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Evil Genius Review - PC

How Evil Are You?

That's Elixir's slogan for this game, so that's what we're going to ask. Evil Genius takes you to a whole new level of gaming, allowing you to control an evil organization, reaping havoc around the world. Evil Genius will keep you at the edge of your seat as you try to destroy the world and carry out your nefarious master plan. With lots on the line, and even more in the game, Vivendi and Elixir have released a game to the public set to create a new genre of evil mastermind games, so read through to find out just how evil you can be.

Gameplay

The gameplay in Evil Genius is one of a kind. Elixir told the world that they planned to create a whole new type of gaming, where you'd take control of an Evil empire and seek world domination instead of creating a civil empire and trying to rescue the world / save the world. This makes for a bit of backward gameplay. Never can you feel totally safe inside your little secret base, and the world are always against you. If you've ever seen an Austin Powers or a James Bond movie, or even if you've played No One Lives Forever, then you'll have a good idea of what's involved in Evil Genius. The main goals are to build up your ultra secret base, and develop implausible super weapons to help you carry out your evil plans.

When you start your game, you can select between three different Evil Genius characters. It's probably a good idea to go through the tutorial, although at some stages it can get annoying. Once you've moved through that though you'll be ready to start your evil empire. With over 300 items and specialized rooms to build, you'll find Evil Genius works a lot like the infamous Theme Park game. Some of the items even allow you to set traps for government spies trying to infiltrate your base. When you capture a spy, you can usually watch a nice entertaining scene of what they do with him. This all adds to the humour side of Evil Genius which is a large part of the game that Elixir is trying to put forward with their innovative idea.

Evil Genius does however have quite a few micromanagement tasks which have been removed from most of the strategy simulation games released these days to allow the gamer to focus more on the activities going on outside the base. You'll have to select where you want every item in every room, and whether or not it needs to be rotated. This can cause irritation as you may be doing this while a spy is infiltrating your base, or while you're being generally attacked. Once you train your minions to deal with the black market, researching super weapons, and general (continued next page)