Most Helpful Customer Reviews
|
|
73 of 74 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Has great highs and bad lows, October 15, 2004
Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars
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.
|
|
|
57 of 60 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The delight of being evil, October 29, 2004
Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars
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!
|
|
|
25 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Been waiting, September 2, 2004
Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars
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.
|
|
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews
|
