Evil Genius - I Give Up

[xyzzysqrl]

Game: Evil Genius
Played Before Now: No
Time played: 5 hours
Finished? No
Will I Go Back? No
How Much is it Right Now? $10
Did I pay that? No, I paid about $3
Recommended? Kinda.

Evil Genius has taught me that I am not evil and I am not a genius. I can, however, recognize a loophole when it's parked in front of my face.

A little past where I stopped last time, after having been defeated by SLIDING DOORS of all things, I noticed something. The tutorial objectives included "capture this maid", and the game didn't seem interested in progressing any further until I had captured her. Still, I could send out minions, revamp my base, etc. So I pondered for a moment, then built a large crew of minions. Some I set to working on the base itself. Others I sent out to bend the world economy over a barrel. Then I sat down with Captain America: The First Avenger on Netflix and a bowl of popcorn and waited.

So... basically I came up with a way to sit and Not Play Evil Genius for a while. Eventually I decided to just save-edit the money I'd get by doing this for several days (because I bloody well would) into my storerooms and play the game already.

So I did! For a while. Revamped the base. Built a hotel. Got things functioning. Had a power crisis and resolved it. Finally, I captured the maid and got a new job class. ...and unlocked a whole bunch of things. Security rooms. New kinds of strongrooms. Various new minion types. I looked at this stuff, and looked at my base, and thought about rebuilding it all AGAIN and doing all the setup stuff AGAIN and...

...and my mouse slid over to the menu and I quit the game.

I'm gonna be honest, as usual. I love everything about Evil Genius except actually playing it. I love the humor. I love the graphics and sound and 1960s aesthetic. I love all of that stuff. I -really- love the music.

Evil Genius is EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE of a game I would ACTUALLY WANT TO PLAY though. I imagine working on the base and learning how traps work and trying to fight off secret agents with this interface and my eyes roll back in my head and I start to fall sideways out of my chair and whimper softly. I am not wired to think this way. My brain does not do this. I really don't want to come off like Captain Violence of the Murder Patrol, but I like when things happen a little more often in games I play. Dialogue, action, combat, puzzles, SOMETHING.

Evil Genius, if you're bent in the direction it wants, is doubtless a great strategy/building game. I want nothing more to do with it. INVALID SURVEY.

Now, I'm kind of worried about this, because we DO have a pile of strategy games on the account, mostly for the Great Woof or from various bundles. But then, this is WHY I have this process running, right? I'm not here to Arino through these things, winning at all costs. I'm doing this so I can see if any of them DO agree with me. I didn't know about Evil Genius! I thought maybe it would work out okay for me! I gave it a good try and just... couldn't take it. Maybe that won't be true of something else!

If anyone knows a good Let's Play of Evil Genius, please link me in the comments.

Okay, Magic Hat. What am I playing next? No whammies, STOP.





Hm. Next time, I become a world famous girl detective and get eaten by wild dogs.

See you next time.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Evil Genius is, in many ways, a lot like Dungeon Keeper. It falls into the category of 'It's a great game, if you like those sorts of games.'

--dang bunni

(I like it, but I Like Those Sorts Of Games. I'm not very good at it, though.)

[relee.livejournal.com]

I always wanted Dungeon Keeper to have the room layout options of Theme Hospital, and that's basically what Evil Genius is, except for an essential problem. In Evil Genius you mostly don't want to kill people in your base. If you get invaded by soldiers or ninjas, yeah you might want to kill them then, but mostly you want to let them snoop around, find nothing of consequence, and get off your island. If they find something of consequence, you knock them out and brainwash them untill they forget what they'd found.

There's actually a literal brain-washing machine which is great for that. It sucks out your brain via syringe, gently washes it, and reinserts it. Not so gentle when used as a torture device.

[vulpisfoxfire.livejournal.com]

Well, that does depend on the situation, really....brainwashing is an option, but so is 'disappearing' them, especially if it's likely that they'll get suspicious again before they leave, and with soldiers--especially the higher-strength varieties--it's sometimes better just to mow them down, as they *start* hostile, and blow up your stuff outside the base much less inside. Just make sure to have cleanup crews ready. :-) (another good tactic--when you get Death Cells, set them so they face directly into an adjacent Freezer. No muss, no fuss!)

But yeah--one of the reasons I like EG so much is because it's like the Keepers...but on the other hand, I can certainly understand why the Sqrl isn't into it. It's RTS based primarily around the base-buildup, punctuated by small but potentially destructive rounds of combat. Not everyone's cuppa, especially considering how Little Computer People/godfish-bowl levels of dull it can get when everything's going *right*. :-) (The ideal is of the game is setting up your defenses/minions so that you don't have to do anything when there's an attack/invasion. The problem with this of course is...you don't have to do anything.)

[relee.livejournal.com]

Yeah if there's one problem with Evil Genius it's that the best strategy is to send all your minions into the world to gather ONE MILLION DOLLARS *pinky* or so overnight while you sleep before catching the maid.

Two things you probably didn't know are that your store-room can only hold a finite amount of money, depending on the open floor space, and unless you leave some minions at your base, nobody will take the money from the airport and seaport to your strongroom, and when you wake up the next day your ports will be full of money and it'll take FOR EVER to have your minions shuffle the money, even if you have a full compliment of minions. So, it's best to leave five minions back at home to shuffle money.

It's too bad you didn't enjoy the game, but I'm glad you gave it a fair try after that nasty bug. Also, if you want the soundtrack I downloaded it from somewhere years ago; it even has the awesome music that only plays when you go to the edge of the screen and just look at the water for a while.


Also, untill you mentioned it I hadn't considered it, but it suddenly seems like a REALLY GOOD IDEA for me to do a Let's Play of Evil Genius. I've always wanted to try doing a Let's Play, but I was never sure what game to do. Maybe I'll do that after this week's adventures are all done. ^.^

[vulpisfoxfire.livejournal.com]

Heee. Actually the GameFAQs guide I read back when I was playing suggest getting 10mil as a bankroll so you never *have* to send minions out on a money run, just item theft missions, but still. :-)

BTW, I might point out that what happened *wasn't* actually a bug, it was Insufficient Manual--the door in and out of the base was locked at level 4. :-) Makes it a weeee bit hard to build if the minions can't get to the helipad for materials/dynamite... ;-)

But yeah--the game music is great, as are the little touches when you zoom in and watch the various minions at work (including their reactions to the EG when they walk the halls--*and* how they salute when you click on them...which amusingly ends up being *useful*, as the strategy for dealing with a minion who's trying to defect/escape is to click on them so they'll stop and salute, giving the rest the chance to catch up and dogpile them. :-) )

Though as I pointed out to the Sqrl in a convo elsewhere, it's *not* quite the same thing as Sims, since unless you're doing the console version, in Sims you're not neccessarily working towards a specific goal as such, where in EG you usually are.

[relee.livejournal.com]

Oh! The door was locked. I hadn't thought to check that when he asked for help. Yeah that's another problem with the game, why is it you can only put guards on a door if you're not going to let your minions through it?

I usually tricked it a bit by putting a choke point between my 'public' and 'private' areas, so that there would be three doors into my lair. One guarded, the other two open. Then, when I see some agents approaching, I can lock one of the two doors, and they'll kill time trying to pick it, while my guys go through the other. If they go for the middle, they get arrested. That can actually be a bad thing since only the one trying to open the door gets tagged, and his friends will defend him, so you've got to tag the rest yourself. Also, you might not want to get into a fight.

Lots of options, anyways.

I never thought to click on a minion who is running away to delay him, before. That's clever!

[vulpisfoxfire.livejournal.com]

Yeah...it was one of those 'Waitaminute' moments after I was looking at the screenshots.

I usually go for the 'false base' tactic myself--main entrance to the real base at level 2, and a entrance to what basically just a loop of trap-laden hallways (I like the high-power fan one, myself--rigged so that when they stop after the loop, moving will set it off *again* :-) ) that's locked at 3...this after reading a bit about the Agents' AI leading them to check a more secure door before a less-secure one. :-) If it weren't for tourists, you could set your main door to 1 and not have much agent problem. :-)

As for the clicking on the runaway minion--I think I got that from the GameFAQs guide as well, and just about fell out laughing when I read it. No clue if that was *intended* behavior by the devs, but it's hilarious. :-)

[relee.livejournal.com]

Yeah that's an option too. I do sometimes put some extra 'doors to nowhere' for the agents to be suspicious of, with traps on the other side, but it's hard not to kill agents with traps. Even the wind ones, they get battered to death. You can make a lot of money by having them blow around in a circle, but when agents don't come back to base, or even when they do, eventually the world powers will send agents with a specific mission to destroy that trap. Unfortunately, everything blows up, so you end up having guys getting hurt by the things they blow up, then going nuts and you have to kill them TOO, and they just send MORE. Very frustrating.

It's your option for everything, but it's more fun if you avoid abusing bugs and such.

[vulpisfoxfire.livejournal.com]

Oh, very true...though I'm not sure how how much of this would be considered 'abusing bugs' and how much is just 'studying AI behavior'.

[relee.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I suppose fake doors would be something to put into a real base. ^.^;;

[vulpisfoxfire.livejournal.com]

Kind of a shame you can't put name-labels on the doors. Then, in *proper* Evil Overlord fashion, the most heavily guarded room in the base would actually be the janitor's closet, labeled 'Master Control Room'. The actual master control room would be unlocked, with the door reading 'Sewage Overflow'. :-)