Black and White 2 v.1.2 Performance Update
by Josh Venning on April 5, 2006 3:01 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Black and White 2
Black and White 2 is the sequel to Lionhead's original Black and White, a game which caused a stir in the gaming world when it was first released in 2001 because of the innovative creature AI and world physics. The sequel carries on the "God-on-a-budget" style of game play of the first, with much less of the sometimes frustrating micro-management seen in the original.
The basic game mechanics in Black and White 2 haven't changed much: you gather resources, build walls and structures for your followers, and interact with the people and land. All this is done from a God's perspective via a floating, disembodied hand. While the mechanics haven't changed much, the goals are a bit more straightforward this time.
In the original, there were tasks to achieve on each of the five lands, but at it's heart the game felt more focused on letting you play with your creature. In this follow-up, the goal is to convert all the people of the different settlements on the map into your followers by either impressing them with your towns and miracles (Good), or by simple hostile takeover (Evil). As you play, the game decides whether each of your actions is "good" or "evil" and aligns you accordingly with different visual results.
While there is debate at how much of an improvement the game play is over the original game, there is no doubt among anyone that the graphics of Black and White 2 are superior to the first. Black and White 2 is in fact one of the most graphically advanced games out presently, using some of the newer SM3.0 aspects to striking effect, particularly with certain features like water. An added bonus is that nearly everything in the game is able to be interacted with, either in subtle ways (i.e. a field of wheat bends and the water ripples realistically as you zoom in close and brush your hand over it), or not so subtle ways (i.e. watch as the buildings and walls tend to collapse and splinter realistically when you throw a massive boulder into them in your divine wrath).
Black and White 2's excellent graphics make it a good benchmark, and we've used it many times for past performance tests. Unfortunately, one of the problems with this game has been that it tends to favor NVIDIA graphics cards over ATI cards, despite the ATI splash screen at the game's startup. This had us scratching our heads, but we suspected it might be fixed in a later game patch. We aren't exactly sure why they didn't get this right earlier, and it's rather misleading for ATI/Lionhead to promote hardware that doesn't perform as well with this game for so long. However, it looks like they've finally got it right with the version 1.2 patch as our performance tests will show.
Black and White 2 is the sequel to Lionhead's original Black and White, a game which caused a stir in the gaming world when it was first released in 2001 because of the innovative creature AI and world physics. The sequel carries on the "God-on-a-budget" style of game play of the first, with much less of the sometimes frustrating micro-management seen in the original.
The basic game mechanics in Black and White 2 haven't changed much: you gather resources, build walls and structures for your followers, and interact with the people and land. All this is done from a God's perspective via a floating, disembodied hand. While the mechanics haven't changed much, the goals are a bit more straightforward this time.
In the original, there were tasks to achieve on each of the five lands, but at it's heart the game felt more focused on letting you play with your creature. In this follow-up, the goal is to convert all the people of the different settlements on the map into your followers by either impressing them with your towns and miracles (Good), or by simple hostile takeover (Evil). As you play, the game decides whether each of your actions is "good" or "evil" and aligns you accordingly with different visual results.
While there is debate at how much of an improvement the game play is over the original game, there is no doubt among anyone that the graphics of Black and White 2 are superior to the first. Black and White 2 is in fact one of the most graphically advanced games out presently, using some of the newer SM3.0 aspects to striking effect, particularly with certain features like water. An added bonus is that nearly everything in the game is able to be interacted with, either in subtle ways (i.e. a field of wheat bends and the water ripples realistically as you zoom in close and brush your hand over it), or not so subtle ways (i.e. watch as the buildings and walls tend to collapse and splinter realistically when you throw a massive boulder into them in your divine wrath).
Black and White 2's excellent graphics make it a good benchmark, and we've used it many times for past performance tests. Unfortunately, one of the problems with this game has been that it tends to favor NVIDIA graphics cards over ATI cards, despite the ATI splash screen at the game's startup. This had us scratching our heads, but we suspected it might be fixed in a later game patch. We aren't exactly sure why they didn't get this right earlier, and it's rather misleading for ATI/Lionhead to promote hardware that doesn't perform as well with this game for so long. However, it looks like they've finally got it right with the version 1.2 patch as our performance tests will show.
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mino - Saturday, April 8, 2006 - link
Hi Josh,could you consider a review of the (forever postponed) S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game ???
I think it is as of now the most visully appealing, realistic and demandong game. IMHO this game is the way to test GPU's performance on future titles.
I'm sure the moment You check it You will understand.
Josh Venning - Tuesday, April 11, 2006 - link
We will definitely consider reviewing this game after it's released, whenever that may be.Kremy - Thursday, April 6, 2006 - link
Just wanted to add another vote for some Oblivion testing, and ALSO an inclusion of ATI's x800 and x850 series vid cards. For the record, I'm playing Oblivion on an x850xt running at 540/580 (PE speeeds), and it's running fine on high settings, 1024x768, no AA, full distance. Great game...AdamK47 3DS - Wednesday, April 5, 2006 - link
Why is there an article about it now when this patch has been out for so long?bupkus - Wednesday, April 5, 2006 - link
Maybe to be fair to ATI.AdamK47 3DS - Wednesday, April 5, 2006 - link
I suppose there could have been some pressure from Ati to post this article in order to vindicate themselves. Anandtech did like to use the previous version of B&W2 for performance testing. People were probably quick to blame Ati for the poor performance. I doubt this whole article would have ever been written had there not been some sort of outside influence.JarredWalton - Wednesday, April 5, 2006 - link
Actually, AFAIK, Josh just wanted to write about this subject. He's also the one that has done some of the regression testing (i.e use old drivers). It's all in the search for knowledge. As far as the patch, I'm *sure* that ATI helped Lionhead make some optimizations. Okay, that's a guess, but I would be amazed if they didn't. So, file this one under the heading of, "why is it that we need to make specific optimizations to games and drivers?"Oblivion is even worse right now. SLI you have to make a custom profile and manually enable AFR2 rendering for best performance (apparently). For ATI CF support, you actually have to rename the executable. So much for multi-GPU support out of box experience! Not that SLI/CF aren't faster, but they are frequently a hassle to deal with.
spinportal - Wednesday, April 5, 2006 - link
Why doesn't any site test a 7900 GTX clocked down to a 7900 GT part for core/mem and see its performance? I have a feeling there could be a US$400 market for such a tweaked GT w/ 512MB card in between a GT (256MB) & GTX (512MB). Where o'where?Araemo - Wednesday, April 5, 2006 - link
"Unfortunately, one of the problems with this game has been that it tends to favor NVIDIA graphics cards over ATI cards, despite the ATI splash screen at the game's startup."Well, humorously enough, there has been at least one "Nvidia: The way it's meant to be played" game that ran better on my 9700 Pro than my friends' 5xxxx and 4xxxx series nvidia cards. :) Most dev houses are against making their game specifically more playable on one type of hardware than another, even with branding payments. ATI and nVidia are pretty even as far as gamer-level market share goes, so they're not going to fubar half their audience on purpose, and some games just run better on one architecture than another.. Nothing really suprising except that ATI and nVidia think that is worth spending their money on. :)
Warder45 - Wednesday, April 5, 2006 - link
Let's see some Elder Scrolls Oblivion testing.