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As inevitable as the rising of the sun, the PC market is about to get another realtime strategy title to add to its growing collection of Command and Conquers, Sim Cities, Age of Empires and what seems like thousands of others. However, out of all these strategy games, most fail to capture the mainstream market due to their incredible complexity and lack of pick-up-and-play appeal. Sure, they're great games, but not since Theme Park have we really seen a strategy game that has taken over the lives of so many people, both casual and hardcore gamers, due to its simple yet insanely addictive gameplay. Maybe, that is, until now...
Evil Genius follows along the lines of the 'Theme' games by being a pretty light-hearted affair, with loads of great ideas that will leave you grinning at your monitor. The basic premise is that you take on the role of an evil genius, who has to build an underground lair on a tropical island. Of course, to achieve this you have an endless stream of minions which you can assign to building the various rooms and devices needed for world domination; including your doomsday machine, which when successfully launched, allows you to take over the world and complete the game.
The only thing that stands between you and controlling every human on the planet is, of course, a load of other evil geniuses who all have the same idea. They'll also be busy building up their bases and deploying teams of minions to attack your base and destroy your weapon. Fortunately, you aren't completely defenceless, since the game provides you with a large variety of hilarious traps that you can set to stop intruders in their tracks. These are easily placed; you can just drag things like piranha tanks, gas chambers and buzz-saws into your base, then connect them to a trigger which will set them off. You can even connect traps together, making the trigger for one being the end of another, so that an unwitting enemy may stumble into a multi-trap combo for which the game will reward you handsomely.
Of course, once you've caught an intruder, you have to find something to do with them. Fortunately, you can keep them in prisons dotted around your base for safe-keeping, until you feel the need for a little entertainment, when you can choose one of your minions to 'extract' information from them. This can be done in many different ways, including firing a massive ray-gun at them, dipping them in vats of acid and even taking them to a kitchen and stuffing them into a blender. Each of these sequences is fully animated and voice-acted, making the whole ordeal quite graphic but strangely satisfying. Unfortunately, while this can be a useful source of entertainment, it runs the risk of escape attempts, which can leave evil minions running about your base!
Despite its light-hearted approach and simplistic-sounding aims, Evil Genius actually has a great deal of depth and complexity beneath its humorous exterior. Minions start off simply being able to build things, but can be trained to perform specific roles, such as turning them into spin-doctors, biochemists and superagents, each with their own special abilities. The minions also have morale and respect ratings, which determine how closely they follow your plans and how likely they are to defect. New gadgets and weapons can also be researched by capturing treasures throughout the world and examining them. These treasures appear on a world map, which also displays the positions of the other evil geniuses and their henchmen, so capturing them depends greatly on your current notoriety rating and how angry each other genius is with you at that moment.
Overall, we were pretty impressed with Evil Genius, and we haven't even scratched the surface of some of its features. With some great ideas, hilarious animations and what looks like seriously addictive gameplay, we expect that Vivendi will have another hit on their hands when it releases in a month's time. Be sure to check out our full review of the finished game which will appear on the site a little closer to its release.
Marc Hull
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