Graphics, Sound, and Interface

It looks like a duck

Creature Isle is just an expansion pack, so there are very few changes to the graphics engine. Black & White doesn’t really need any changes to its graphics though – it’s still the best looking Sim game out right now. The tessellation engine scales the number of polygons in a model to allow you to zoom in to see a villagers face, or zoom out to see the entire island. The textures scale so the closer you are the more detailed the textures get. You can read the original Black & White review if you want more details.

It sounds like a duck

Sound effects and music are also unchanged in Creature Isle. Again like the graphics, this is a good call on Lionhead’s part. The original Black & White has some of the best voice acting in a game to date. Creature Isle has much less voice acting, but the quality is still very high. The same great sense of humor is also still present.

Tortoise vs. Monkey

Tyke learning to farm

A monument to me

There are some peculiarities with the voices of the creatures. For instance, all of the creatures in The Brotherhood can talk, but your creature can’t. It’s disheartening to know that your creature is a few steps down the evolutionary ladder from the rest of the creatures on the island. It would be a lot easier to train your creature if you could say, “Don’t take a dump on the villagers!” rather than smacking the crap out of it when it does. It’s interesting and somewhat funny that this game encourages corporal punishment.

Also, all of the creatures on the island have some sort of accent. Granted, most of the voices in the original have British accents, giving them a certain charm that only uppity Brits can have. In Creature Isle the creatures go global with accents from everywhere. I’d almost say some of them are borderline racist, except that the animal’s accent has nothing to do with where it’s from (and it’s a 40 foot tall talking animal). The monkeys sound like they’re straight out of Fat Albert though – I was waiting for them to offer me some Jell-O.

Cannon fodder trial

Marbles anyone?

Soccer mandril

It feels like a duck

Creature Isle also keeps the “Hand of God” interface from the original. Everything you need to do in the game is done through a hand – no menus, buttons, or lists to mess with. Need to move a tree? Just pick it up and throw it. To cast a miracle, just wave the hand around in patterns and you can conjure up a flock of birds, a pile of wood, or a bolt of lightning.

I never liked the interface in Black & White, and after playing Creature Isle, I still don’t. The overriding factor is the inaccuracy of the hand. If you’re zoomed out, it’s really hard to pick up or point at an object in a group. You can zoom in right next to the object you’re trying to grab, but you have to zoom in so far to be accurate that it’s a waste of time. I wish I could play this game more like an RTS – zoomed out to a reasonable distance and able to easily click on anything on the screen. This inaccuracy kills any enjoyment in some of the trials which are dependent on it.