Customer Reviews

Evil Genius

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Evil Genius is an amazingly addictive strategy game (sort of a Sims game). It has great humor, great graphics, great sound, and lots of great gameplay. Unfortunately it has some moments of really boring gameplay as well as some downright frustration.

In the game you build an evil lair and send your minions around the world doing evil deeds. Meanwhile you raise cash, more minions, build a bigger base, buid traps, and defend your base against the nasty do-gooder agents (ala James Bond) trying to take you down.

Doing all of these things is great fun. Just deciding on your base design is fun and the graphic animations are terrifc so just watching things happen is entertaining. Unfortunately you really need to read between the lines of the goals as well as read the manual a few times (and the online help) to figure out exactly how things work. It is very easy to get stuck in moments where not much is really going on and you can't figure out what you are supposed to do next. It is very easy for the boring moments to go on for hours.

Fortunately the game will easily take you 40 hours or more to complete and you will certainly want to play it at least one more time to incorporate all you learned on your first play.

Overall, Evil Genius is a great mix of strategy and campy humor that will probably keep you playing long into the night. Just don't be surprised if some of those hours are frustrating.

Evil Genius: The game you can't live without if you've ever had the urge to stroke white fluffy cats while speaking in a sinister tone, and own your own Doomsday Device.

You have three choices for your Evil Genius: Alexis, the beautiful heiress whose charm allows her to keep minions loyal far longer than the other two. Maximilliam, a megalomaniac entrepeneur, and Shen Yu the Inescrutable Lord from China.

All of them are, of coure, stereotypes of the typical Bond Villains. Back when James Bond was good and scottish, before a certain cocky englishman hopped into the movies.
You get your typical Piranha tank traps. Beehive traps, laser traps, blade traps, etcetera.

The goal of the game is assembling your Doomsday Device. Of course, near the middle of the game when you get really notorious after you've tampered in the world, you have "Special Agents" coming after you being sent by governments from the five continents. They are tough and hard to beat. But when you capture them and send them for interrogation and/or torture, your Evil Genius automatically walks to the placce of torture and starts laughing and rubbing his or her hands.

Of course, the Special Agent has a high chance of breaking out of the trap.

In fact, it is very hard to kill the Special Agents. But that doesn't make the game unwinnable: Evil does triumph if you are smart enough.
Specially with creating traps that connect. Should one of the poor sods slip, be prepared to laugh at the beautiful chain reaction!



The whole game is great with parody and spoof on Bond-esque.

For example, one of the tortures is to put your prisoner into a giant blender. No blood, all they do is spin spin spin spin spin spin around and flail.

Another torture has one of your Evil Henchmen doing a bad Michael Jackson impersonation at the prisoner, including the Moonwalk, the "I'm Bad" and the 90 degree lean.


Strangely enough, that's when the prisoner screams the loudest.


The voice acting is also wonderful. British accents galore, of course... but for example, Alexis sounds like the typical Bond High Class Villainess, right down to the "Daaaahling"

By default, I love any game where you get to steal the eiffel tower.
The attention to style is staggering: all the menus have silhouette dancing in the background. You know, the trademark of the 60s, and particularly the Connery-era Bond movies. Only these are humorous...for example the Save/Load screen is an underwater scene, with scuba divers doing....synchronized underwater ballet.


I really can't say enough about how much I like EG. Go ahead, buy it! Laugh maniacally.. rule the world!

I grew up watching James Bond films and though they might not be cinematic masterpieces in general, the esthetic has always sparked my imagination. This same spark comes in the box with Evil Genius.
A mish-mash of 'Dungeon Keeper' and the 'Sims' series, Evil Genius puts you at the helm of a nefarious, cliché (though never boring) plot for world domination. Take on the role of an insane mastermind and recruit the world's most devious criminal leaders to your superior purposes. Cold war era world authorities will try to stop you with their militaries & intelligence agencies while you counter with your legions of loyal lackeys. Setup operations underground on a picturesque island while wearing the guise of a vacation destination. However, if you cause too much noise, and unwelcome guests arrive, give them a true taste of your well-oiled insanity. Lay ingenious connectable traps across your island, torture captives in wickedly humorous ways, or just rub them out and stock the freezer. Extend your reach to all points across the globe with the theft of money, valuable art, landmarks (Eiffel Tower anyone?), and cause general evil mischief as your government moles cover your tracks. In the end when everything is perfect, the world comes under your thumb as your unleash your masterpiece, a doomsday device (which comes in 3 flavors of doom).
Sound is great, with a 60's era original soundtrack, and SFX are so detailed you can zoom in and listen to the whoosh of sliding doors or hear the crackle of ice in the freezer. GFX are smooth and clean, with bright colors, day/night changes, and a 360-degree viewpoint zooming camera. Character animation is flawless and humored, with dozens of comic like animations. The interface is easy to master in minutes and you're provided with a detailed X-Com-like view of your minion's stats and world operations.
I run a 2.4P4 w/1GB RAM and a Nvidia GF4 GFX card. Like I said, it was smooth and clean and anyone with a low-mid range system should have no problem. No Doom 3 upgrade scrambling here ;D

Anyone who likes the James Bond/Austin Powers genre, 60's era quirkiness, and a good RTS, should look seriously at this gem.

I have been playing computer games since Atari and the Commodore 64 so I have seen it all. I rarely give any games such a high score. Evil Genius deserves this high score hands down!
It is detailed, well thought out, clever, humorous, engaging, a long play time of 40 to 60 hours if you savor it and best of all this game has high replayability since it won't be the same the next time you play it!

Go to the official website, check out the screenshots, the high resolution videos of actual gameplay and download the demo to take it for a spin before buying.

The premise -
I typically don't go for SIM games like this. I am very into first person shooters. This game has me totally absorbed.

If you have ever played a SIM game, you will be familiar with this style of play. This game is like Simcity, the SIMS and any hardcore RTS game you have ever played....only this time it was done right!

Your a villain trying to dominate the world. You must build your lair hidden under a mountain on an island. You must manage your resources, gain NOTORIETY to advance but keep your HEAT from your crimes low or you will be constantly invaded by the forces of justice. You build your army of MINIONS(pions), then you must develop their skills so they can evolve into advanced minions. As you grow successful you can add HENCHMEN(super villain assistants) to help you fight SUPERAGENTS of justice. All the while you must steal money to pay for your schemes and building your lair, keeping justice off your back, keeping your minions happy and achieving your mission goals. WHEW!!!

The GOOD -
This game is easily a "40 to 60 hours of play game"...or even longer if you want to drag it out. It is up to you. Eventually you do have to accomplish your missions to advance, get new toys, and get new equipment for your lair.
The level of detail and thought put into this game is amazing! The graphics are sharp and clear. There are humorous little jokes plastered throughout. For example - while interrogating an agent of justice, your minion starts to dance and sing like Michael Jackson! The whole time the agent is pleading for mercy! Too funny! When you get money from a mission, your minions actually carry little cash filled briefcases from the helipad to the lair and deposit it in the vault! Until they finish that procedure, your money is not added to your bank account. It is the little things like this that make the game magical.

You have a wide assortment of missions to perform. Some give you gold, some give you notoriety, some give you valuables(priceless paintings, carpets, vases, statues), others give you people that can help train your men!

You must use your head, read through the manual, the in-game glossary and follow the video tutorials. I spent about 5 or 6 hours getting used to the program on the EASY setting. I then started all over with some experience. It paid off bigtime!

You have so many choices and options that no game will ever go like the last one! Similar in structure...but not a predictable match everytime. VERY NICE, this game has high replayability!

For young adults, the violence and torture scenes are very mild...cute and funny even. Not gory or hardcore. This game is meant to be funny, not taken seriously. One example of torture is putting the spy into a giant food mixer and spinning them around and around until they are so dizzy they forget what their mission was. Harmless.

The GOOD parts of this game go on and on and is too much to list here!

Now for the BAD - Just 2 things
1 - This game is not for young kids because it takes adult level thinking to play this game.

2 - There are some minor bugs that can cause major headaches. A patch has been released that solved the big problems.
However, my personal experience went like this...a mission demands that you build a special room for your evil genius to meet with his evil friends from around the world then you must go out and gather these companions.
I built it and started the mission. I placed this room on the edge of my lair. DUMB! Agents kept tunnelling into it and destroying the room. I destroyed the room and rebuilt it in another spot. A good idea but when I did that, the game would not allow the missions to be accomplished because the room had been moved. A bug of the worst kind! I luckily had a previous saved game from 3 days before. I had to wipe out 3 days worth of play. Not bad but not great either! I lost about 11 hours of play time. If I had not had that previous save, I would have had to start all over again!

My advice, save your game regularly(not quick save)with a good label and keep them! Don't delete them until you know everything is fine. I now keep atleast 25 different saves.


This game is great. A lot of effort and deep thought were put into this game before a single line of game code was written. This game is a role model for other game developers and programmers alike.

As always I recommend you go to the game's official website, check out screenshots, in-game video play, then download the demo to try it before you buy it. See if it is for you.

Good luck!!

The interface is really badly designed in some ways, despite what a gamespy review said.

Trying to figure it out without the manual is pretty difficult - it in no intuitive. Get used to right clicking a lot and that will help, but it would also be nice if selecting a henchman did not focus on him - it makes it quite hard to send multiple henchmen after a super agent (tough bad guy, er good guy)for example.

It is also difficult at times to realize what to do to progress the plot. Small spoiler: for instance if you don't move to a new island the game never progresses and the attacks get more and more ridiculous with no way to alleiviate them. This can be very frustrating especially as the pathetic vivendi website would not accept my forum registration, has no contact email, and has a broken contact form so there is no way to even complain about it.

There are also some bugs and one time my game was ruined because briefcases got dropped in a way that my minions were too stupid to get into the strongroom so they stopped doing any more work.

Still, the gameplay is extremely addictive and I stayed up til 5am the other night playing it. I found myself evilly laughing quite often as I finally found ways to defeat previously unbeatable enemies, and many of the missions were more hysterically funny ideas than anything in austin powers.

As for the game itself, it has been many years since I found

The scene: a nondescript tropical island somewhere in the Pacific. A large hotel-casino resort stands here, making for a relaxing vacation spot. Nothing out of the ordinary, right? Nothing at all...except DR. SIN'S EVIL VOLCANO MOUNTAIN LAIR!!! That's right: Beneath all the tourist traps and public facades lies the inner sanctum of a nefarious madman who is bent on ruling the world. Ever wonder what the day-to-day life of a James Bond villian is like? You will now. At it's core, Evil Genius is a real-time strategy?simulation game vaguely akin to something like "The Sims" or "Ghost Master". The big twist here is that you take on the role of a wicked, scheming, criminal mastermind, assuming control over all his associated henchmen, lackeys, facilities, and technology. You start the game with little more than a simple, clandestine "inner sanctum" which eventually grows into an elaborate supervillian lair worthy of Dr. No himself. You can also buy minions, who build all your cool weapons, while soldiers act as gaurds, defending your hideout from bothersome intruders. You can upgrade your minions to take on dozens of different proffesions. There are also 12 different henchmen, who are tough and loyal. You'll be building your lair while tourists are blissfully oblivious to the fact that your extravagent casino resort is little more than a clever front-go about their ignorant lives, putting more cash into your coffers. Much of your fortune will go toward the construction of a doomsday device, which is essentially what brings about your ultimate goal of world domination. As you progress into the game, you'll have to deal with enemy super-agents enroaching on your island, set on ending your wicked ways. Fortunately, you can set traps and torture devices to end their lives. This is a funny and detailed game, as you can tell from this review.

This is a game that stays for you for a very long time - and is bound to find its way to your hard drive every time there is a new Bond film hype. After the deluge of the latest DRM-ruined games, I went looking through my gaming library for older gems to play. This is definitely one of them!

In a classic Ian Flemming's setting, you start in a desert tropical island where you are to design and build your secret lair. In a SIMS tradition you do not control your minions directly, instead you control the Evil Mastermind behind everything that is brilliantly nefarious: a stocky Bloomfield-lookalike in a gray Mao/Nehru jacket and an insatiable mood to take over the world (the other choices are the heavy-accented seductress Alexis and efficient Shen Yu - but we all know how chauvinistic the world of self-indulgent espionage can be).

Besides the Evil Genius, you can (partially) control a couple of major Evil Henchmen/women. I said partially because once given an order they will take their sweet time to execute it - if ever. No wonder Bond always won in the end: the Evil nemesis had to do everything himself!

Including making ends meet. Yes, even the most evil of geniuses apparently cannot print money. Hence, the need to built hotel and vacation resorts - not only to hide but also to finance the plans to take over the world. From hotelier to World Dictator - everyone not born with a silver spoon in his mouth has to pay his dues I guess...

Nevertheless, the real fun of the game is designing your lair and setting up the traps! Since there seems to be an endless number of possible combinations this alone multiples the replayability of the game.
Plan carefully ahead and watch the invading Secret Agents be thrown helplessly from one trap directly to the next - and finally out of your lair (or into a body-freezer room). Until the Super Agents that is.

The Super Agents make the game almost impossible to win. Again, in a true Ian Flemming fashion, good should prevail - and should do so easily (funny THAT concept never seemed to caught on in real life...). Nevertheless, the game is not unbeatable - it just needs a lot of practice. (I needed more than half a dozen tries - and they were all fun!)

In these Middle-Age days of PC gaming, when the industry decided to go to the dark side, it is a good idea to unwind with a brilliant classic.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

The idea behind Evil Genius is much like the idea behind the Dungeon Keeper series: build a base to attract minions and then try to take over the world by crushing the silly forces of good. Unfortunately, the game has way too much micro managing when it comes to the combat system and takes way way too much time. If you liked Dungeon Keeper and Startopia, this game will keep you amused for a few hours before you get fed up and want to strangle your own minions for setting off the bases automated defenses.

A few years ago, I bought this game for my boyfriend. He played it for almost 2 months, exclusively. He is a video/pc game addict, and for him to concentrate on one game for so long is extraordinary. He would finish the game, then go back and start over. Through the past 2 or 3 years, he would reinstall the game and play it through a few times, sort of a comfort-game for him. Recently, he attempted to reinstall the game and, sadly, one of the discs was scratched beyond repair. He was deeply disappointed. He looked like a child who had lost his blankey. So, I ordered it for him, and the second he recieved it, he tore it open and has played it at least once a week ever since. Thank you for making my gaming addict happy again!!

I absolutely love this game and have played it dozens of times always changing my base designs and placement of traps. If you like the Sean Connery James Bond stuff and Austin Powers movies then you will love this game. Everything is a parody of the 60's Bond films from the animations and the voices of the characters, to the music and the dialog (which always makes me laugh).

The game has a "cartoonish" feel to the graphics and animation which makes it even more fun to play. The violence in the game sounds pretty horrific but it's actually very toned down, yes you get to put the Russian in the mixer but he ends up spinning around and around like a crazy windmill. You "torture" your enemies with Michael Jackson moonwalk impressions and by banging loud cymbals together and your evil genius always comes down to the armory to cackle gleefully over their "suffering". You build traps with laughing gas, piranha tanks, and Do-Not-Press buttons which of course your enemies ALWAYS end up pressing, and don't miss the Venus Man Trap which is my personal favorite. The only violent part that I've had a problem with is when people are set on fire, then they run around screaming while they burn to a crisp. It's a little gruesome so I try to avoid fire traps, I always feel too guilty afterwards.

One thing though, this game is mostly about building and resource management. Yes, you have objectives and Acts Of Infamy to complete but you end up watching the clock and moving your minions around, you're not actively involved in the "action" sequences at all. The majority of your time is spent on micromanaging your minions, building rooms, and placing objects inside. It takes time for things to get going but once you have a simple base set up with equipment and traps set then you can really start having fun.

Note: I highly recommend buying the Prima Evil Genius Strategy Guide with this game. You have a ton of traps, artifacts, and objects and the guide lists everything including all of the henchmen, minions, and enemies available and their strengths and weaknesses. I went through each item and added the size of the objects (2x2 sq., etc.) which strangely enough is not listed in the guide, but It's an enormous help when planning the size and layouts of your rooms.