Evil Genius 2: What Our Dastardly Super-Villains

I should point out, first and foremost of the changes, is the difference between how you will manage your minions while they are out in the world, scheming and stealing all in your name. Whilst in the past, sending your minions, and indeed your henchmen, out into the wider world was the only way for your forces to squirrel away income for you while you schemed and prayed the forces of justice would leave your endeavouring jumpsuited lemmings alone (which they inevitably didn’t, knocking them down like the literal pawns they are as you watched on from the comfort of your Bond-era swivel chair and stroked a disgruntled cat).

Well no more! Your genius has had enough of it and has since decided to rethink their plans. To wit – ONCE A MINION LEAVES, THEY DO NOT RETURN. This is to prevent the ever irascible Forces of Justice following the halfwits back to your immaculately planned lair, and rightly so. What this means in a practical sense, is that your minions become very much currency expendable, as they should be.

Needless to say, the Forces of Justice find you before too long regardless, no doubt through a hapless minion’s selfie, but at least this way you have the infrastructure to spend minions… err, I mean, dispatch loyal followers, around the world to send you back all manner of ill-gotten goods. All for the Greater Good, of course.

Sixteen years, and it is plain to see our friendly neighbourhood Forces of Justice have decided to actually put safeguards in place in the event of another mad genius attempting to take over the globe.

While it is true the new world map is slightly different in how we handle acts of infamy, wherein now troops are sacrificed dispatched from our base directly to enact our nefarious plans, it is worth noting the Forces of Justice do not take this lying down. An age ago, these forces would have just taken the heat from our nefarious crimes and sent an appropriate love letter in the form of saboteurs, soldiers or even *shudders* the Agents of Justice.

Now, however, times have changed, and so has the response we can expect. Now, each region is initially closed to us completely, only available once we establish a crime ring using the Operation Room Consoles. Whilst we take comfort that global domination still rests in the all important Control Room, what is new is a clever mechanic (on their part) wherein the Forces of Justice will lock us out of an area of the world for a time completely if we exceed the heat limit there. Notably, there are acts of infamy that lower your heat at the cost of gold, as well as research to extend this heat limit, however the expense of that trade-off is up to the player.

Tourists. We can spot them a mile away. Unless we were base security in EG1 and suddenly we, as players, found a group of people dressed in their finest beachwear, flailing and screaming as they ran through our dastardly lairs. Did I issue kill tags? Who is to say… I did though…

Well, our favourite super-criminals have had many years to think on it. Their plan was foolproof: Make a Casino to distract the simpletons, and maybe even throw the world’s forces off the scent too. How could that plan possibly be improved upon, it was perfect!….

Suddenly, a lightning bolt hits and the answer is made apparent: CHARGE THEM FOR IT. Yes, now your fancy Casino is not just a nice distraction in case the wrong people go wandering down a tunnel with a big orange door with two dots on it. It can now offer a rather lucrative alternative for your income needs, rather handy when some of the more expensive early game items may make you baulk at their price. But hey, whoever said global conquest would be cheap?

How many times before have you, an intrepid Villain-to-be made your first steps at world domination, only to find the minion you spent all that time and money in capturing maids/guards/scientists and training him from them, only to find the last one dead at your feet, leaving you having to rebuild the entire thing over again?

Luckily, once again our brilliant Evil Geniuses have discovered the answer. Once you have interrogated someone for their skills, you KEEP the ability to build the training room bot, which any minion can use if they are by themselves. (Max is a good help in this regard as he now has a skill to instantly finish the training of anyone in his Aura).

Let’s be honest, who does not love the simple joy in having our minions capture an agent of justice, having them completely at our mercy and locking them in… the… one room we keep all the guns… Perhaps it was a simpler time back in 2004? Err.. thinking back, it really wasn’t.

A rather novel idea by our super-villain overlords, apart from now adding a handy table for the more muscular of our forces to hang out and, one would assume, discuss flexing and the complexities of wearing tight shirts whilst languishing near a camera table (all ready to spring into action in the event the base is intruded) is simply this: PRISON ROOMS ARE NOW SEPARATE FROM THE ARMOURY.

This is a decent piece of information to keep in mind when designing ones new evil lair. The practical upswing of this: Having your room full of guns near the entrances of your base and burying your victims in the darkest recesses of your base is now a reality. Of course this could be achieved before by simply building two armoury’s but, now at least we have a nice place for our poor expendable guards to spend their time without the worry someone might bust out of a cage (and don’t worry, now they’re all laser cages, because the old metal ones just didn’t seem to keep the worst of the worst at bay. Lasers will be better… right?

Far be it from an Evil Genius to stew in his lair, musing over how best to make the world crumble at his knees, yet when it ever came to the ‘put up or shut up’ of it, an Evil Genius without his Henchmen or even a decent minion around was himself, for lack of a better word, helpless.

Since their time in exile, and with the new opportunity of a world at their heel, our Geniuses have learned to hold their own, even (in the case of that lovable dictator Red Ivan) to excel. But then, who doesn’t whip out a 4-barrel Rocket Launcher at a party, right?

One of the most intricate, and arguably iconic aspects of the original Evil Genius is its penchant for ensnaring the nefarious and unwitting alike in the most intricate web of traps your twisted mind could devise. So, naturally, they would be back. Bigger, and better than ever.

While not overly something to keep in mind, the new trap system has NO ACTIVATORS: therein all a pathetic ‘insert here’ has to do is spring the keen net of traps with something like the giant fan, and without having to connect it, you can just sit down, have your minion bring you a drink of choice, then cackle maniacally as you watch the feeble Forces of Justice try and fail to get anywhere near your plan to make the world better-ish-kinda.