, horsemen should you turn to the war side. It’s interesting to notice that the choice between peace and war will also be visible in the towns’ architecture. The good guys will have nice looking buildings, while the bad guys will have a much more gloomy looking architecture, with a lot of darkness surrounding them. Black and White quickly became known as the creature game. Aside from the citizens, you also had to take care of a creature which was a symbol of divine power - some of which were fairly amusing. This time round you will be able to choose between a lion, a cow, a monkey and a wolf (and a tiger in the limited edition version).

Once again, Black And White 2 is set to dazzle you with the graphics. In fact the game looks so impressive that gamers will need a pretty solid PC to get the full experience. Molyneux have stated that the game will require the same resources as Half Life 2.