Evil Genius

Doesn't work on El Capitan. Just crashes to desktop while booting up... no loader or anything. Be warned. The game is great though... Seriously

A classic game designed to keep you playing for hours and hours as an evil genius.

Starts off fun. Tried to make my super base in the side of a mount (not like I have a choice). Most of the fun was in building hallways, however when I started running out of money that is when the game went to crap. So as the micro world is base building, your macro world is the “world map” where you spread your minions over the world like a dumbed down version of Risk. This is not a good macro world interface like XCom, and more time should have been put into it as money is your primary means of survival. Then the agents start coming in, but its cool. Your one henchman (one henchman) takes care of them at first, but then they start arriving on the island in groups all over it. Now you could diversify your minion base to deal better with this multiplying threat, but to do so you must “interrogate” either a civilian or a secret agent in order to gain their skill (srly, you need to interrogate a cleaning lady to learn how to clean your base). While capturing is manageable, it’s not clear how you are supposed to assign a minion to interrogate a subject, or how you are supposed to get the subject to the interrogation chair. Somehow I got it to work once but could never figure out how. After two hours I raged quit this game.

If you look up "mixed bag" in the dictionary it says "Evil Genius" The game's audio and visuals score a perfect ten and then some. The love and care that went into the design and animation of the characters is palpable. I could watch my minions torture agents with Michael Jackson-moves for hours. But as it happens, Evil Genius is a game, which means you have to push buttons to make things happen and this is where problems start to crop up. Exhibit A: The World Domination screen. You receive no forewarning of stuff that happens there, so you need to keep checking it manually, until it becomes an involuntary tick. I guess you could rationalize it as a way of putting you in the head space of a high-strung, paranoid megalomaniac but for me it was just a big bummer. This, combined with issues making money and exceptional soldiers massacring my hapless minions made me concede and start using cheats. Through cheating I was able to rekindle a lot of the initial fun, building cool lairs and setting up ridiculous trap-corridors. I've never been much good at micromanaging stuff so more seasoned players can probably find workarounds for my annoyances but at the end of the day I just want to watch the supercomputer tickle ambassadors.

i have played this game for hours and it is by far the best game on earth