Ah, Mr Bond, I have been expecting you.
Take a seat, have a cigar. A drink? Vodka Martini, shaken not stirred I presume?

**Bang!**
Oh dear Mr Bond I appear to have shot you through the head with my Magnum. Roll the credits…

Well that’s how I'd do it anyway. I mean, why on Earth do villains mess about wasting time and waffling on when they could kill the meddling hero straight away and save themselves a world of trouble? Probably because it’s more fun to gloat and devise more inventive and fun ways to dispatch a do-gooder and in Evil Genius that you can do just that.

It's not often you get to play as the outright bad guy, let alone be the mastermind of an underground evil empire, and everyone knows that the dark side is far more gratifying and fun - just ask Darth Vader, who got to stomp around in a cool suit throttling people and speaking menacingly whilst Ben Kenobi wimped out and Yoda just got old and annoying in a forest. Therefore Evil Genius was a great opportunity to deliver a satisfying, unheroic and naughty angle on the great ‘let’s kill people’ tradition of video gaming.

After choosing your character you are plonked on to a remote island from which you are set to build your evil empire. And here was my first big disappointment. Why does my lair always have to start on a tropical island? What about the classic oil rig, the unfeasible underwater base or the ridiculously advanced space station? Why can’t I build these things up from scratch? It would have been nice to have had a choice in the matter and would have spiced things up.

Anyway I soldiered on, looking forward to some wrong-doing, though to start off with, it seemed light years away. This is because the main element of the game is an isometric viewpoint resource management exercise where you have to blow out the volcanic rock of the island and build a complex of chambers within. You do this with the help of your minions and workers who wander around doing nothing until you order them to get off their arses and contribute something. Naturally this costs money, but you start off with a fair amount with which to get things working. To start with the game is a no-brainer and follows the same lines as many similar PC resource management games. In other words, you need to build a barracks with beds and lockers to produce more workers. Then you build a canteen to keep them well fed. Then you build a training room to keep them fit and competent. Then you build a power station to keep it all working. You get the picture. Yawn! There is a lot of sitting around and watching going on here and it was only when control centres, experimental lasers and inner sanctums became available that I began to wake up.

To be honest I found it all pretty irritating because I found that half of my time was spent watching my minions take some gold from the safe, jet off to get the materials, return and then start building my new corridor. Whilst the end results are pleasing, (who doesn’t love seeing their underground complex of evil and death grow?) it’d surely would be more fun to be doing something ‘hands on’ in the meantime? Blimey, I could shout ‘Ernst Stavro Blofeld’ a hundred times before one of my useless gits decided to blow out a corridor.

This is where the second big disappointment came in. This screen is little more than a dull information display where absolutely nothing dynamic happens. After putting into action a dastardly act I found myself waiting, and waiting and waiting… and then flipping back to the island-building part of the game in a frustrated rage which resulted in me killing a few of my workers just to get some kicks. Five minutes later, whilst I was making a cup of tea and castigating the dog for messing up the carpet (in real life) a sort of news flash report was suddenly broadcast saying that my nasty deed had been successful.

Well whoopee do!, that was nice to know! Did I actually run back up the stairs for that?

This really isn’t good enough, despite the broadcasts being quite authentic and internationally specific. When you look at an ancient game like, ummm, X-Com for example, even that had a decent resource management part as well as providing a decent ‘field game’ where you could get stuck in at various atmospheric locations, and both game systems felt connected and essential. In the year 2004 and Evil Genius you get a disjointed and vague connection between worldwide events and your island lair. And why couldn’t I be allowed to actually manoeuvre my henchmen in real time to cause acts of terror, stealth and robbery at graphically represented worldwide locations? Wouldn’t that have been cool and provided more variety and atmosphere to proceedings?

Obviously any Evil Genius worth his salt would have considered these potential problems and thankfully the developers have too, hence a supreme range of devious and over the top contraptions have been provided with which to trap and murder your foes. It has to be said that this was one of the few redeeming features of the game and the more advanced and developed your base becomes the more choice you have in your devices, and experimenting with them can be fascinating and amusing, in the manner of designing a death-delivering mouse run. For example, you can use wind machines to blow agents down a passage and into a chamber full of confusing dummies and then unleash killer bees or gas onto him whilst he is dumbstruck and occupied. Security cameras, trapdoors and footplates can all be employed to help you feel more secure, and this all helps to create a rather cool atmosphere of a cowardly criminal mastermind at work.

It’s all a bit of a shame because the game is genuinely quite amusing to watch. Though the graphics are fairly simplistic and cartoonish, the daft, camp style fits like a glove, it sounds great and watching your henchmen beat up and interrogate fat housemaids and seeing enemy agents meet their maker in extravagant ways is a blast. There are other complexities too, such as the continuing development of your minions who can have diverse uses within their Military, Social and Science divisions, and it’s their animations that are endlessly watchable in that ‘Sims’ kind of way. But at the end of the day Evil Genius just isn’t evil enough. Being a criminal mastermind is the product of a great, dark ambition, something that on certain fronts was clearly lacking in this game.