The best games are the ones you become immersed in for hours at a time, losing all track of time, and annoying your friends and family.

True to Peter Molyneux's legacy, Lionhead Studios is attempting to do some things that have never really been accomplished in an interface before. First, there is no separate control interface. The game-world, as you see, is your interface, and you interact with it, directly and indirectly, with only a floating hand. Those of you who have played Dungeon Keeper may remember the Hand of Evil; your hand in Black & White is a more able, refined version of that concept. Want to create a Titan? Pick up a lizard and drop it into your citadel, where it will begin to grow and take form. Is it feeding time? Pick up a pig or bird and drop it into your Titan's pen and enjoy the carnage as it devours its food.

Another first for Black & White is a new 'Gesture Recognition' technology, in which players cast spells by mouse movements. To cast a firewall, for example, you must sweep the mouse in a circle. From this gesture, Lionhead's GR technology can sense the type of spell you wish to cast and (according to how accurately the spell was executed) determine how strong it was. This allows a huge variety in spell types and powers, and players can practice and perfect their spellcasting abilities.

Spell combat in Black & White will be fair because each spell takes some time to form and cast (in addition to the practical concern of executing the proper gestures with the mouse). This buildup of spells gives each player warning of incoming danger, and allows them reaction time to prepare and cast a counter of their own. Black & White is supposed to have over 100 spells in the game.

Using this same gesture recognition technology, you can also cast spells on your own followers (which aren't dependent upon worship for their power). You can make the appropriate motions, and summon a ball, which you can drop for your villagers to discover. In time, they'll learn to play with the ball, create group sports, form teams, and play competitive team games with it.

Yet another feature of the interface (or lack thereof) in Black & White is a huge variety in scalability. You can zoom out to almost stratospheric heights to observe your villagers as tiny specks below, going on with their lives. You can also zoom down to a direct face-to-face level with your villagers, inspecting and observing them with an almost first-person shooter-like level of detail.