Black & White - Love & Hate

The other night, I completed the story of Black & White. I actually had to run through it twice to properly complete the story, because the first time a bug screwed up the story (but not the creature! phew) on the final quest. Fortunately, the second run was plenty of fun. And this is just a part of my love and hate relationship with Black & White.

Knickerbuck, my flamboyant companion.

My first time through, I was juggling the raising of a creature and completion of the quests, and they often interfere with each other. The game allows you to restart the story, but keep your creature, so I got to experience the story without fretting about my creature's upbringing. I think the story was meant to be slowly tackled while you spent a LOT of time with your creature in between quests opposed to knocked down in a efficient manner. Peter Molyneux is about the slow paced games with incredible moments.

I'm actually so intrigued by the AI that I plan on raising another creature or two. My current fella is a little short and greedy and seems to be errrmm...limited on his learning capacity now. I've also got a few of the mechanics under my belt and am interested in applying them to a new creature.

I'm also considering contributing heavily to the wiki or writing up a walk-through as the surviving documentation for B&W is poor. The original forums have been lost to the internet and the available guides are severely lacking (One of the walk-throughs even said for the last level "Well this is the last level so you should probably figure it out on your own.").

I'll have to see if I can play the expansion pack, Creature Isle. I installed it and my computer had such an angry fit the next time I restarted it, that I had to do a System Restore.