Osta Evil Genius

So sad that as of last week I still played this game on cd, yes the org cd... The hundreds if not over a thousand hours I've put into this game. Then i see it on steam (compleatly unware) and have to build my game hrs all over again like I'm new. Great game. From the little comedy antics to the satisfaction to see your gold has filled the room. HEY GAME MAKING DEV PEOPLE. Make an EVIL GENIUS 2 (this time add a sandbox island).

REVIEW HAIKU

Dominate the world

Lure your foes to their demise

Henchmen wreak havoc

Excellent game. Good build play. Nice Bond villian asthetic. Terribly fun.

This game is my personal classic favourite. It was the first full game I bought back in 2006 and since then I've had a lot of nostalgic fun with it.
The overall the graphics are still satisfactory in terms of the art style, the gameplay is solid and fun, and the overall story is positively parodistic with good pretty good humour and fun.

I enjoy this, many more people should too.

Let me say one thing first. I have played and loved Dungeon Keeper 1,2 as well as Evil Genius. Saying Evil Genius is a clone of Dungeon Keeper is to me like saying Chess(EG) is a clone of checkers(DK). There are similarities but one is a lot deeper and harder to master than the other. There is nothing before or since like Evil Genius. There have been attempts to do something like Dungeon Keeper with mixed results. No one has to my knowledge has even tried with Evil Genius. It is also the only game I know where so many people(like me) are crying for a sequel. The game does have some flaws involving minion, space and gold management. The learning curve is very steep at some points and it is not always intuitive how you do some simple things like interrogate a prisoner. Even with the bugfix patch it can be a little unstable. For the first time through, expect that you will have to go to the glossery and the internet for help and that you should save often. Even on easy mode, Marimba Mamba (the weakest superagent) is most likely going to wipeout many of your high level minions, steal some of your ill gotten goodies and blow up your power stations while you are checking on an act of infamy. On the plus side there is a lot of humor and some replayability. The graphics are dated but it still looks good. It is worth buying this game, even at its non-sale price.

Truly a gem of a game, you may develop the desire to rule the world after playing.

+ A great style to it, take some of the humor of Austin Powers and apply it to a base building sim, this is that basicly.
+ 3 EG's (Evil Geniuses) to choose from each with their own perks.
+ Good Humor
+ Monkeys
+ You can have traps knock enemies, and minions, into other traps, and be rewarded for it.
+ Phat Loot.

- Steam version is unpatched and has several bugs, like certain objects not able to be researched
- Only 100 minions max, unless you mess with stuff
- No steam workshop, would be incredible

This game IS genius.

Inspired by dungeon keeper, EG castes you as a 70's bond villian with the world as your play thing, mange missions to increases you infamy while making fools of the forces of justice, also manage you lair built into a mountain on a tropical island, like DK you can have minions to command traps to lay and agents to fool or dispose of, you even henchman to do your bidding who are powerful enough to go toe to toe with "Super agents" 007 types who may eventuallly be sent to stop you.

Apart from the genius gameplay this game also manages a wicked sense of humor with the characters and settings a little closer too Austin powers than James bond.

Should you get this game?
If you like Dungeon Keeper, then Get This game.
If you like James bond or Austin powers then Get This game.
If you like management sims or humor in your games then Get This game.

An essentail mod
Evil Genius origionally shipped with a number of bugs, and the steam version has not seen all of them eradicated, so I highly advise people to download a small mod that takes care of these problems:

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1638920
https://steamcommunity.com/linkfilter/http://www.gamefront.com/files/20273223/Evil_Genius_Steam_Patch_exe

Simply extract this into you EG folder and you're all set to go. The mod contains the official and unofficail mods combined with the bonus content CD for the best EG experiance,

An unessential mod
There is a another mod that fixes widescreen and resolution limitations, but I've found that it also creates som UI problems so I just play the game at its max 1280 x 1040 which I find satisfactory.

One last small tweak.
In your "Evil Genius\DynamicResources\Config" folder you can open the file called "concept" and adjust some settings with notepad..
Change all sections for [GameCamera] MaxHeight, from 50 to 70 (or more if you want), this will allow you to observe much more of the action, and to detect intruders to your island more easily.

It's an older game so it has its..... charms. But I think it is fantastic. Very deep game with a lot of cool features. Looks great too, looks like a stylized modern game. An all time favourite.

Easily one of the best simulators where you play the bad guys on the market.

Has lots of content, from resource management and minion management to traps and worldwide domination. It does not fall short in any catagory other than story, as there is not much of one, so there is much room for roleplay in this game. Small price tag adds even more to the value, and it's a great game to play to kill time, be it in one sitting or in short bursts. Has a charming humor to it, and the lack of any real dismemberment and bloody carnage further adds this charm to it. The game can be very difficult and very frustrating, especially the last half of the game, but it only adds to the flavour of the game.

10/10, would lock Russians in a giant venus flytrap filled room again.

Heyyo,

Evil Genius is a realtime strategy game with a twist... where you try and take over the world as an Evil Genius from the 70's. Think of Austin Power's main antagonist... Dr. Evil. You get to be him and it's glorious. How many hours have I spent on the gog.com release before picking it up on a Steam sale because I love this game so much? I dunno, but a lot lol. :)

If you wish to play it in Widescreen? Just follow this Steam Community thread:
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=904360

If you've ever played Startopia, Dungeon Keeper or War for The Overworld? You'll know what kind of game to expect.. and to enjoy a lot. Buy this game for yourself or someone who enjoys a cunning and challenging game with a touch of silliness. ;)

A really good game that is fun at the same time cause its really easy to accidentaly kill your minions!

This game allows me to fulfill my dreams of taking over the world, torturing my enemies and leading an army of incompetent mooks.
10/10 would be a James Bond villain again.

I've played this little gem a lot. So i just bought it on Steam to have it here too, now that it's on sale finally :-)

What is it? It's overlooked, underhyped and underrated. Sadly.
Take my beloved Dungeon Keeper (one of my alltime top10), take out the evil high fantasy stuff and put in the more-or-less real evil villain and CIA-stuff. And voila!
It looks like "Tropico" and "The Sims" made love with "Dungeon Keeper" and "No One Lives Forever" in a gruesome gangbang and this is the outcome. "Dungeon Keeper" being the gameplay though, the rest defined the optics/theme.

I won't dive into depths here, because there is said MORE than enough about this pearl.

tl;dr:
You've missed this 10yrs ago but are into RTS? Go get it!
You've missed this 10yrs ago but are not into RTS? But you like evil villains and games that make a parody of themselves? Give it a try, it's just a few bucks anyway!

It even runs fine on Win8.1.1, and with some easy "hacks" in FullHD (or more or less) in Borderless Fullscreen. What else can one wish nowadays?
(http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=904360)
Of course you have to value gamplay over optics, because the graphics are somehow dated. But it's not THAT bad, just don't expect Skyrim.

Stop reading, start buying!

The game itself tries to re-created the feel of everyone's favorite base-builder classic Dungeon Keeper 2. How close does it come? Closer than anyone else, but not without a lot of new, and very avoidable flaws.

Much like DK2 the game revolves around you digging out multiple specialty rooms in your Evil Lair (Control Room, Armory, Barracks, etc.) to acomplish various tasks, and to keep your minions healed, happy, and armed. The forces of good will also come wandering in to your lair in an effort to sabatoge your operation and must be kept at bay, or dealt with. You also have the option of building traps and security devices to keep intruders occupied, or dead...

You have the option to deal with the do-gooders in various ways. By default your minions completely ignore all enemies and neutral tourists unless they are directly atttacked. You must "tag" an intruder on your island with an action for your minions to take. These are either "Kill", "Capture", or "Befuddle". Killing is the most straightforward way, but the downside is that a dead enemy leaves a corpse behind. If tourists or enemy agents see these your "heat" level increases for that particular faction. A higher "heat" level for a faction means that they will send stronger agents to your island and are much harder to deal with. To deal with the bodies you must build a freezer and storage racks to hide the bodies until they decay. You can kill anyone that looks at you funny, but you will run out of storage space quick. Another method to deal with them is to "befuddle" them. You have social minions like Valets and Spin Doctors who will attempt to confuse enemy agents and tourists. Once their Mind stat is reduced to zero the enemy will stand there in a daze and do nothing. Agents only have a fixed amount of time they spend investigating your island, so the more time they spend drooling on themselves the less time they have to throw monkey wrenches in your plans. The third option is to "capture". Minions will attempt to knock the victim out and then drag them to a holding cell. From there you can either kill them, or interrogate them. Interrogation is only useful against skilled civilians so that you can train your minions for that profession, otherwise it is a complete waste of time.

One thing that sets the game apart from the DK series is the use of the world map. Not only must you build and maintain your evil lair, but you must send your minions out into the world to Steal, Plot, and cause Mayhem to further your evil goals. It is a very unique addition, but has numerous flaws that make it more of a pain than a pleasure. The world map is split between 4 different alliances, each alliance having 4 separate territories. Each territory has an income and a security rating. The income number shows how much your minions can steal from that territory, and the security rating determines how much heat your illicit activities will generate. You won't know what these numbers are unless you have a specific number of Control Panels in your control room properly staffed. You also have access to various evil missions to send your minions on. These include kidnapping specialists for interrogation, stealing valuble loot, and regular story advancement mission.

THE FLAWS
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The game, unfortunately has many, many flaws that should have never happened. For starters the controls are terrible and very unintuitive. Almost everything is done by right-clicking. Left is generally only used for selecting your Avatar/Henchman and to drag out room building templates. What game uses the left button only 10% of the time? The World Map controls are just as terrible. Scroll speed depends on how fast your PC is, so old PCs have a reasonable scroll speed, but on newer ones you will constantly overshoot the place you are trying to scroll to. This is very irritating when you are frantically trying to tell your minions to go in to hiding so they aren't caught by the investigator agents who randomly deploy across the world and kill your minions. Speaking of which, when those agents deploy you have NO WARNING! While you are desperately trying to fend off agents invading your lair, about 80% of the places you have minions deployed on the world map will suddenly have an investigating agent deployed there as well, and if you don't luck up and check the world map at the right time all of your minions will end up dead after about 10 seconds. The World Map button will sometimes tell you have have minions being killed, but by the time it tells you it's way too late.

Keeping enemies from casually wandering in to your base and investigating your freezer full of corpses, blowing generators up, or stealing gold is unreasonably difficult. As I mentioned before minions completely ignore enemies unless manually told to do something about them. There is no "default" action you can set for enemies so you have to manually assign an action for EVERY enemy individually. Good luck with that level of micro-management when you have two separate screens to pay attention to, neither of which can be automated in any helpful way. Traps and Security Cameras are supposed to help with this but both are complete wastes of money. Traps can only be triggered by an enemy activating a pressure plate, tripwire, or motion detector. The problem is that these can NOT be placed on the actual trap, they must be placed next to it (or anywhere else, but that is even less useful). When placed next to the trap the enemy will, 90% of the time stop on top of the triggering device while the trap gos off harmlessly next to them. If it does manage to trap an enemy it has an equal or better chance of trapping your minions as well! Security cameras are just pointless. They are supposed to alert you to intruders and then deploy minions to deal with them. The cameras only alert if an enemy has been "tagged" previously. Enemies that havent been tagged will be ignored. Even if an alert is sounded only minions within earshot of a loudspeaker will be deployed. All of these things are complete wastes of valuble cash.

Dealing with enemies is needlessly difficuly as well. Enemy Agents will always be armed and you have the option of arming your minions, but only if you have built the proper gun cabinets, and only if your base is on Yellow or Red alert. The rest of the time they return the guns to the armory and if enemy soldiers start raiding they will gun your helpless minions down before you can issue the alert. This makes some sense for your regular minions, but why aren't your guards armed 24/7? Your only real defense is your Henchmen, the only guys that you can manually control besides your avatar. They can easily deal with weaker agents on their own, but require backup if faced with numerous opponents. You start with one, but can recruit more later on. One word of advice, avoid the ones that use explosives, they will kill your own guys more often than your enemies. The best method of dealing with potential intruders seems to be using the "befuddle" option if you have a lot of social minions. Yes, it requires 1 minion to be occupied with each target, but it saves freezer space and doesn't raise your heat level.

Hotels are a complete joke. They are super-expensive, require staffing, and produce no income. Better off stuffing their corpses in the freezer.

BOTTOM LINE
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A worthy attempt to recreate the magic of Dungeon Keeper. Some horrid flaws keep it from being a true successor, but it is well worth your time and money if you loved DK2.

its just amazing!

Great game despite being so old.Very playable even today .

Great game, a must have for all simulation lovers.

For a very narrow audience, but I got everything I could ever want out of it. Absolutely amazing, I could not believe how many things I could do to those pesky agents intruding my base. It was absolutely staggering

The controls are terrible, but that's what the game is based on - you cannot control your minions. You have to create an infrastructure that will be able to defend itself, in the meantime executing your subordinates to kill time, whenever you aren't taunting prisoners of course. I don't think they should be as clunky as they are, but they'd get away with it in 2004.

A must have for any aspiring evil geniuses out there.

An absolute classic, a dungeon keeper-esque management of your evil lair (with equal comedy style) as you continue on you way to world domination. defending agents agents that try to sneak in with your minions or an assortment of comedic traps (Who can resist a big red button?) and take them away for equally comic interrogation.

While the game isn't sandbox you can easily save at certain points and hold progression of the story. but if you want a good base management game, with a lovely style, you can't go wrong here.

quick note: you may need to hunt around for a patch to bring the game up to modern resolutions.

Very recommended! The game allows so much fun to happen in just one session, and you'll be playing it for a long time, I assure you. Things are really balanced, and offers gameplay that many games dont have. And on top of that, once you're done the game, theres still so much playability! Really well inplemented thoughts in such a great game.