The demo got me itching for Evil Genius. Hell, it got me itching for Dungeon Keeper, so I played some DK2 goodness while I waited. Once I finally got to Evil Genius, I found a game with a good idea but some poor design decisions.

This is actually a pretty long game, considering the situation. Unlike DK2, it's not a series of scenarios. It's one long main objective, achieved by completing a series of smaller objectives (many of which have their own smaller objectives). Near the end, you will get a chance to relocate to a second island with a much larger space for building, but unfortunately it also has greater distances to the depots, which means construction projects take longer.

Base design is one of the strong points. It's quite enjoyable to plan your layout and decide what kind of design you want. Something geared towards presenting an innocent front to agents that sneak in? Entrances that lead to a series of traps for disabling or killing agents? Or something ultra efficient, designed for speed and easy access? Each has its strengths and its weaknesses. My own design was a mix of the latter two. My three entrances had non-lethal traps for disabling intruders. I had a number of "honeypot" entrances: the doors in lead to corridors of traps which end at a door leading back out.

Minion specialization worked out pretty well. The problem was that, with the minion cap hard set at 100, it was too hard to keep a lot of highly specialized minions, and it was far far too easy to have them all killed by super-agents. Any time one of your highly specialized types is completely wiped out, you need to go through the hassle of kidnapping one and torturing him all over again. How often does this happen? Much more often than I thought reasonable. The problem is that you can't mandate that they make training underlings a priority. Your marksmen and martial arts masters respond to every kill tag, just like guards and mercenaries. Your diplomats and playboys will try to shmooze agents tagged for weakening, just like their less-skilled spin doctors and valets. The problem is, of course, that performing these duties is rather hazardous. If I had a nickel for every time a super-agent went absolute batshit and murdered all of my social minions for no goddamn reason, I'd be a rich man.

Yeah, super-agents. This was an intriguing idea with an implementation that led to more frustraiton than any other aspect of the game. Super-agents are special advanced agents that cannot be killed through normal means. Only late in the game can you find out the secrets needed to stop them permanently. Super-agents also have special powers that they can use against you and your minions. The worst, John Steele, can actually change your alert levels, reset all of your security doors to the lowest level, and start random fires in your base. And he does this all at once. Any time he wants. The problem here is that super-agents get freaked by the most minor things, and then they start killing everyone in sight. Even having a hoarde of social minions sapping their attention is no guarantee of avoiding their wrath. Trying to distract agents like this really drains the minions' endurance. So eventually, they get too tired to keep it up. This assumes, of course, that the super-agent doesn't just up and kill them before (or right after) they get a chance to do their thing. If this wasn't bad enough, there were times where I had 3 super-agents roaming my island at once. Killing with abandon. Blowing up shit left and right.

So, in the end, the only way I could continue playing the game was to cheat. I discovered a way to raise my minion max to 200, allowing me to specialize more. There's also a cheat that makes most agents (and all super-agents) leave the island after only a very brief time of looking around. Once I took advantage of these, I was able to actually focus on completing various "Acts of Infamy" and working towards the final objective.

Replay value? Very little. The game progression, as far as I can tell, will be fundamentally the same for all sessions. Differences will be minor: your choice of avatar, your choice of henchmen, your choice of base design, your choice of final doomsday weapon. I might try playing again with a very very innocent-looking base with a focus on hiding nerfarious objects deep inside. Even then, I expect that I'll eventually have to rely on the cheat again, just to keep from quitting the game in frustration. Like I said, this game is a great idea marred by some poor implementation decisions.