Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

Evil Genius 2: World Domination

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,231
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth


https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/...domination-feels-like-a-thing-of-breezy-charm

Evil Genius 2: World Domination feels like a thing of breezy charm
Bond dessinée.

After a morning with Evil Genius 2, I've discovered that if I have an evil genius for anything, it's not economics. I keep crashing my evil economy. I should be sitting in my desert island stronghold enjoying the sight of my minions bringing gold into my vault. Instead I'm deep in construction - tunnels in the wrong place, rooms with doors that won't fit, the lights going out because I haven't built enough generators. This is not a fiddly game - it's all me. It's like Grand Designs, but with armed guards primed to dispose of Kevin McCloud as soon as he arrives and starts talking about composting toilets.

What a lovely game this is. The current demo build is limited to the tutorial, but it's more than enough time to get your evil operation up and running. The only HQ I can select is the tropical island, yet it's perfect for villainy, with a helipad, guards running all over the place, and the arctic tidal swells of a classic Bond soundtrack ebbing and breaking over the headphones. If you've played Evil Genius 1, or Dungeon Keeper, or even Theme Hospital, you'll be right at home. It turns out that being an evil genius is a bit like being a hospital administrator. Build the rooms you need to get running. Build power and storage for gold and a place for your minions to train up on neck-breaking (okay, hospitals do not need all of these things) and then make sure the numbers go up.

Placing rooms and kitting them out with items is nice and simple, drag-and-drop stuff accompanied by lovely industrious animations as your minions do your bidding. Electricity and whatnot is fuss free: just build generators and let the evil cabling and infrastructure take care of itself. Each of the game's evil geniuses has skills that they can use. My guy, a Blofeld if ever I saw one, is able to make people work faster or train faster when he's nearby. Granted, it is weird to see an evil genius actually walking around, since they tend to be of the egg-chair-and-fancy-lap-cat type most of the time. I got used to it though. Ambulatory evil. Maybe the cat is in a pocket? Anyway, pretty soon, forgetting the pauses for economic disaster and power outages, I had all the basic rooms I needed and a nice army of baddies ready to hassle the world a bit.

This takes place on a world map of considerable charm. Everything in Evil Genius 2 is of considerable charm, very likely because Rebellion is in charge and charm is something this outfit does rather well. The whole world is laid out before me! I choose to kick off my criminal empire in Greenland. Greenland, frankly, has had it coming for a while. Pretty soon I am pulling off bank jobs and undermining governments and all of that stuff. It's a simple trade: time and minions - you don't get minions back - for the money you make on each job. The money goes back to your base, where I've had to use most of it to keep the place running. Being an evil genius is a bit of a slog in the early days.

jpg


Everywhere there are signs of things that will complicate this loop. Side stories flare the campaign in interesting ways, just as side objectives help keep building interesting. After a while, my lair is infiltrated by enemy agents, who need to be caught and killed by guards, and whose corpses will lower morale, as corpses often do, so I'd better build an incinerator. I need to capture people and interrogate them so I'd better build all that stuff too. I want to train people to be scientists and murderers, so I have to get on that as well. Being an Evil Genius is busy work!

What I love most about this game is that, like the idea of an evil genius on a fancy island somewhere, the whole thing is a bit of a cheery throwback. Despite the lovely animation and glossy 3D rocks being chiseled away as I dig out a new room, Evil Genius 2 feels a lot like PC games from the late 1990s. I don't mean that as a knock at all. Quite the opposite. I love looking down into these sorts of worlds, with a busy UI and lots of buttons to click, things to upgrade, research to undertake and enemies to smight. I have a crime network to bring to life, a whole world to conquer. And I need to work out how to keep the lights on, of course.
 

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,231
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
https://www.pcgamer.com/evil-genius-2-is-the-silly-stylish-game-i-was-hoping-for/

Evil Genius 2 is the silly, stylish game I was hoping for
An early look at the first few hours of bad guy builder Evil Genius 2.

Tycoon-style games have enjoyed a tiny comeback, sparked by the return of Two Point Hospital and Frontier's work on Planet Coaster and Planet Zoo. Now enters Evil Genius 2, a revived cult classic more in the spirit of 1997's Dungeon Keeper. You're a villain-mastermind, trying to keep meddling heroes out of your elaborately-constructed lair as you make progress on a master scheme.

It's a delightful concept, and a reminder that we still need more 'bad guy' games, especially farcical ones. It feels good to just click-drag a giant money vault into existence, then watch it passively accumulate piles of gold bars. It feels good to ask your scientists to research a special laser door you can use to protect that horde of bouillon. It feels good to waddle around a sprawling base as a psychopathic Dr. Evil-look-alike contest winner, boosting minion productivity within my radius.

Over the last week I had access to a limited pre-release build of Evil Genius 2, our first chance to play it since we first glimpsed it at 2019's PC Gaming Show. What I played was essentially the tutorial, which turns out to be several hours of checklist tasks that talk you through every main system and constructable room type. It's a necessary introduction to Evil Genius 2's UI and sandbox structure. Though I walked away with some modest concerns about its depth and event variety—mostly because much of the game's content was unavailable in this build—I'm sold on Evil Genius 2 as a crooked take on the genre.

"Spy-fi"
Immediately appreciable are Evil Genius 2's tone and art direction. Like Two Point Hospital and Planet Coaster, there's a cartoonish roundedness to everything, a world built from slightly-exaggerated shapes and vibrant colors. The Incredibles is the closest touchpoint. Like Pixar's films, Evil Genius 2 is a fictional setting yet to invent microprocessors, but populated by plenty of imaginative gadgets nevertheless: ridiculous freeze rays, healing beds, and brainwashing stations for captees. In the seven hours I played, that playfulness cushioned moments of frustration.

The Bond villain theme extends outward into the front of my base, where a carpeted casino forms a forward wing of the facility, a literal front for my operations that I can drop baccarat tables and cocktail bars into from the bird's-eye view. To staff these stations, I have to train valets, a middle-tier minion type that specializes in deception. The casino basically operates as an initial buffer: investigators or hero characters that wander in can be interrupted by the casino games, giving my valets a chance to lower their skill before they make an attempt to enter my base. You can also set the gambling games to "Scam tourists," earning some side money from the neutral NPCs that mill around.

The main way of raking in gold, though, are schemes, which populate continuously on a global map that constitutes a separate gameplay layer. Almost like XCOM, you attend to different regions within continents by sending out minions to establish criminal operations there, then send even more minions to complete jobs (like stealing an incredibly good recipe and selling it on the black market) that earn gold over time. I found the world map a bit simple, and I'm hoping that the later-game stuff forces some tougher choices. Essentially all I did was alternate between stealing gold and reducing heat (a measured limit on how much law enforcement attention your criminal activities are drawing). Hopefully there's a little more to this quadrant of the game than the maintenance work of clicking on icons and waiting for cooldowns to expire.

Likewise, this early-campaign build didn't throw a ton of different threats and obstacles at my base. After I'd built every room type (including a cafeteria, a guard room, a jail and interrogation room, an inner sanctum plated with gold), I mostly had to fend off investigators, the lowly, initial scouts that good-guy groups throw at you. They arrived in telegraphed waves, walking through my casino and then through some security doors. To deal with them, all I had to do was click on them and ask my guards and common minions to either kill or capture the target. Occasionally one would slip out of a jail cell before I interrogated them, but these basic good guys didn't really bother my base.

Eventually Evil Genius 2 did throw me a fiery curveball. Toward the end of my session, I panned over to see my power generators and science lab engulfed in flames. Ski-masked saboteurs had infiltrated without being noticed, and had apparently set some bombs. Minions scrambled for fire extinguishers, scientists died in the flames beside their broken whiteboards, and I was left with thousands of dollars of stuff that needed to be rebuilt. Oof.

Endgame
These are the kinds of setbacks I hope to see more of as I get later into Evil Genius 2's campaign. In this early stage I only had access to only about 20 percent of the playable map, which amounts to five separate floors that can be connected with placeable stairs. I'm excited about the potential scale of your base, which should make it pleasantly taxing to keep an eye on every entrance and edge.

I'm also curious how EG2's final win condition will unfold. The "World Domination" section of the research menu was completely hidden in the build I played, so I'm mostly in the dark about how this key component of the game works. Evil Genius 2's Steam page promises that you'll be able to "build a Doomsday Device and dominate the world! Sell the British Royal Family, Kidnap the Governor of Maine, and literally BAKE ALASKA." Unlike the first Evil Genius, we do know that you construct these doomsday devices in stages "and regularly test it out on the people of the planet," altering the world map as you do, according to Rebellion.

I can't shrug off these big questions, but my greater takeaway is how pleasant Evil Genius 2 is to play. Building stuff is seamless, and EG2 doesn't bury itself in resources and obscured systems: get gold, hire minions, do research, expand. The game is also taking a swing at accessibility settings, including three common colorblind modes, and support for "the most popular" gamepads on PC at launch, along with the Xbox Adaptive Controller. Not very nefarious of them, but appreciated.
 

lightbane

Arcane
Joined
Dec 27, 2008
Messages
10,156
Sadly it uses Denuvo, fitting for a villain game I suppose. At least they haven't gone to Epic for the ultimate evil move... Yet.
 

Jaedar

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Aug 5, 2009
Messages
9,837
Project: Eternity Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Pathfinder: Kingmaker
The game is also taking a swing at accessibility settings, including three common colorblind modes, and support for "the most popular" gamepads on PC at launch, along with the Xbox Adaptive Controller.
Imagine wanting to play a strategy game with a controller.
 

Zombra

An iron rock in the river of blood and evil
Patron
Joined
Jan 12, 2004
Messages
11,539
Location
Black Goat Woods !@#*%&^
Make the Codex Great Again! RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
New voice cast reveal: Samantha Bond (Miss Moneypenny in all 1995-2002 James Bond films) as Emma the Spymaster, a character I already had an eye on as best suiting my playstyle.

Also two actors I've never heard of, who have appeared in other Rebellion games, as the other two. Source.

 

Nutria

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Mar 12, 2017
Messages
2,252
Location
한양
Strap Yourselves In
This is how the Tropico series was ruined for me. This was stuff that me and my parents lived out in real life. This wasn't a fucking fantasy world for us. I hate how this shit just gets dumbed down for zoomers now. Maybe we should be like in the old days where the kids are expected to learn what the fuck was happening in the adult world. Even in stuff like Evil Genius that's extremely tongue-in-cheek there's a certain level of respect for the people who survived that time.
 
Joined
Feb 20, 2018
Messages
999
This is how the Tropico series was ruined for me. This was stuff that me and my parents lived out in real life. This wasn't a fucking fantasy world for us. I hate how this shit just gets dumbed down for zoomers now. Maybe we should be like in the old days where the kids are expected to learn what the fuck was happening in the adult world. Even in stuff like Evil Genius that's extremely tongue-in-cheek there's a certain level of respect for the people who survived that time.
Oh boo hoo, my mother escaped from a country that became the nucleus of the globalist regime and every globohomo and the media sucks it off like it's the best thing ever even though my mother's stories and my own experiences show that it's a shit hole responsible for at least a quarter of the world's current issues. People who don't live through real suffering and oppression tend not to empathise with people who have. Move on. Your shitty country won't be the last to do shitty things to it's people.
 

Gastrick

Cipher
Joined
Aug 1, 2020
Messages
1,704
This is how the Tropico series was ruined for me. This was stuff that me and my parents lived out in real life. This wasn't a fucking fantasy world for us. I hate how this shit just gets dumbed down for zoomers now. Maybe we should be like in the old days where the kids are expected to learn what the fuck was happening in the adult world. Even in stuff like Evil Genius that's extremely tongue-in-cheek there's a certain level of respect for the people who survived that time.
Oh boo hoo, my mother escaped from a country that became the nucleus of the globalist regime and every globohomo and the media sucks it off like it's the best thing ever even though my mother's stories and my own experiences show that it's a shit hole responsible for at least a quarter of the world's current issues. People who don't live through real suffering and oppression tend not to empathise with people who have. Move on. Your shitty country won't be the last to do shitty things to it's people.
I'm curious now to know which country you are talking about.
 

LESS T_T

Arcane
Joined
Oct 5, 2012
Messages
13,582
Codex 2014


Funny this trailer is not cinematic as in CGI or non-gameplay, but more of a dramatic presentation of actual gameplay.
 

A horse of course

Guest
This is how the Tropico series was ruined for me. This was stuff that me and my parents lived out in real life. This wasn't a fucking fantasy world for us. I hate how this shit just gets dumbed down for zoomers now. Maybe we should be like in the old days where the kids are expected to learn what the fuck was happening in the adult world. Even in stuff like Evil Genius that's extremely tongue-in-cheek there's a certain level of respect for the people who survived that time.
Oh boo hoo, my mother escaped from a country that became the nucleus of the globalist regime and every globohomo and the media sucks it off like it's the best thing ever even though my mother's stories and my own experiences show that it's a shit hole responsible for at least a quarter of the world's current issues. People who don't live through real suffering and oppression tend not to empathise with people who have. Move on. Your shitty country won't be the last to do shitty things to it's people.
I'm curious now to know which country you are talking about.

Switzerland
 

Zombra

An iron rock in the river of blood and evil
Patron
Joined
Jan 12, 2004
Messages
11,539
Location
Black Goat Woods !@#*%&^
Make the Codex Great Again! RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Wow, now that I've heard all the voice actors it's a much more difficult choice. I only knew Glen McReady as "some actor who's worked for Rebellion for a while" until I heard him ... that's the narrator from Strange Brigade! I love him, makes me want to play as Max. The voice for Zalika, although I don't recognize her, has a lot of charisma too. Not going to be easy to pick.
 

Xamenos

Magister
Patron
Joined
Feb 4, 2020
Messages
1,256
Pathfinder: Wrath
I've previously used a Win10 virtual machine to play shit on my Win7 system, but it's gonna require a pretty damn good machine to run this one.
 

Jaedar

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Aug 5, 2009
Messages
9,837
Project: Eternity Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Pathfinder: Kingmaker
I've previously used a Win10 virtual machine to play shit on my Win7 system, but it's gonna require a pretty damn good machine to run this one.
Interesting. I've always found that the graphics card doesn't emulate at all, so most things crash on launch. The requirements don't seem steep at all for a regular computer, but I guess they might very well be insurmountable for emulation.
 

Xamenos

Magister
Patron
Joined
Feb 4, 2020
Messages
1,256
Pathfinder: Wrath
I've previously used a Win10 virtual machine to play shit on my Win7 system, but it's gonna require a pretty damn good machine to run this one.
Interesting. I've always found that the graphics card doesn't emulate at all, so most things crash on launch. The requirements don't seem steep at all for a regular computer, but I guess they might very well be insurmountable for emulation.
I had this problem with VirtualBox, but VMware could emulate graphics. Granted, I never used it for a 3d game so I don't know how well it would work.
 

Zombra

An iron rock in the river of blood and evil
Patron
Joined
Jan 12, 2004
Messages
11,539
Location
Black Goat Woods !@#*%&^
Make the Codex Great Again! RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth

A more in-depth comparison of the four main characters to choose from. No real surprises.
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom