It all began in the dungeons
In the
year 2000 I experienced a very sad moment when I learned that development of Dungeon Keeper
3 was cancelled. I was one of the first to buy Dungeon Keeper when it came out in 1997 and
also with the sequel 2 years later, which I spent many happy hours playing.
For those
among you that dont (or cant) remember: Dungeon Keeper was a unique new real time strategy
game that put you in charge of an evil underground domain. Commanding a vast army of
villains, demons and other out-of-this-world creatures your goal was to expand your lair
further and further, contaminating and spoiling the land above you. Of course your neighbors
upstairs, especially those pesky do-gooders that people often refer to as heroes would try
to invade and destroy your lair at regular intervals, plundering your treasure room while
they were down there (even heroes need to survive). All this helped in the training of your
minions for combat, setting deceitful and deadly traps and help the study of new ways of
offence and defense a necessity if you wanted your evil empire to survive.
Dungeon
Keeper was new, unique and most importantly fun. The graphics (dont forget though it was
1997) were impressive and I know many people regretted that there never was a third
installment.
Many a year has passed since then, computers became a bit faster and no
one ever picked up the successful idea until now that is. Everybody say hello to Evil
Genius.
Born to be bad
Evil Genius is a new real time strategy game
that puts you in charge of an evil organization. Commanding a vast army of villains,
soldiers of fortune and other antisocial characters your goal is to expand your area of
influence further and further, contaminating and spoiling the countries of the world. Of
course your neighbors, especially those pesky organizations that people often refer to as
governments will try to invade and destroy your lair at regular intervals, plundering your
treasure room while they are there (would you prefer another tax raise instead?). All this
makes for great training of your minions for combat, setting deceitful and deadly traps and
study of new ways of offence and defense a necessity if you want your evil empire to
survive.
Sounds familiar? Elixir Studios, developers of the ambitious but sadly
not well received Republic, picked up what Bullfrog left behind when they and their games -
like so many before and after them - disappeared in the vast videogame giant that controls
the market nowadays. Dont get me wrong their work is only based on the general idea of
Dungeon Keeper but they took it so much further so lets get started
already.
Dungeon Genius Evil Keeper
Evil Genius lets you choose one
of three evil masterminds. Maximilian is, despite of his short stature, a true genius when
it comes to infamous acts, Alexis is a woman of breathtaking beauty but full of evil
ambitions and Shen Yu finally is a former agent who simply grew tired of following orders
and now prefers to give them instead.
Which one you choose has no impact at all on
the game itself but since your avatar will be running around your base at all times and will
need to be protected from attempted assassinations you better grow fond of him or
her.
Once you have chosen your Evil Genius you are transferred to your first island.
A true evil genius needs a hidden base of course so your minions in the beginning you only
have access to the versatile but weak and not very loyal construction workers better start
blasting tunnels into the islands mountain. First you will need some barracks for your
minions, a strong room for your booty and last but not least a control room to coordinate
your evil actions all over the world.
Base Building is really simple. You draw the
shapes of the room, put placeholders for the items you want to have in them and your workers
will take care of the rest. Now finally the developers affection for the small things
becomes obvious for the first time. A worker will go to your strong room, fetch some money,
run to a nearby depot and buy some dynamite. He will return to the construction site, place
the explosives, get away from the danger zone before triggering the blast and after the dust
settled down again he will build your room. Once the room is done your workers will start
fetching the ordered object from the depot and bring them to your new room where they will
set them up.
This is just one of the many examples of the detailed and often even
funny actions your minions will perform. Watch them in their free time, witness accidents
and their training, yes even watch them trying to steal from you, grabbing a bar of gold and
trying to hide it in the barracks. While I of course had to eliminate the later much of my
time was simply consumed watching my guys at work.
Evil Genius is hiring call
555-CANNON-FODDER
Once you have your base setup it is time to start threatening
the governments of the world. Sending out your employees to steal or perform other acts of
evil you will soon realize that better minions are needed for more delicate jobs. Since
specialists are always in demand and not all of them want to work on a desolate island and
especially not for an evil genius abduction is often the way to go. Locking them up in a
prison cell and adding some interrogation will cause them to share their knowledge and
experience with one of your workers who than can pass it on to others in a training room.
Each interrogation needs to take place in combination with a torture device of you choice
just let your cursor wander around the objects in your base you will be surprised how
creative your minions can be. That a laboratory can be a dangerous place is likely no
surprise but how one can use kitchen equipment and library furnishing will surprise
you
Your construction workers can evolve into one of 12 different characters from
3 different fields Social, Science and Military. A minion that started one career path
cannot go back to an other path so make sure you have enough training rooms and workers
since every job on the world map needs different abilities.
Social jobs include
characters like the diplomat and the playboy and their job is distracting your enemies. Your
science team includes all sorts of eggheads ranging from Technicians and Biochemists to
Quantum Physicists. Thanks to their technical skills they will not only make sure that your
base is always up and running but also look for objects that maybe can be improved with a
little research. Last but not least the members of your private armed forces. Guards,
Marksman and Martial Arts Experts will track down and capture / kill your enemies wherever
they encounter them.
10 little agents came to my island
Sadly world
domination is neither a simple nor risk-free business. The more evil deeds you perform the
more unwanted attention you will get from the worlds intelligence agencies. Investigators,
saboteurs, burglars, assassins and soldiers will be sent to your island to fight back.
Investigators will try to sneak into your base and find proof of your evil ambitions. This
may include stolen goods, prison cells, torture devices or simply witnessing how another
agent or tourist, falls victim to an, ehhhhm, *terrible* accident. Investigators can be
fooled by your minions with social skills though. If they are successful the investigator
will forget to what parts of your base he has already been and with luck will leave your
base without any evidence, which will calm down the agency he is working for. Sooner or
later rather sooner though there is no way of hiding your actions any longer. Saboteurs
will try to place bombs in important rooms, burglars will try to steal (back) important
pieces of booty or technology, assassins will try to take down your evil genius and soldiers
will slaughter your minions.
Of course you have more than one way of fighting back.
Besides your military units you will have access to more and more deadly traps and weapons
over time that you can place at important entry points and junctions in your base. The
better the agent the smarter they are and they might be able to circumvent or even destroy
your devilish trap. The real joy of trap building is of course building vicious combos. An
agent might pass a laser barrier that triggers a jet engine hidden in a wall, slamming the
poor agent against the next wall where he triggers part 2 of your trap a treadmill that
suddenly stops to throw him into a basin full of piranhas... The list could go on and on if
the agent didnt eventually die.
Beware though an unwary or simply stupid minion
might accidentally trigger a trap as well and not once did one of my oversized trap systems
swallow half a dozen of my employees in a single shot. Accusations that I simply wanted to
test my traps at the cost of a few expendable assets are purely speculative.
Hey
Brain, what do you want to do tonight?
Once you have slain too many agents and
performed to many crimes on the world map the agencies will finally use drastic methods to
get rid of you and will send their dreaded super agents. You cant kill nor capture them (at
least not for long) at first and only once you found out their weaknesses do you have a
chance of crushing them once and for all. But before that will happen they can deal an awful
lot of damage so you better fortify your base and send your high-class social minions to
distract the agents till their mission time is over.
Once you have caused enough
havoc it will be finally time to take over the world. What does every evil genius need for
this? A doomsday weapon of course! You and your forces will move to a new island (that
finally also includes an active volcano, hurray!) where things will start to heat up
especially once you announced your plans to the world. What happens next and what the three
available doomsday weapons do I will leave up to you to find out but rest assured the
developers wont let you down there either.
Conclusion:
One of the few
letdowns is that there are only two islands and the set number of missions. Furthermore the
game can be awfully hard at times when half your base and ¾ of your staff are slaughtered in
an all-out attack and before you can raise the funds to rebuild and restock the enemy is all
over you yet again. But still - lots of lovely little details and gimmicks, lots of black
humor and lots and lots of evil deeds to perform - what else can an evil genius of tomorrow
ask from a game?
Graphics :8.5
Sound :8.0
Gameplay
:9.0
Multiplayer :N/A
Overall : 8.5
