I recently picked up the new Black and White 2 game, and haven't really had time to get past the tutorials. Was suddenly curious, what do you guys think on this pretty unorthodox style of design?

I haven't played Black & White 2, only the original Black & White, so I can offer my thoughts, but I'm not sure what you mean by "unorthodox" in the style of design. Black & White, to me, seemed to be a slight variation of the original Populous, with a mish-mash of other gameplay elements thrown in for no real reason other than the designer thought they were cool, such as an A.I. Creature, scripted events etc. I thought Black & White would have been a lot better if the scripted events and Creature had been dropped in favour of spending more time on getting the good and evil feel right, and concentrating on making village managment a lot better.

I had always throught that B&W gameplay idea WAS the creature,... The goal being that you 'teach' your creature and your villages to do what you want without having to do it all yourself. If you were always running around providing everything they needed, villagers were suppose to become worse at getting things for themselves, and would whine if you weren't always overhead doing everything.

Suppose to be a very hard game to play 'right' and very easy to play 'wrong'. (I never finished it, as it doesn't like WinXP)

You can run B&W 1 in windows 98 emulation mode, if you apply patch 1.2. Don't patch with 1.3, neither with the measly 1.1. It is 1.2 that you need. 1.4 is totally out of question.

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Original post by Talroth I had always throught that B&W gameplay idea WAS the creature,... The goal being that you 'teach' your creature and your villages to do what you want without having to do it all yourself. If you were always running around providing everything they needed, villagers were suppose to become worse at getting things for themselves, and would whine if you weren't always overhead doing everything.

I thought so too, but after the first two tutorial levels the game apparently often took your creature away from you, which seems a bit odd since there was so much focus on the creature to begin with. Admittedly I never got past the third level, as the game was a slow as molasses, took 15 minutes to save and load my game, and was deadly boring playing as a "good" god.

And I noticed that the villagers were getting useless, but it was hard to know that was because I was babysitting them too much or not, as there wasn't much feedback as to what you actions were doing.

I liked the idea of a simulaton combined with some original gamepaly elements but the biggest issue i had with b&w was way too much micromangment, they gave you a ton of cool features but i spent 80% of my time feeding the worshiper or making sure the creature didnt wonder off and starve

Like Trapper Zoid says, it's not too off from Populous, which is generally considered the first god game. I like the games. I think that the townbuilding/enemy_town_destroying mix is particularly fun and great. Granted, it's been all downhill since Populous [and powermonger, dungeon keeper][imo]... Some other games tried to sort of make that mix [stronghold, caesar] but are just "different" and don't really fit that mold.

I started a post mordem on Black and White 2 and all God games, but then I realized that I was making a hash of it. :)

This is a great question, but the answer needs to be an article rather than a ham-fisted forum post.

However, so I'm not simply unhelpful. I'll give you the basic thesis that I won't bother to support with examples (although it pains me) and suggestions (pains me even more).

The hardest part of making a "God" game is placing limitations on the player who is a "God" so that it is a game with risk and reward. The second hardest part is placing limitations on the scale of your game and still delivering enough power to the player that they feel like they are actually playing a God. Balancing these three dimensions (limitations and rules for the player, limitations on the scale of the game's feature sets, and making the player feel powerful "like a God") is the crux of the problem, and Black and White 2 is one answer among many possible answers with parts that are fulfilling and fun and others that are less so.

The creature is really a "stand-out" feature of the B&W series and could really get it's own article about allowing players to "train" AI and how soft or hard the interface should be. I think people who liked the creature in the original B&W do not like the B&W 2 creature because you can tell what you are training the creature to do in the sequel. However, many other people were frustrated with the creature in the original B&W because their attempts to train the creature often met with bad results due to not having good control over the training do the soft UI.

Personally I love the user-friendly changes, because, quite frankly, I don't have 8 hours a day to devote to training a creature like was required in the original. :|