Playing Evil Genius: Dawdling to Doomsday

right listen up team there have been reports of a new player in the underground you don't know who it is we know they're organized motivated building a team of henchmen and minions the like of which the world has never seen before this person is attempting to become an evil genius sir what is it Perkins would you say that the evil genius would have an underground less it would appear not Perkins however I fear it's only a matter of time what do we even where's the flexor well Perkins if I was build an evil there not that I would you understand I designed an evil lair the like of which the world had never seen probably build it into a mountain Perkins underground threatened a barracks for the men and a control room organized the away teams and a strong room of course store all my ill-gotten gains probably have to build some recreation items for the men they get disloyal you know maggots and you build traps hundreds of them Perkins don't want agents snooping around while you take over the world and I'd build a cover operation to hide the base from prying eyes camouflage that's the key it's a good thing you're not an evil genius sir I'd be such a damn fool buggins right team you have your orders get out there and find me a madman [Music] yep bringing the world to its knees evil genius is a base building strategy game a cult classic developed by DS sadly defunct alixus Studios creators of one of a game that I somehow played and only learned of the connection between these two just now and both games are now owned by rebellion Studios who have announced an evil genius sequel that isn't a Facebook game this sequel was announced not two days after I started recording footage so naturally I rushed to get this video done in a timely manner and yeah I bloody well failed at that but then again an evil genius is tasking me or of a difficult feat take over the world with just 100 less-than-stellar employees this is going to be a tricky video for much more than that I've reorganized my Forte's a lot before and during the writing of this this video is going to be more of a critique than anything else and I apologize if much if it sounds like an extended tutorial this game is rather unique and I want people to see where I'm coming from I played this game as a kid never to completion and I recorded this review over a two-month period I did two flavors the first played very poorly didn't pay attention to key mechanics and did not clear the game the second went fast mover and was obviously played to completion I learned from my mistakes but the game still had a big share of annoyances I've had my ups and downs with this game and my opinion went right along with it more than any other video I've worked on I've had times where I just wanted to drop the game completely and I was unsure if I ever felt justified dropping the game yet still writing the video I filled it not wanting to play any more is a solid indictment against the game but it's not good angle from which to critique it particularly for this kind of video keeping the announcement of a sequel in mind this video is not going to be me saying that the elements I ended up disliking need to go for it to be good nor is this going to be a list of what I want to see in it if it's by some coincidence seen by someone working on evil genius 2 will it be helpful for them no sodding clue they know bad and I do how the sausage is made as of right now I am happy to hear a sequel is announced and I will be keeping an eye on it at the end of it all I can't say I hate evil genius I can't even say I completely dislike it I put that down to the game being filtered a brim would charm the music is gorgeous bafta-nominated with reason the writing is incredibly funny and very sharp it doesn't waste words the art style is both nice to look at and very easy to read I can identify who and what everything is a glance even the more bizarre objects make a sort of internal sense I can look at them and know what they do immediately and the game animates beautifully to back all this up it's nice cartoony and exaggerated in just the right way but all that is a stakes my videos focus on gameplay and plot the plot is white ultimately fine and the gameplay I found to have a good share of flaws some quite pervasive others relatively minor I want to encapsulate a great deal of my issues with this statement evil genius is an OK game running at quarter speed okay obviously there's a lot more to it than that I checked how long to be I tend not to find the website reliable but I generally come up a few hours fast but an evil genius my play time was far in excess I didn't even 100% the game and still came up far behind that metric I do also want to note that I spoke with a good few people who do like this game or at least remembered it fondly they always near enough brought up unprompted that they would raise the hard unit cap as mentioned 100 bloke stops it's a number that feels restrictive yet it is what the game is balanced for one guy mentioned that he found the game fun and when I said I was playing it for sake of reviewing it he told me to just cheat for money I did neither of these things I played games far worse than this is intended I mean I did come up against an EP resolution that melds for Pokemon benefits so I felt it was only fair to do the same for evil genius this said activating cheats and modifying the population is very easily done and I can see how doing either of these things may have alleviated some of my issues first up we got a pick an evil genius they each have different benefits but none are completely game-changing you won't be punished for picking one over the other we start with some workers loyal henchmen a bit of dosh and a not so deserted island as it seems some pesky agents feel it's got potential as an evil lair and they've stuck around in case someone got ideas some of us odd even evil of an I must have advertised it as a holiday destination since we start getting tourists not soon after even if we're just a metal tube carved into a mountain in the middle of the ocean and he'll never get around to taking down those notices as these tourists never stop coming not even after hundreds of dead thanks to this place first port of call is establishing a base from which we can carry out our evil schemes we plop down some room plans and our workers will carry out the excavation and construction soon we have a barracks to increase our unit cap and behind that I placed a new strong room so our gold isn't outside I think if the men would feel enriched by this placement and it shows I trust them somewhat I also plopped down a power plant so I don't risk a power cut when we expand and lastly for now a control center opening up the world domination screen and allowing us to carry out away missions there are two sides to this game and they feed into one another your island layer is a real-time base building game where you have to ward off the forces of justice derive a manipulation or murder is where you store and defend your ill-gotten gains train and retrain an army of minions to send out into the world and most importantly build an impregnable base to house everything you buy or develop and defend your avatar from harm if they die it's game over then there's the world domination screen it's a board game you dispatch troops to carry out acts of infamy steal a loot to dot around the base and earn money much like the real Cold War we were odds with five superpowers each of them four territories strong Patriot represents the northern Americas and Japan and bill protects Asia and Polynesia Sabre stands for Europe South Africa India and Australia and hammer is the Warsaw Pact in gameplay terms they're not distinct from one another visually very much so we're going to be rubbing shoulders a lot with these lads going forwards it tends to keep them off our backs so a confession I'm less than an hour in and despite me saying that I will not cheat or bump up that unit cap I am actually exploiting something so the game won't actually send enemies to your base until you capture and interrogate this made so I've already filled a room with lockers and staffed my base to capacity not that you can see most of them since they're all out in the world looting like mad my flimsy explanation for not just using the money cheat if I was going to do this is that this still had a time investment more than an hour of waiting around ironically this may end up saving time later down the line I am going to call this game slow-paced as an egg ever quite a few points going forward but not right now this one's on me anyway once the meat is interrogated the worker moves into a valley and all bets are off the world will be gunning to avenge this maid but before that dam breaks I've been using that money for base building and I've only really got praise for it it's only issues are decidedly minor some issues with moving objects besides that it's easily understood very simple to execute but still enjoyable and there's a good amount of depth under the hood and those under the hood elements do influence base design in really nice ways rooms and the objects therein are made up of squares and cost dosh some objects have facing requirements so you can rotate them different rooms can house different objects and that's about it you have quite a lot of space to work with but I always try to be at least a little bit economical with space I like to have my stuff crammed together part of this is that there are barely any instantaneous actions in the game like just now I order a room to be constructed so a minion will run to the strong room to collect the funds are necessary for dynamite they'll then run over to plot the dynamite and depending on how much space was allocated some rooms will take more than one brick so that's another reason in my mind to keep rooms on the smaller side and that money isn't warping in either people have to go pick it up and drop it off so you'll learn more about base building as I move on to other topics but good base design is very rewarding it's nice to find a balance between a labyrinth theme to throw off enemy agents but accommodating for your troops luckily minions just know the base layout so you needn't worry about them getting lost generally my bases feature one long winding corridor from which everything else branches off the entrance and much of the corridor is lined with security cameras and traps and at a certain point that corridor will hit a high-traffic area that separates the more innocent front of the base from the dodgiest stuff at the back the stuff that will raise alarm bells and have more agents breathing down our neck after I cleared the game I went and looked to other people's play furries to see how others designed their bases and with such a simple system it is nice to see how much variance did come into play especially since the bases are just nice to look at some people built in ways to exploit agents curiosity and waste their time others had a more open plan merging rooms and ignoring hallways having bases expanded in all directions rather than my corridor setup I will say the base building is done well and that along with traps make up the best part of the gameplay most of the agents who turn up will be seeking out anything incriminating and if they leave with evidence of wrongdoing this will add to your he he attracts greater resistance from the forces of justice bumping up not only the strength of units they will sense your face but also frequency low heat you'll only have investigative agents who'll stick their noses where they don't belong if given the chance but generally won't be forceful in doing so the high heat more dangerous goons will turn up who may try and do some sabotage to your base either through theft or destruction and at max heat they'll drop all pretense and start dropping in soldiers armed to the teeth with orders to shoot on sight enemy agents also have adjectives from pathetic to exceptional although exceptional only seems to mean that they don't discriminate and will gun down even bury the valley yeah and they have more health but that's not funny he is gained independently for each of the five agencies but there's no real way to play them against each other at least for most of the game so it's best to just keep heat low in general pissing off one agency is at the end of the world but game on multiple countries tits at the same time is ill-advised certain objects necessary to operate in your face generate heat along with attacking agents obviously so to keep a low profile you have to wait agent self played anything incriminating and build your face to effectively waste their time it is satisfying for a long while to see agents go down a long haul get caught on traps and see them disoriented and lost only to get on ceremoniously led outside none the wiser it's far more gratifying than gunning them down to this end I also use my patience fund mostly to build a ton of hotels in shacks topside since agents just kind of circle the island investigating anything and everything for stumbling upon your entrance this dramatically ate into their time and of course the tourists kept coming not that my hotels were of a staff I mean I needed everyone at base keeping out the riffraff I won't be bringing up my first play for it too much since it was a complete disaster and what I did learn about the game from it is only valuable at bits and pieces how about it went was entirely my fault for ignoring the heat system stocking up on combat units and playing this like a tower defense game I picked fights my face design was front-loaded on lousy tracks were barely used and I pissed off every country at the same time I played entirely wrong and I learned the evil genius does not pull punches my level enemies came in constant waves and they shot on sight bringing money or objects into the base was a death trap due to the constant patrols outside I didn't want to send any troops outdoors and this cost a ton of units and wasted a lot of time I was constantly needing to replace doors and other security measures not to mention men plus killing the unit's set to kill me only led to more heat so waiting out the heat took a long time as I was topping it up every once in a while I was very much put in my place respect the heat system that's the biggest takeaway here I guess the most help I got from this was the I learned how the combat system worked and that meant I handled the much more sporadic combat and my success will run a lot better due to having a good deal of experience so he is another great big factor in base design and what I like about is how it does incentivize doing your base to be for lack of a better term evil he actively encourages building a weird maze like labyrinth through gameplay systems rather than just to fit the theme it has to waste it through this time and wits that is what I like about Pete here is what I dislike the only response to hate is to wait it out there is no active way to decrease heat faster or mitigate outside of one temporary gameplay addition that we'll be seeing later he is a punishment for poor play and that's fine but it's also inevitable that you will gain heat he isn't just gained on the base a large majority of it comes from world domination activities the moment minions touchdown the forces of justice are cooking and clearing missions just raises it further can't really blame the mind the first thing we're tasked we're doing is placing ourselves at the head of the underworld and today and we're gathering world-renowned crime lords for a big fancy conference to discuss our plans the first few can be found just by plotting on the world map plotting is straightforward you plant some minions in a region told them to plot and overtime missions will reveal themselves it can take a bit and some minion types are better at plotting than others off we gather a few one just turns up and decides to strut around the face acting like he's been so I toss him in the food processor and that turns him around next up is a rogue CIA agent Ewing and he's going to actually hold us up a bit he'll only reveal himself if he finds us worthy and that means building notoriety notoriety is earned by clearing missions on the world domination screen it has a few effects with more notoriety we need less lockers more people will just gladly work for us without caring about where they put their stuff but certain intervals we also get new henchmen there are super units mostly unkillable tougher than most and each brings a couple unique abilities to the table alongside henchmen as notoriety increases more agencies will bring out their super agents to try and put us down the world domination screen is also our source of income we send out roots to sit on a territory and they'll send back cache both while looting and plotting you need to look in on units occasionally as the forces of justice occasionally dispatch patrols that will kill your units unless you put them into hiding so you get them to safety and go back to what you're doing but wait you're not done yet they won't reimburse when the threat is gone they'll do it offer a timed interval so they can more effectively get themselves killed this is a really annoying feature and I can't think of a good reason why they do this either stay in hiding until I say otherwise or automate it completely don't punish me for not noticing and fixing the same problem twice in a row especially since the forces of justice patrols seem to be both random and he influenced at the same time they can stick around for ages or just pop in and out the missions themselves named acts of infamy are also quite simple Affairs each act of infamy has a minyan requirement to begin a timer and a risk rating the timer is how long the mission takes to clear and the higher the risk the more troops will die during and after the mission with missions failing if everyone dies before the time is up so I will argue to always overestimate the needed minions even on low risk this does of course bring more heat you don't actually see the missions play out just watch the ticker go down and hope that you chucked enough bodies eh it's pure attrition I will say however that I do love the mission descriptions a lot of the acts of infamy could be described more as petty than anything else dumping a bunch of tea in India in the hopes we spoil a bunch of savory agents days setting fire to Australia and blowing up Nashville it's all like hide phone we do also Nick a bunch of historical relics priceless art and even landmarks along the way to spruce up the joint and while we don't get any cutscenes or visuals we do get radio broadcasts g'day Australasia and welcome to the the breaking news concerns a global crime wave that is now watching over our own being Shores he discussed this latest atrocity we have savors chairman on the line mr. chairman and yeah they're good any way that CIA agent must have been tuning in since well he's heard about us and we can go again so there's one last crime lord left and he'll be here to annoy us at any moment let's talk about how I've also been expanding my retinue of forces we kidnapped a security guard and a technician and learned what we could from them giving us our first combat and science minions they did seem to simplify what they learned into punching things and playing with chemicals but the other minions do seem to get the gist of it so I can't complain after base design and traps the most important matter is your minion composition you can allocate a certain amount of each type of unit as long as you don't breach the cap we've only 100 places you'll be shifting around on occasion due to the demands of various acts of infamy and your own needs besides the worker there are free minion trees with four types in each the basic workers you get a free one each minute to replace losses and you can pay cash to speed up the rate at which they turn up combat social and science minions require specialist training the minion further along in their tree can Train anyone beneath them they do have to train through each tier however so if you want a diplomat say they're coming in as a worker and going through Valley and spin-doctor training first combat minions obviously excel in combat on the world domination screen they individually pull in the most money and reduce losses during missions social minions were to me the most important unit they can psychologically weaken enemies and escort them out of the base on the world domination screen they listen heat from armored minions and reduce the heat gained from clearing acts of infamy but only the stronger types of social Millions had a really big effect and you don't get them for a very long time science minions aren't too important just yet on the base but it won't be long till they're needed on the world domination screen they are the best plotters and they also speed up missions they're involved in besides this some minion types have specific tasks that only they will do for instance only workers will handle construction valets for some reason are the only ones capable of cooking out fires combat minions are the best at Hawking the television mostly because the lazy pricks don't do any work that doesn't involve screens essentially even wait game you'll want a healthy mix of earlier minion types kept around so how do you get these allowed to do your bidding well that brings us to our controls you can only completely direct a minority of your units that is to say your evil genius and your henchmen your minions are not directly controlled they're more influenced both by orders you place down and settings around your base you put down security stations and set up security cameras and loudspeakers so that they have enough information to track down agents you change security settings on doors to restrict and allow access you put time clocks on worked rooms such as the control center and armory to say how heavily you want them staffed you have free alarm stages that changes how quickly minions move and how fight you they are this is another part of why good base design is important you don't click on a menu and click on an enemy and let them get on with it when you right-click on an agent you have four options kill psychologically weaken capture and well the last one removes any of these previous orders what killing and imprisoning do are obvious weakening is a more socially acceptable social combat okay it's not really combat agents tend not to fight back in this case at least not with words [ __ ] exceptional minions also have several different needs naturally if they run out of Health they die but they also have loyalty smarts attention and endurance and if these run low they'll either desert go temporarily brain-dead or unconscious there are a number of ways to refill these building staff rooms mess halls and archives allow minions to tend to themselves and improve their quality of life and it's a short life so you know give them something nice certain objects also passively refill these needs most importantly the loot you collect on the world map tends to impress any nearby minions so spreading your spoils around the base to keep everyone in line is a key consideration however these also tend to bring a lot of heat if discovered so place them carefully your evil genius also exudes an air of loyalty or intimidation both work and that helps out everyone nearby and if you need to very quickly top everyone off well you can just murder Steve in front of everyone that sends a message they have no choice but to be wide awake and not [ __ ] around it heals them too yeah I used all of minions as fuel to keep training going I probably killed more minions and the forces of justice actually the point I'm getting to live needs is that minions mostly active free will there are stimulus they'll react to of their own accord and when an order goes out it feels less like someone runs off to get it done but the collective work force just kind of shrugs and goes someone will get round to it as I mentioned earlier nothing is instantaneous this is a nother reason the game feels slow brew motors can go a good while before being cleared I enjoy base building but I more enjoy the planning of it than the actual execution it can be minutes before someone gets started if you order multiple rooms it can be an inordinate amount of time before things get done only one type of combat minion keeps a weapon on them the rest do not so when the alarm is raised they go to the armory to stock up I could never tell when I tagged an agent women will be immediately jumped on or completely ignored I can have a tagged agent walk right past a group of minions and have them go unnoticed because they're technically not on the security network only technicians repair objects latest science minions do not and again it feels like they only get around to it if they have nothing bad to be doing if fires start or if one of the henchmen gets Kayode or there are unattended body bags non-combat minions will charge out to fight the flames or collect the injured and guess what if the henchman is dead that likely means they are running into a very dangerous situation on both play furs I lost ate a lot of social minions to this lack of self-preservation since there are a few good ways to stop them from killing themselves there's no way to forbid them from charging out to collect body bags or pickup mochou of all of this training is the worst training made my blood boil it made me nearly have an aneurysm since while minions do tend to get on with it there is no actual way to encourage training and at times it can be infuriating when they refuse to fill up their numbers the most intense this game gets is when I'm low on a certain kind of unit and if you lose all of them you have to once again kidnap a trainer from the world domination screen getting all that heat over again bring him into a prison and then interrogate them it's a multi minute long process with minute long repercussions and I've had to do it more than once and well remember what I said about unit needs that they can pass out if they've run out of a certain want well it seems that training really Tucker's the poor lads out because if they exit their training and they're out of a step they will just pass out and the training will not take something you have no control over a double crapshoot it is quite annoying yeah refilling a roster of minions can take a good while of sitting around granted the worst individual thing I had happened to me did come after a run of bad luck the base was in poor repair I'd been attacked quite a few times I was in a boring state of recovering from losses I'm just getting troops funneled in I had finally kidnapped a diplomat so I could start training up my own diplomat minions I order an interrogation and nothing happens I want to note prisoners slowly lose health and it seems that diplomats are an unhealthy Bunch as he had a heart attack before his cell door was even opened I am less than pleased so I reloaded earlier saved to see what had happened so it turns out the job of interrogating him had been assigned to a rather lackadaisical worker who was very far away most jobs are assigned purely on proximity this is proximity ignoring walls and other factors that change the actual distant has travelled I don't really mind that but this just infuriating I have no basis for why this minion was picked I don't feel bad about save scumming at times like this I can also put the base on red alert to make everyone run everywhere but obviously that comes with risks since red alert also means the minions start killing things on site I am at least glad that when I order minions to the world map they like it they get going pretty much right away no dilly-dallying I still have to wait on them getting to one of the two alternate depots at boarding a transport but at least it's treated with some urgency so at this point it's only feds talk about the unit's you can control the henchmen make up your heavy hairs there are colorful cast of characters their backstories and abilities make for a fun read and I looked forward to seeing what henchmen I'd get next some are definitely better than others but in only one case did I feel I made a truly poor choice gameplay wise they skew between being better at combat or manipulation supplementing your minions abilities and giving you a bit more control in a pinch [Music] each of them can actually direct minions to a loose degree every henchman has two unique abilities they can earn from bonding minefields to talking agent into forgetting everything but every single one of them has the ability to summon minions to follow so this is one of the most useful abilities in the game and also one of the most annoying since minions are incredibly forgetful on more than one occasion seeing a flight coming up I grab moko a South American God turned moral and have him go and collect the lads from the armory to go out and kill veterans or a super-agent overwhelmed the Lord numbers my old strat by the time moko had gathered the men and made his way to de fret I noticed that more than half the people who had decided to follow him had broken away so I'd be constantly stopping shouting and trying to keep this poorly coordinated all of Def together since men would just seem to break away entirely at random it's really awkward incredibly imprecise and I could never say if this is intentional unless I heard it from the horse's mouth I mean what is added by making this ability awkward to use is it too much to ask that I have one ability that lets me move my units to a specific point it's not hard to do just awkward it's the same issue I have with my men coming out of fighting at a timed interval rather than when the fret has gone away its punishing you for thinking the game wouldn't do something so asinine this really should function like a toggle where you can catch and release your minions from following henchmen at will most of the time I don't really mind this lack of control scheme I feel it is to make it rewarding when the base is running like a well-oiled machine but it does at points lead to problems for the player I feel like a watchmaker working with a litter picker it doesn't help that the minions are monumentally stupid yes it starts off as funny but it does not hold up for a whole game it quickly becomes frustrating as their stupidity just ends up costing time and causing failures for things outside of my control then again traps do pick up some of the slack traps are without a doubt the highlight of this game much like base-building a simple system with a good few possibilities you sell traps self triggers and Link the to the variety of traps available is really nice from simple popups designed to trick and confuse intruders to powerful wind traps and magnets to move agents to saw blades flamethrowers and man-eating plants meant to maim and a lot more where that came from you've got a lot of toys if you just want a trap simulator and of course you can combo traps together having a magnet pull someone under a fallen gas trap is just the start of myriad possibilities I will confess however that I was very utilitarian with my traps seeing as my aim was to clear the game I'm mostly stuck to the pop-up trap to start with and it was more than effective for my purposes everyone falls for it it also doesn't raise suspicion as many of the deadlier traps do having no heat rating and what with minions being able to trigger traps many of the deadlier traps I had installed spent most of the time disconnected since they tended to cause more friendly fire than anything else what with being deeper in the base and behind several doors and smart traps agents did not see them nearly as often as my employees with that on more than one occasion I had to become a sort of violent plumber unclogging stupidity stoppages in my base as a great deal of minions fell victim to these pop-ups uniting with the forces of Justice to attack cardboard for whatever reason you can't kill dimwit soldiers you have to kill someone who's doing nothing and is in a good state that makes them eligible for sacrifice this for me is the action I felt the most guilt over an evil genius you can't punish the guy who fell for the trap at the base he works at you have to kill the guy who's just innocently doing nothing well as innocent as he can be working for me that's pretty much all I have to say on traps they are the standout feature and I am NOT trying to gloss over them but they're very simple they're very straightforward and they work very well they have a good deal of debt underneath they're very simple surface you have to learn their ranges and optimal positioning of triggers and they can easily be switched on and off I've got no complaints for them enemies well we do have one enemy not on the side of justice the last crime lord London gangster Bob barking Kane he's not so accepting of us and so he sent some jumpsuits workers mate you trying to wreck my face or build it for me not like Joe could probably do a better job anyway his resistance is four nor his men are beaten down by both me and the forces of justice he caves and comes to join us shortly thereafter so War II underworld at large is given into us the forces of Justice will take a lot more convincing and unlike Bob they actually have a decent variety of troops investigators and agents wander the base looking for anything incriminating thieves will Nick cash and attempt to return loot home saboteurs will blow up key structures and if you're put on the [ __ ] list you're going to be seeing soldiers and veterans they're a bit like saboteurs but for human lives for the most part enemies won't be hostile right away even soldiers and veterans will only attack combat minions on site and they tend to remain indoors it's only really in max heat that everyone's in danger the enemy AI has its own set of quirks for the most part it's quite easily exploited and can be worked into your stealthy defense such as the fact they're curious about every door that just means you give them more doors I can't much hold it against them that they break my trap triggers I mean no one likes getting pranked but when they explode don't blame me for it that was your fault don't just start shooting everyone because you did this and lastly each agency has a super-agent their drip vents slowly into the game as a notoriety builds they then patrol the world domination screen hoping to find and kill any men use of yours and then they get impatient and come to the island to take it out on you they turn up essentially at random regardless of he though he I believe does influence them and make them appear more often at first they do create a nice dramatic moment especially if they turn up while you're already besieged and just add another problem to juggle but be unkillable by the 5th time you see the same agent it's a lot less thrilling I find them a lot less interesting than the henchmen in terms of design and ability I'm not incredibly into the superspy fiction but I do recognize the influences for these characters Mariana Mamba can drain loyalty making a minion quit on the spot this ability tends to work against her since it's lowered and her just stabbing them frost Innova can turn invisible and jet Chan has the ability of being the biggest most aggressive bastard in the entire game and the big dog John steel can play with your security settings setting the base to Red Alert or switching the alarm off and opening every door on base at his will I don't know what dark masters does he turned up once I kick the SH out of him and he left and I kind of respect him for it okay but while I'm on this topic [ __ ] jet Chan I haven't got exact figures but I'm thinking here to come back to my base an average of every 20 minutes and start killing everyone he's worse than the bloody James Bond analog at least he waited until the eleventh hour to fail to be as much of a problem oh he turned me doors off big [ __ ] whoop this guy punched through them to kill whatever was on the other side inevitably with enemies comes combat and it's best avoided grunt if that's kind of the point that's what traps and words are for when it comes to blows it already feels like a failure of a kind but when the heat gets high and people willing to shoot on sight turn up and when the super agents come knocking it is at times best to go on the offensive before they can do too much damage no matter how much I hold enemies up some are going to slip through the cracks so with what I said about getting henchmen to herd troops to battle well that is the most annoying part but that is really not all the combat is very simple minions and enemies throw punches out or shoot one another one runs out of hell for endurance first depending on whether it was a fight to kill or incapacitate and when one runs out they collapse certain troop types have more health and do more damage so use bigger numbers of bear troops dead agents leave body bags which will be left in the freezer until they disappear that is the basic description of combat it is straightforward but can be nice to watch I love and hate that during think world your minions will stand on the sidelines and cheer it's a great image it's perfectly fable the game schema and it really tells me everything I need to know about my minions but that is dampened when it's my heavy kit as my combat minions standing on the sidelines watching valleys get rumbled it's not just because there are too many participants in the plate so they're just providing a nice visual it seems almost random I see duals get chairs and I've also seen an agent get turned into paste by a crowd mopping look like I said most of my knowledge of the game's combat comes from my ship first playthrough I had more fights than my minions had bought dinners the game quickly became a slog of non-stop assaults from powerful enemy forces which tended to prolong and lead to more assaults from powerful enemy forces leading to me losing minions faster than I was receiving and training them and running out of money to outpace that I think the biggest lesson I learned from the combat is not to feel without get worried about it your minions will die in droves and it's mostly their own fault due to how they handled combat you heard how they stopped following moko how they chair fights on rather than mucking in I can't even sympathize with a dead social and science minions the moment the alarm goes up they should be fleeing to the farthest corner of the base to cower below it millions will just charge the grouped up enemies single-file not way up and form their own groups unless you gather them with a henchman and well we know how that can be and hell when you get to the fight you have few ways of knowing if they'll get in on the action or stand back in cheer and fewer ways than that of forcing them to get in there and minions with guns have the opposite problem if the environment is too small they won't draw their guns they'll charge in and punish I know fighting outside fixes that but that's where my tracks that advantage isn't the imprecision of the controls is that most an annoyance when things are peaceful during combat layout downright frustrating they are barely fit for task is there anything else I did wrong on that run oh yeah Ivan Ivan isn't bad let's just say he's for the more attentive player I would recommend recruiting him just to know a unique form of paranoia sometimes when a fights died on my base and you know there were a lot I get chills down my spine [ __ ] Ivan might be nearby I'd hit pause and make sure he wasn't Ivan is a fantastic combat unit with a rocket launch it's a hand he could hurt a good amount of people in a single blow blowing them sky-high and any armed units nearby can land a few hits while the enemy gets back up red Ivan however has never heard of collateral damage he will fire into melees hurting his own he will gladly blow up my base and set fire to things and he'll generally only get two shots off before being ko'd anyway red Ivan didn't make the cut on my successful playthrough for many reasons another local super agents while we're talking about life and death brawls each henchman has free lives but these can only be taken by super agents and if all three are gone that henchman is dead that's good incentive to prioritize taking down super agents speedily so now another note about lack of control I have read some tips and faq since finishing the game and getting to scripting the review to see if I could have been playing more effectively and learned that it's a good idea to put your henchman in a room and just lock the door henchmen wander they don't stick to any specific place super agents typically have a musical sting when they arrive however this did not always play in my experience so nearly every life these henchman lost was because they would wander outside a super agent would spawn in and the henchman would attack them on-site super agents are far far tougher than them the correct procedure for super agents is to dog pile them get as many people as will pay attention and run them down with sheer numbers make sure you get your henchmen in range for everyone else to be angry and then tell them to run away safety first alright time to confess second exploit after I defeated the super agents a good few times I started chasing them you need a lord came for this one of his abilities is to convince agents that nothing is amiss removing all heat it's so overwhelming that the moment someone is targeted for it they will stop and patiently await came so I'd see a super agent and I'd sent Kane running in the other direction and I'd send everyone else in the other of a direction the moment the fight was about to start Cain would freeze them up and hopefully they would be down and out before he could talk to them now I do have another defense for why I was essentially cheating when it came to the toughest buggers in the game and that's how indecisive they are I could beat down Mariana have her jailed and interrogated twice she'd awake outside for the third time that day and decide you know what it's probably time I leave and then she'd get up go to walk away then one of my minions would come within 50 feet of her and she'd immediately decide to try breaking in one more time so yeah [ __ ] oh hey there you East End get well the grand finale of our plan is revealed a volcano base from which we can house a doomsday weapon and we also give Bob a piece of our mind for his defiance we got a shrink-ray and that's it for the crime lords I think they turned a new leaf and reforms seeing as I never hear from any of them ever again anyway this brings us to chapter 3 of 10 don't worry we'll be speeding up soon if we're to take over the world we need a doomsday weapon it tends to help with negotiations the world lacks one up to our lofty standards however and since we're no slouches we're just gonna make one ourselves so we Nick a top-of-the-line research machine filled up databank and once we have some lab equipment we can undertake research it's a simple affair once the lab is built the science boys will wander around the base looking for stuff to research once the minion has found something researchable you'll get notified you then pick a device to research it with and if you pick the right one then congratulations new item it's pure guesswork you are told what you fail to get when you fail to get it so the next guest can be a more educated one or you can pay up to remove the wrong options this is how you get me more interesting Jex in the game the majority of your traps will come from research the upgrades to track triggers and security systems along with the more outlandish furniture I don't like that my men aren't reading anymore since I installed this but it does get them back to work faster so I can't complain we also pop down a fake research machine so the forces of justice can think they stole it back so research does have similar issues to the rest of the game it's near entirely automated for one generally it's to take one for new research to come in but it slows up soon I can in no way influence what gets researched and I can't say this is entirely a negative as it does make you mix up your face design but an object needs to be on the base for it to be researched so I tried to keep a copy of everything on hand I had a full way of disused traps that probably made my men feel really uneasy what I do like is that a ton of loot gained from the world domination screed yields new items and they tend to be the more interesting ones it gives a nice extra incentive to seek out loot beyond just for eating up the base and propping up the minions so alongside that fake research machine we do have a really nice side objective with our new lab we get a cloning device we use this great break fruit to fool the forces of justice assassins are being dispatched to take down our evil genius so we make clones and send them to their deaths this lowers heat from the assassins agency it is a fantastic addition to the game play an active way to lower heat I have to actually maneuver the assassin and the clone together and they can directly control said clone yet this objective quickly goes away the assassins stopped coming and you can't even purchase a cloning machine in future it's such a wasted element and it isn't replaced with any equivalent [Music] so that is the gameplay in quite a lot of detail I've yet to make it to the second island but what's added there is relatively minor so the base building is good every other element I talked about traps heat Lu minions how they act in their needs enemies in their AI influences the base building in very interesting ways and there are many solutions to any problems presented I can't name too many games we're building a dead end has this much function however once the base is established and all that needs to be changed is minor I'm left with very little enjoyable to do for very long periods of time I'd build up my forces do a mission weigh out the heat check my traps rebuild forces for another mission rinse wash repeat some setbacks would be bigger than others but I spent most of the game just recovering so I could sustain the next loss it was really quite repetitive as far as actual input I'm left with well that's managing minions which is frustrating and mostly hands-off tagging enemies which is really just busy work and occasional combat which is worse money is much the same way since its siphoned from the world map over time I just sit waiting on cash to come in occasionally I'd sell off something I no longer needed to speed this along and that's the problem I have the reward for a good base is that you could be very hands-off and just sit and watch the base operate and for a little bit anyway it's nice to do so it can be quite relaxed but for me it also became quite boring well I do think a fast-forward would help somewhat it's more that I go very long periods of time doing very little I feel is important I don't really make any interesting decisions my only hands-on experience at this point is keeping things moving as smoothly as I could get them so I feel like I'm sustaining the thing that I'm bored by let's say let's be repetitive ourselves we're waiting for money waiting for units to arrive waiting for units to train waiting for missions to finish waiting out the heat the heat system rather than feeling like the punishment that it really is he was more like a speed limit placed on a game that's already rather slow waiting for units to find research spending money so research isn't a guessing game spending money to listen waiting on new units spending money to replace doors traps and triggers and then having spent my money I go out into the world and wait on more money forces of justice about footmen in hiding and wait them out I you're incredibly inactive for very long stretches it's the real-time strategy equivalent of owning a cat I know waiting on tasks to be completed is a part of every strategy game but with evil genius I feel like I'm waiting for people to even get around to starting the tasks that I need to wait to finish I think the control system is fine it's an okay start I don't mind it being hands-off what I do mind is it feels like my units are ignoring me besides all of this I have the feeling that this game is just kind of ticking down to completion I feel like yeah I'm definitely gonna win this game at this point it's just a matter of time until it happens I don't really feel challenged especially once I get access to research and I just have to sit there and watch everything play out by this point the objectives are usually clearing an act of infamy or interrogating someone it's mostly those two things I do know there are unlockable objects that speed up cash gain and heighten our cashes value I never found them all confessed so I can't say how much they'd help with waiting on money but even then that's just a part of it we're still a ways off from doomsday there are free lost orders of business before we can make the move we need 200 notoriety so we got to go out there and pull some pranks this also ensures a super agent or two will be in play before we hit the second island we also need to gather Intel for a potential doomsday weapon both by seeking out on the world domination screen and by interrogating soldiers that are just now turning up to deliver it once we have the starting ideas of a doomsday device it's time to head off for a more suitable Island to make it a reality but to get that island we're going to need capital to prove we have that we have to find and steal four or six pieces of uber loot and that somehow proves it despite my complaints of slowness I did end up stealing all six as they're actually really quite nice to look at some of these pieces are Excalibur no one was quite worthy of the sword so the rock had to come to we put the shrink-ray to good use and stole the Eiffel Tower I'd have preferred the Washington Monument on a sleeper hey it'd be cruel to take both there and this big useless bill then finally we need to be consistently earning 10k for five minutes to prove something to ourselves also an unseen unmentioned investor I to add luckily that he doesn't build over time spent stealing in a region it's just the number and mix of troops you send there that does influence it and then it sticks there regardless this objective feels a little bit needless going to the second island do you only bring loot with you everything else is gone and needs to be reborn and there isn't a base just sitting there ready we have to dig out a new base I'd advise holding out for a lot more than 50k I couldn't exploit this time but I will say this over the course of several hours I stole two million dollars then I sold everything at the base before departing for a fervor 600k and I spent all of that I don't think this objective should be acquire a million dollars or something but 50k is not going to cut it it's not going to come anywhere close to cutting it whoever's budgeting this place is really under reaching anyway enough boring money talk let's go to other volcano [Music] [Applause] so the second island is cool nothing too different gameplay-wise some elements are advanced and it does have monkeys we can now get the remaining pieces of lab equipment and that of course means more possible traps for the troops and toys for the boys besides this we're also drip fed side objectives that allow us to actually take down the super agents for good they're still unkillable but this is good we just make it so that they live in shame we have to defeat them and interrogate them in a specific fashion oh yeah the amount of stuff you can use to interrogate in this game is fantastic it's mostly lab equipment but I don't think I tired of putting jet Qian on a centrifuge John Steele can only be taken out at the end mind he'll never back down I'd also say that once you make it to this island feel free to double daminion town you know treat yourself at least I would say that but a friend told me that it only takes effect on a whole new save so maybe you can I don't know once on the island we have a mountain to shacks and the most improve Native yard sale ever hosted whoa we or were we not playing on selling these because they're still here I guess maybe it was purely an ego thing my mind the south period for this island can be a long process within an hour I had a grand total of four rooms up and running granted these rooms were sizable but it didn't help that only three of my workers seemed to be interested in actually working you have no idea how terrified I am of not having a training room risking losing all of a certain kind of unit during this time your troops will be out in the open wandering the island in small groups or maybe completely alone so if the game decides to drop a super agent on you which it bloody well might like a slasher villain they will kill some people frustrating not to have a security system as I'm starting to believe like minions lack eyes while bigger this island is trickier to build on for one major factor the depot's to move units in an hour and bring stuff in are further apart than last time and even separated by the mountain so having two entrances is encouraged but this is a double-edged sword with one entrance you slow everybody down both you and enemies with two you can more easily evade deadlier patrols but the base is more vulnerable but for smooth enough traps and winding corridors this issue can be worked around it's a good and natural increase in considerations I myself went for two entrances with a giant winding corridor connecting them and then I had a choke point leading into the base proper beyond that point I've secret in a way over spiciest ugh this worked out pretty well only a handful of agents managed to slip fruit and those who did tended to be surrounded by goons on this island I did Ashu hotels and shacks but things went well enough without so now that we have a base of a doomsday capable housing in the form of this crater we need to take the beginnings of our doomsday weapon to completion we need plans to construct one and a rocket to take it into orbit once the lab has been rebuilt we need the Codex of knowledge and a scientist capable of understanding it no one in our ranks is smart enough so we bring in a mercenary scientist from the wider world to decode it for us after this is done he tries to defect not so successfully it's no matter we got what we needed from him and with this we can pick our flavor of doomsday weapon our options are a gravity disruptor an earthquake beam or an ID eliminator you know I haven't actually seen the endings before so the idea laminator was by far the most intriguing to me is it an ID eliminator I mean that will mess with the census a bit or is it an heed eliminator removing everyone's baser instincts and even then which of those is more interesting and naturally I pick the gravity disrupter the next stage of the plan is my most analysts favourite diplomats from all corners of the globe have come to the island it's not stated why it could well be to try and talk us down but seeing as we're still somehow getting tourism an ill-advised holiday isn't out of the question so we have to kidnap interrogate and replace them with our moles this is a fun objective but mainly for the payoff with all moles planted we sow the seeds of dissent plunging the world into chaos and now agents from rival factions will fight and kill one another on sight this is the greatest reward I have gotten all game this is better than the ending they've been such a pain in the ass and this is the perfect vengeance even the super agents are not safe well that's a great objective it comes with another we need to gather 25 crates five are necessary for each rocket segment all 25 can come from one location of a possible five I only say this since I misinterpreted the word in the first time around this is a repeating act of infamy it yields one crate per completion and each time you clear it it gives you a ton of heat can kill your troops and pays out five notoriety if the latest super agents haven't been woken up yet they will now it also means a lot of angry people are going to be turning up real soon you know I realize in retrospect I should have been stealing from Russia and the u.s. at the same time and have them play against each other when they arrive but then again hindsight is 20/20 this mission is a big drain on men and will kick up a ton of heat unless you decide to tackle it at a glacial pace have a big fridge ready for the goods rocket ready to go we then Nick an engine and next on the agenda is learning how to construct a satellite we actually have free choices in how we do this steal from patriot and defend the payload steal from sabre and anvil and protect the payloads or interrogate a cosmonaut six times in a row while hammer tries to save him hey he may not be going to space but by the time I'm done with him he'll be seeing stars so for sake of reference this is all taken about eight hours of play time there is still a good chunk of time left from picking your doomsday device until you get that ending so think carefully or watch the cutscenes on YouTube after I also want to restate that this game is repetitive my previous objective from the options available were clear one objective on the world map clear two objectives on the world map or do six interrogations in a row this comes after clearing twenty five missions on the world map you know on my ship fruit I thought I could summarize this game as survive on the islands long enough to win the board game I think there is some truth in that statement but it ignores just how much that island is also fueling the board game it's a far more symbiotic relationship than that statement losses on the world map are also unavoidable and a lot of this game is spent building up your forces on the base to send the back out into the world to die mitigating what losses you can means sending more soldiers onto the world map which means higher heat which means more soldiers on the island possibly killing blokes and more waiting out heat and more replacing and I'm talking through these objectives and making them sound quicker than they are but that is because I'm leaving out a lot of the preamble anyway we have a rocket and a satellite we're almost there first we need to test the rocket engine this is a weird objective it's like a test of how many science menus you have you fire up the engine it starts shocking and killing everyone in the rocket chamber and if it runs out of people to kill before the test is complete the objective is a failure with that done we set up a TV studio and broadcast our ultimatum to the world they don't bow to our demands however and as such its launch time the whole world goes on red alert and we have to defend the rocket chamber for 12 minutes against the United might of the whole globe and it's actually very easy for one thing despite the imminent danger everyone is still killing each other I just sort of coasted past local liners corpses littered the outdoors and my minions ran out to try and hide the bodies yeah can't have anyone framing us for murder while we're getting this bad boy into orbit and bust the game just sort of ended itself [Music] honestly it had to be an identity destroyer it'd be more entertaining if it was anything but [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] and with that the world sees the gravity of the situation and it's revealed that we sit as its new leader it's pretty much the ending I wanted and all three of the doomsday weapon cutscenes are winners [Music] [Music] writing this review has been harder than most of my others I know I've repeated myself a fair bit more than usual and I do apologize for that most other titles I revisit from childhood to have tended towards the janky and forgotten and I tend to have less expectations myself to go off of I focus on gameplay and plot for these videos but the a stakes are the best part of this game the plot is fine but minimal most of the story is in little self-contained acts of infamy which are more funny vignettes than anything else the actual plot is the acquisition and use of the doomsday weapon which is mostly delivered through gameplay and is pretty self-explanatory my opinion of the game stayed high and declined it fell hard the first time around recovered somewhat when I realized how I should be playing and even then I had low periods of the game that I found dull and frustrating I would never describe evil genius as difficult but I have no trouble saying it's frustrating most of what was keeping me on board was seeing new items reading their descriptions reading mission descriptions and seeing what new henchmen I would get but some of these would be separate by hours of uneventful gameplay this game is very fondly remembered I'm not saying those memories are wrong I'm not saying if you don't think this game is flawed you're wrong I encourage people to try evil genius but that's for its art music and animation but that's not a great reason to replay a game when I was a kid I didn't even make it to the second island I only mucked around building bases and watching minions fight I never attempted a serious run of this game in my experience I saw two sides of this game and it was either slow-paced or a constant bombardment of enemies and I felt I lacked the control to reach a comfortable medium I was scared of losing time by playing fast and loose the unit cap of 100 feels at the same time very limiting yet the world domination missions are obviously balanced around it every play fur I looked at on YouTube had bumped that cap up some more than doubled it I was so cured at the slow pace doesn't offer much there's a good amount of systems under the hood but once the base is established the game can play a lot of itself yet you lack the tools to fully optimize a base and this automation is little reward to me this game had me thinking about how comedy is shown in games how comedy tends to be done in point and click games where you can click on something and get a funny result or it's done through non gameplay elements it's in the narrative it's in the lines characters say I don't think it's impossible to convey comedy through gameplay I feel most good comedy comes somewhat from frustration from playing with expectations and that can't work the whole time in a strategy game it's not every game where you see your units not fighting because they're standing on the sidelines cheering on a fight that's funny that is a denial expectations but from a gameplay perspective it's very annoying and that is probably the most interesting takeaway I took from this is oh yeah comedy in actual gameplay terms is very rarely done the few tasks left at a player start out as fun when you're not faced building but they quickly become repetitive or outright annoying I stopped feeling like an evil genius and while I could babysit I just wish I had more to actually do I wish there was another way to earn money I wish they were more active ways to lessen heat and not just for a side objective that quickly goes away I wish I had a bit more control over my combat minions in a pinch the fact they won't do a lot of base work already means that extra control comes at some cost I won't deny I probably played the game far too slow and too cautiously but even if I beat the game in half the time I still would have been inactive for multiple hours I could only play this game in 1 or 2 hour bursts because I felt incredibly afar jerk each time from having very little to do so I will be keeping an eye on the sequel and I'm happy it's been announced definitely I like the theme I want a game to make me feel like an evil genius and I think this game has ok execution in a few areas and absolutely fantastic style I feel more control can be granted in some areas without compromising the challenge or the unique control scheme anyway that's that I waited out the world and the world caved a big thank you to my patrons if you enjoyed this video and what the help me produce more of these you can donate my patreon I recently cleared the 100 dollar goal which means I will soon be starting on the Yakuza series those who bid $5 will get access to bonus videos where I answer questions and offer any last-minute thoughts on the games in question my patrons are Eric NACE DBZ king 1 1 9 noonim Sigurd two mascots armed and ready austin wagon man all f4 games samson alpha d gonzales Martin Johnny Z corrupted cages John Leonys son of cinder Z no Nick marrow Jonathan Katara's rights Ella win Detroit Piper and Tom Hughes a big thanks to each of you and to everyone watching join me next time launch the rocket you English fool the time of reckoning has become ours we will destroy this pathetic planet

Channel: Tehsnakerer

Views: 218,999

Keywords: Evil Genius, Evil Genius 2, Evil Genius review, Evil Genius analysis, Evil Genius Critique, sequel, evil genius sequel, playing evil genius, tehsnakerer, TehSnakerer, Steam, GoG, evil genius gameplay, traps, good old games, gameplay, Evil Genius essay, Evil Genius game, essay, review, analysis, Evil Genius Gameplay, Evil Genius PC, Evil Genius Steam, Playing Evil Genius

Id: T-404kgsaDA

Length: 64min 35sec (3875 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 22 2017