"No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die!"

Author's Rating:

Pros: Cleverness, sound, evil deeds.

Cons: File-saving structure, limited minion control, slow gameplay at first.

The Bottom Line: 
A fun and clever diversion that pays homage to the espionage culture. Minor gameplay and AI gripes, but overall entertaining.

Author's Review
Overview
There's a maniacal megalomaniac bent on world-domination in all of us, and this game makes no bones about cultivating those dark urges. Part "Dungeon Master" and part "Sims," Evil Genius draws much of its inspiration from the popular espionage genre. Visual and auditory cues from James Bond to Austin Powers, give this game a good premise, without taking itself too seriously.

Evil Genius is actually two games in one and has a couple of minor weaknesses which I will touch upon, but overall, it is entertaining and caters to the player's cyber-urge to wreak havoc on an unsupecting world.

Premise
The player takes on the role of one of three Evil Geniuses: Maxmillian, Alexis, or Shen Yu. In respective order, these characters are clearly derived from Ernst Stavro Blofeld/Dr. Evil, Joan Collins, or Ming the Merciless (from Flash Gordon). You are given one powerful henchman at the beginning, a crew of yellow-suited worker minions, and a limited stash of gold. The object is to build your lair and launch dastardly deeds, all while protecting it from the forces of good, who regularly attack you.

Gameplay
Playing and controlling Evil Genius is deceptively simple, and the in-game tutorial and hints give this game a great learning curve. Unlike many games, you cannot electively save this game. Rather, it auto-saves every 10 minutes (or to whatever pre-set increment you desire) into three reserved spots. There is no "going back" to change history, a paradoxical touch, considering that most Evil Geniuses would stoop to this.

There are really two games to consider within Evil Genius. The primary screen focuses upon your evil lair, its accouterments, its defense, minion-training, and financing. It is in this view that you see overhead representations of your Evil Genius, henchmen, and minions. Much like in Dungeon Master, you can click on certain targets and "tag" characters for interrogation/torture, capture, death, etc.

The secondary game is laid out much like you would see on the old "Risk" board-game. There is a world map with territories that can be clicked upon and viewed. The territories are color-coded to correspond with one of five regional security agencies. Minions can be dispatched to each territory to commit acts of infamy, steal funds, or plot evil. Stealing money is necessary for financing your lair, acts of infamy help you gain noteriety (when at maximum you supposedly get a Doomsday Device and win), and plotting helps you access special missions and benefits. All evil actions generate "heat" from the law enforcement agencies who will dispatch agents to kill your minions in the secondary screen, but also send them to your lair on the primary screen, which must be vigrously defended. The more heat you generate (seen on a taskbar) the stronger the agents that will be sent against you. However, with noteriety comes more opportunities to gain henchmen and special evil weapons and rooms.

The in-game action can be exclusively controlled with the mouse, which allows you to scroll about, change the camera angles/zoom, inspect key characters, direct construction efforts, and perform acts of infamy. It also allows you to closely inspect your minions hit points. Every character has a health, loyalty, endurance, attention, and intelligence bar which must be replenished in certain rooms. For example, loyalty can be increased by torturing enemies in view of your minions. The only characters that can be directly controlled are your Evil Genius and the henchmen. Henchmen gain special abilities which they can use against enemies as their experience grows.

Minions can be trained into specialties such as guards, technicians, scientists, etc, but they cannot be directly controlled. They wander about their routines, staffing the base as appropriately needed. While you cannot directly control them, they give you many benefits from training and help the lair run more efficiently.

The Evil Genius has a "sphere of influence" that will affect your minions' status and efficiency when in that area.

Initially, the gameplay is slow, but this is a good thing since new players will make critical mistakes if forced by a fast pace. Since there is no true "save" function in the game, making the right choices early is important. The gameplay begins to pick up after just a few hours of play and you'll find that keeping up can be difficult when juggling between the primary and secondary screens.

The philosophy of this game reminds me more of the Chinese game "Go" since it really is a slow game of gradual attrition and plotting. The pacing will be annoying to those who are not used to playing games like "The Sims." The game requires constant attention and adjustment over long periods of time.

Graphics
The graphics are bright and simple. The video card requirements are reasonable (it will do just fine on a 64mb card) even while running at 1280x1020 resolution. The overall look of the game is somewhat whimsical and relies upon icons and large toggle buttons in the taskbar to access information. The developers did a very nice job rendering the Evil Genius characters and the unique henchmen.

Each of the menu screens is done up like the Maurice Binder titles of the James Bond movies--a colored background with dancing figures in silhouette. It's a nice touch for Ian Fleming fans.

Sound
One of the surprising hight points of the game is its music and sound. The music ranges from sweeping orchestrals and segues into jazzy cymbals and bass arrangements. Combat sequences also have a specific score. The grand scale of the music helps to reinforce your mad dreams of world domination.

The sound effects are well-done and there are special touches that make the game more compelling. The characters engage in "speech" which is similar to the gibberish that one hears in the "Sims." It's especially entertaining to watch them interrogate a prisoner. The sobs, moon-walking, and teasing, of the captured enemy agents is downright hillarious, albeit a violation of the Geneva Convention.

And yes, I did say that your interrogators moon-walk in front of their victims.

Additionally, the lair sounds are well-done. The overhead klaxons, and authoritarian female voice all have built in echoes to mimic the feel of the halls of an underground lair. Since this is all done in 5.1 Surround sound, the immersion effect is that much stronger.

AI
My biggest gripe is with the AI. The only characters you can directly control are the Evil Genius and the henchmen. All other characters aimlessly muddle about doing tasks and maintaing the base. You can influence minions behavior by training them into specialty professions that will "guide" them to behave a certain way, and you can also issue kill, capture, or weaken orders for them to initiate on enemy agents. However, you cannot simply group them together and attack (the logical way to deal with strong enemies). The only other way to have them fight effectively is to put the base on yellow or red alert, after which they drop everything and kill on sight.

Cool Stuff
Special mention should be made of the traps and security systems that you can put into your lair. As any Evil Genius would expect, protection of your lair and its spoils is important. In this regard, there are many many nasty traps that can be employed to do away with the forces of good. All of these can be linked to sensors and a complex array of nastiness can be built. A very good example is employing a pop-up distraction, then turning on a wind machine which blows the enemy agent into a poison gas trap.

Of course this removes the opportunity for the Evil Genius to gloat over, and then have the enemy agent tortured to death.

The security systems are also linked and all of the cameras, loudspeakers, and control centers can be organized into large sub-groups, making command and control, and base-defense, largely automated and area-based. These systems can be easily re-organized and augmented, depending upon weaknesses that you encounter.

Overall
I'm rating this game above average. It's done quite nicely but doesn't really have a high "wow" factor beyond its clever premise. It's fairly priced and I suspect that its appeal will be geared more towards "Sims" fans that never got the chance to fully delve into the evil potential of their virtual avatars. Some of the comic violence may not be good for children, but its actually less intense than most first-person shooters.

Aside from the control issues I mentioned above in the AI section, this game will do a nice job of filling in the gap between now and this years Christmas crop of uber-games.