Why is it when we have fantasies of taking over the world, we imagine doing it in the style of a James Bond villain? Sitting in an evil comfy chair in front of an evil world map in an evil secret underground lair surrounded by evil henchmen and honest working minions. The plans concocted are usually too complex and overtly complicated and easily defeatable because it has been explained to a super spy while being strapped to an easily escapable and needless torture device. And the plan is usually hold the world to ransom with an impossible weapon. The only game that allowed you to take over the world, but in a non-Bond villain way, was Sid Meier’s Civilization series. But in 2004, Elixir Studios released Evil Genius, a game similar to the Dungeon Keeper series, in order to gratify your inner Blofeld, but does it succeed? Let’s see:
The game doesn’t really have much of a plot, you just select from three evil geniuses (geniuii?) and build-up an evil lair, do missions to show the world you’re fo’ serious and protect yourself from the agents of justice. There are three evil geniuses to choose from; Maximilian, who resembles Blofeld; Alexis, who resembles the rich evil woman archetype like Elektra King from The World is Not Enough; and Shen Yu, who resembles Fu Manchu and other evil magical Chinamen. Apart from physical appearances, there is very little difference between the three. The thing that differentiates them apart is that each one has a ‘Circle of Influence (COI)’ that affects minions stats and each one has a different COI; Alexis had the largest ring, but slowest stat regeneration rate; Shen Yu has the smallest ring, but fastest stat regeneration rate; and Maximilian’s ring size and stat regeneration rate are average, the middle ground. After selecting your evil genius, you begin on a desert island with a few minions and enough gold to build-up your lair in the mountain of the island. It is here the game resembles a building simulation or god game, here you build several different rooms to help you along the way to total domination, examples being; the Strongroom, that holds your money in glorious gold bars and silver briefcases and its size limits how much money you can have; the Barracks allows your minions to rest; the Staff Room placates your minions with ping-pong and pinball; the Control Room allows you to do missions around the world; the Armoury stores your weapons and prisoners; the Power Plant powers your base; the Laboratory allows you to research stuff and torture your enemies.
Once you build the Control Room, you have the ability to access the ‘World Domination’ screen. This give you access to a world map that shows certain missions (Acts of Infamy) that can raise your notoriety in order to get new missions or they can have valuable loot or a certain victims to kidnap and interrogate to acquire a certain skill for your minions or new henchmen. You also get ‘heat’ that attracts ‘Agents of Justice’ from the five ‘Forces of Justice’ that either investigate your lair (Investigators and Agents), steal your money and stolen loot (Burglars and Thieves), sabotage your lair (Infiltrators and Saboteurs) or come in large groups to take you and your minions down by force (Soldiers and Veterans) . You don’t really need to know the names of the Forces of Justice because the only difference between an agent from one or the other is purely appearances; the different types of agents from one Forces of Justice do the exact same thing as agents from a different Forces of Justice.
Now, let’s talk about the minions. No evil genius worth his salt would be without minions to do his bidding or to be cannon fodder and Evil Genius offers varieties of minions to do your viscous, evil deeds or to stand in front of a control panel and look busy. At the beginning you get ‘Construction minions’; a bunch of guys in yellow jumpsuits who construct your lair, can carry weapons, carry out missions or operate stuff in your lair. Soon, a mission will appear that allows kidnapping a certain person and after you interrogate them, the minion who was interrogating them would acquire their skills, change appearances and could train your minions in the Training Room to make more of them. There are, that upgrade from the Construction minion, three classes of minions, each with four varieties; Science minions repair and research in your lair, and help more missions appear on the World Domination screen; Military minions protect your lair, are good at acquiring more money from territories and help prevent casualties in missions; and the Social minions take care of exhausted minions and psychologically weaken and distract agents. All your minions have stats that you must manage and keep as high as possible or face the consequences. Health is your minion’s health and zero Health means death, Loyalty is what makes minions work for you and zero Loyalty means defection, Attention is your minion’s ability to concentrate and zero Attention means they may activate your traps, Smarts is your minion’s intelligence and zero Smarts makes them stand around in a stupor and Endurance is how much your minions can take or do before reaching zero Endurance where they collapse until taken to the Barracks. Your evil genius’ COI, stolen loot or rooms like the Staff Room or Barracks can help regenerate stats.
The soundtrack is good, if a little lacking; there are about six songs. The use of steel guitars and orchestral scores do give this real feeling of being a scheming mastermind in the 1970's and it did get award-winning composer James Hannigan, a well known British video game composer, a BAFTA nomination.
The main criticism I would have to give Evil Genius that there are moments were it can get incredibly boring, especially the parts were you are waiting around for new missions to appear, meaning you’ll be doing an awful lot of faffing about or defending your lair from the constant flow of agents who just keep coming. And while the special Super Agents can offer challenge to the fact they can’t really die until later in the game, it’s really annoying that they escape when you’re too busy managing your lair and your minions don’t think to automatically raise the alert level, something you have to yourself, although it does help if you’ve built a security network. And the game can be a bit long, it took me at least five days to get to the end, only to release there is a second island to build a whole new lair.
Evil Genius is a very fun management/god game, with quite a bit of depth and charm to it. The presentation style is so lovingly reminiscent of 1970's spy films that it’s just so charming and because the graphics aren’t too demanding, you can run this on a less powerful PC. If you have a need to live the life of a Bond villain but be much more competent and actually take over the world, then get Evil Genius. It is one of the few games that allow us to be the bad guy.
I’m Random Internet Critic and I criticise it because I’m evil, this is the life you see, the Devil tips his hat to me.
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