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Release Dates Out Now (North America) Out Now (Europe) |
Review
In this latest strategy title, you find yourself on an evil island with an extinct volcano as your hideaway. The point of the game is quite simply, “be evil”, and through the careful control of your minions and henchmen, planning, and execution, world domination is imminent! You take on the role of an Evil Genius and it is your goal to build up an underground lair, effectively progressing through the many different levels of becoming a domineering force of darkness in the world.
Before the main game starts there is the option of having a tutorial. You might think that being evil comes as a second nature to many of us but with expert introduction to the game, full explanations, fully comprehensive video tutorials and a large glossary of terms and help, learning to be evil can be taught, and it’s openly clear that there is a great emphasis on making this game easy to play.
There are three Evil Genius’ to choose from and each one comes with a few minions and a loyal henchman to get started. You can quickly build up your array of qualified little helpers by building the appropriate room to create more space to keep their pants and boots, lockers in the staff room. Henchmen can be recruited as you progress through the game and are invaluable when a horde of enemy burglars or assassins might attack your base.
There are two main views that you must use in order to conquer the world. The 3D view of the base is the most exciting and interactive and it is here that you build new parts of the base, kill and dispose of intruders, interrogate prisoners, and mastermind the operations. The other controlled area of the game is the world map where you can control how many of each of your men go to any particular continent.
The main stint of the game is spent in the base, the 3D view is similar to most other games, and control systems are the same. Zoom in and out, rotate all 360 degrees, and pan around the base. Unfortunately, though the camera angle seems unusually high, which means you have to constantly pan around, and there is no tilt. Even the slight option to put the camera lower or higher at different periods in the game would be helpful. The zoom function too seems a little clumsy, zooming out in four stages and then zooming all the way in with one roll up of the mouse wheel.
