Black & White: Creature Isle Critic Reviews

The sheer innovation of this new direction in gameplay shows the developers at Lionhead to be very creative thinkers and is worth the acquisition of the game by itself.

It gives you an absolutely enemy-free island to play around and raise your new baby chicken, covered in new, fun trials, creatures, and spells. I have to admit that I am a little disappointed in the lack of content, though.

If you fell in love with the virtual pet aspect within the original, the Creature AI is more dynamic and the insertion of variety keeps the adventure from becoming redundant.

A great expansion that keeps the flavor of the original, while adding new gameplay changes that remove much of the original's micro-management.

This new ability to duel on demand is sure to please fervent fight-fans and is a very useful training tool for those wanting to prepare intensively for an on-line rumpus.

Between all the minigames and the inspired addition of a younger creature for your own creature to look after, you'll find that Creature Isle is a great place to visit.

Those who enjoyed the micro management of the first title, may be disillusioned by the slightly trivial nature of this compared to the first title. However the game becomes much more enjoyable after the first few hours.

While it does not have the seemingly endless replay value of the original, the tighter gameplay works well for a more straightforward gaming experience.

The real appeal of the game is in the nurturing and maintenance of your creature which, for me at least, isn't necessarily the best aspect of the first game.

New additions to the game's recipe have fallen short, offering little incentive for the player to stray from the formula they have grown used to over the last ten months.

This expansion has just as much potential to both infuriate and delight gamers, and will likely earn a split crowd of followers and haters.

This touchy-feely emphasis might not be to everyone's taste but if sheep herding, bowling, stroking a tiger's nether regions and teaching a chicken to breakdance is your idea of fun, then Creature's Isle is the creature feature for you.

The ability to so easily change between creature types and the opportunity to concentrate on the creature's development are very nice additions to the game that should please those who simply wanted to interact with the game's incredible AI, unfettered by the incursions of rival gods.

While entertaining in small doses, Creature Isle does not have the kind of countervailing payoff for these frustration as the first game.

The immersiveness that made "Black & White" so appealing is distinctly absent.

It can get tiresome, it can get too easy...it does have one big downside - your creature lacks the personality it had in the original game.

Its key omission, though, comes in the loss of the original's delightfully open-ended nature. There is no "good" or "bad' way to win a bowling match -- you either win or you lose -- in which case all you need to do is try again.

I’d compare the enjoyment once can get from Creature Isle to that of sitting on a cross Atlantic flight for 14 hours in a seat next to a crying baby. It’ll have you raving to your friends for hours, but for all the wrong reasons.

It may have spectacular AI, but it's still just an elaborate virtual pet forced to perform a tedious sequence of often frustrating tasks.