Evil Genius is the latest good vs. evil role reversal game to hit the market for the PC. The game places you in the shoes of one of three, well, evil genius bent on conquering the world. For an added twist to the game, Evil Genius has a retro 60s feel, nicely blending a mix of Austin Powers and James Bond settings. You start off on an island with a meager sum of money, and begin the process of building your secret lair inside the large mountain located in the center of your hidden spec in the ocean. Eventually, you begin unlocking new rooms and functions, and start on the process of defeating the forces of good on a global scale. Advancement through the game is accomplished by completing major game objectives and committing “Act of Infamy” missions in different regions of the world. Starting a mission requires you place the correct type and number of minions working for you in the territory the Act is located. Once you have met the requirements, you begin the mission and the mission timer counts down. While the timer is running, you have a chance of losing minions based on the risk factor associated with the Act. The higher the risk, the more likely your minions will be caught or killed. Lose all of your minions and you fail the mission. Completing a mission always gives notoriety, but sometimes a piece of loot, a new minion class, or other bonus to help you. You have to be careful though, as each completed mission also adds heat, or bad attention, to the major organization charged with keeping evil entrepreneurs like yourself out of business and behind bars. It is normal to have a few agents from various organizations wandering your island to see what you are up to, but too much heat will bring larger numbers of armed soldiers that prefer to shoot first and ask questions later. The graphics work well for this lair building game. They provide pizzazz and detail to the experience without watering down or distracting from the gameplay. All of the floors have a waxy reflection, and the character models work well to convey a feel similar to the No One Lives Forever series of games. One of the best features though is the excellent music that has a very brass instrument heavy jazz feel. The game, although daunting at times, sets an overall good pace. While the goal is to complete the objectives laid out for you, the Acts of Infamy sprinkled throughout the world map in addition to lair creation tasks are a nice mix. The biggest challenge is actually learning to balance all three without neglecting a feature too much. Spending too much time on the Risk-like world map, and your base could end up suffering from serious agent infestation. While the game is solid in design, there are a startling number of major bugs which can crash the game or even worse, force the player to restart from the beginning. I can’t go into much detail without ruining portions of the game, but poor minion pathing, text display issues with the in game help, and minion training problems are the most common. More extreme cases have crashes to the desktop, corrupted saves that kill your genius on load, or missing items that prevent you from completing some objectives. While the EG community has come up with some workarounds and fixes, it really seems odd that most of these problems made it to release. Even more strange is that even at the date this review was written, a patch has still not been released. Overall, Evil Genius is a fun game for those that don’t mind an occasional challenge, but I recommend waiting to pick this one up until a major patch is released.
Great game... tedious... painfully painfully tedious... but a great game. This game teaches some important lessons about being an evil genius. Firstly that patience is key. Being a third rate despot building towards t... Read Full Review
I never really liked Austin Powers as much as I like Dr. Evil, but then again, I'm a "bad guy" kind of person. Evil Genius caught my eye because the player gets to be exactly that: evil! Picking from three evil maste... Read Full Review
