Yeah, right... The way things look now, Lionhead is going to have a tough time getting to glory. So far it looks as though they have been churning out
![G o o d [Good]](/emoticons/g_o_o_d.gif)
, but somewhat incomplete games time and again.
Black & White was great, and had excellent multiplayer and skirmish functionality. Especially with the expansion pack, Creature Isle, the gameplay was excellent; but B&W was especially prone to bugs and the like. One time on creature isle, i found the workers from my little egyptian settlement going to cut trees where there weren't any trees -- walking all the way around the mountain my Temple was on, around the beach, heading to no where in particular. I picked them up, dropped them back at the village and they went back on the same path. Now given, they have probably fixed most of the bugs by now with patches, but still...
Black & White 2 was... OK. To be honest, I was enthralled for a
while, but after that i was just disappointed. They gutted the games potential by removing all multiplayer and skirmish modes from the game, leaving us to play the boring campaign missions, which only got sufficiently difficult in the 7th and 9th lands. Now, Battle of the Gods was VERY
, as not only did it add several new buildings, miracles and the like, but they added better AI, made the enemy a God instead of a tribal leader (so now you have to fight against miracles), and made the game much harder.
Gulp.
Gone are the days of simply parking archers on your wall to take out approaching enemies easily; the enemy now MOVES on your turf in FORCE, with lots of troops and siege weapons, and they WILL kill you if you aren't careful. Annnd before long you will find yourself being shot at by FIREBALLS! Plus, it removes *all* of the bothersome, loooong tutorials and thrusts you right into the thick of the action from the start, which is a serious plus in my book as I hate tutorials. The downsides are that they cut the lands in the campaign to *3* instead of *9*, and there is STILL no multiplayer functionality, or skirmish capability. Plus, my computer crashed on the final land for some reason. Still fun though, and I really recommend buying the expansion if you own B&W2.
![Big Smile [:D]](/emoticons/emotion-2.gif)
All in all, Lionhead REALLY needs to start working on their games more instead of rushing them out the door, trying to keep themselves afloat and make money. The best they can hope for right now is that Fable 2 sells well enough and long enough so they have the breathing space to make a really, really
game, and hopefully pack it with the necessary fun content we are all looking for. With the XBox live support for modding it, Fable 2 should go over well, and if it does, Lionhead should have the money and, most importantly Time necessary to make something really nice, like Black & White 3. But for the love of all thats holy (no pun intended), I hope they put in skirmish and multiplayer this time.
![Smily [:)]](/emoticons/emotion-1.gif)