The year was 2004, and while Pierce Brosnan was trying to rip the clothes off of Halle Berry two years before, the years of Thunderball‘s eye-patched villain Emilio Largo was gone. Instead, those cartoonish villains were reduced to a cinder by the likes of Austin Powers. However, one studio formed by an ex-Lionhead developer, a studio in itself formed by those from Bullfrog, took the management genre and applied a little too much tongue-in-cheek, cliché riddled, and downright Bond-villain-esque ideas into making Evil Genius. Being a little buggy and overly retentive with requests of the player’s ability to manage means it reviewed well, yet sold poorly.

Earlier this year, David reviewed the sequel to what I consider to be one of the greatest games of all time, Evil Genius. Several months on, I’ve finally got my hands on Evil Genius 2: World Domination, after suggesting David cover the PC port, to which I get to finally play the exact same game, right down the controls. This is why I like a lot of things about Xbox, you can plug in a keyboard and mouse (sometimes), and they just work. I wish more developers retained this ethos because it would make reviewing ports so much better, in some cases. At least it would allow flexibility.

In Evil Genius 2, you continue to play the insurance nightmare of putting your secluded, not so abandoned evil lair in a volcano. Well, you have the option of inside a volcano, Tracy Island, or generic island base that Jeff Bezos retreats to so he can suck the blood out of dead pigs or something. That’s the thing about Evil Genius 2, you can apply the word “still” to a lot of what you want to say. Is it still Dungeon Keeper with a colorful aesthetic and tongue firmly cemented within one’s own cheek dialogue that is overly camp? Yes, yes it is.

You still set capacity for minions, who are still yellow despite Dreamworks sending around the tougheners, by your number of lockers and you can’t control them directly. You swear as you place down rooms, fill them, then have to add more guff into the room while playing furniture Tetris so you don’t block anything. You’re also controlling your global operations of crime from a dingy cupboard somewhere in the back of your evil lair. Everything is higgledy-piggledy, as you jam in a vault here and power station large enough to power all of Wales for a month on the end there, maybe even with a mess-hall tucked around the corner.

I will admit there are some things that are a little backwards, as if it were a direct sequel to the 2004 game but released without the 17-year gap. This is less so with the controller, but that has its own usual issues with console ports of strategy games. Specifically, I’m talking about Q and E being used to rotate the camera until you are in the build menu. In the build menu suddenly Q and E work like RB and LB, swapping the tabs of the build menu instead of the camera being allowed to move freely. It seems insignificant when you know the middle mouse button also rotates and tilts, but at the same time, when I spend hours swooping around my lair like the tails on Red Ivan’s cape with Q and E, it becomes a little insufferable.

Something that isn’t so agonizingly petty is the accessibility, aimed squarely at those playing on a controller. Real-time strategies/dungeon management games such as Evil Genius live and die on your ability to respond to situations. While controllers are often an afterthought, Rebellion did something simple, they let you pause the game. Of course, you can pause the game any time you like, there is a pause button after all. Nevertheless, in the collection of accessibility options (there are quite a few) you can tell the game to auto-pause when building, your genius is being attacked, or you’re in a full menu.

Yes, the actual controller controls continue to be a little bit clunky in places, but this rather hefty catalog of options (alongside keyboard and mouse support) allows for a more robust set of experiences to be had. I honestly don’t remember the last time I’ve seen in a console port of a strategy game feature optional fixed camera rotation and speed controls for it. Also there is a collection of presses, drags, and holds for specific things, panning, zooming, and rotating speeds, and a whole host of simple things to tweak your experience. The only thing missing in all the options as far as I could find was a mouse sensitivity option, which you don’t normally ask for in a console port anyway.

Artistically, Evil Genius 2 is beautiful in every way. It is a bit futuristic 70s with a twinge of being modern looking back. I guess retro-futuristic 70s fits the whole classic Bond villain thing, as little angry Maximilian still heads the group. Every bit of tech consists of big chunky, tape-deck style computers and lava-lamp lights, and it is just silly and camp as it should be. In essence, the whole thing is a snake after it has shed its original skin: Retaining the colorful campness and general style of the original while also bringing the graphical fidelity of the modern-day.

One thing that isn’t so much a fresh lick of paint or definition to established dungeon management mechanics would be the fact that bases are multilayered now. This allows you to screw up the corners of your rooms not once, but multiple levels of shouting into the void. That alongside your tech-tree allowing you to blow further into the sediment of the mountain lets you expand and try to correct those early mistakes. I liked the explosives being the standard for clearing out space in Evil Genius (1), but then again I am one of those weirdos that like explosions to cover up the dead bodies, so the gravity guns used as interdimensional-hoovers works, I guess.

While the cast consists of four Doctor Who actors, one from “Midnight,” “The Angels Take Manhattan,” and another from an upcoming episode in my series of reviews, there is one I won’t get to mention. I don’t think anyone would disagree that hiring Brian Blessed is where most of the budget for actors went, and not just because he is literally a big voice. This is why I find it odd that you’d take one of the most recognizable voices, and try to disguise him under a cartoonish Russian accent, which might be it. Largo’s actor Adolfo Celi was Italian but dubbed to sound a little broader, so it only makes sense to make Red Ivan mustache twirlingly evil and have Blessed play with the accent.

Ultimately, despite a couple of clunky design decisions with the controller and possibly wasting a fair few bob on our Brian there, Evil Genius 2: World Domination is exactly what it should be. It is a return to the management games of the past, the Bullfrog days of Dungeon Keeper, just a little more refined and prettier than before. As flamboyantly camp as Dale Winton in a caravan in Brighton, and wonderful for every second of it. It is bright and fun to counter the darkness of torture, murder, and whatever you call my many convoluted traps. 

An Xbox One copy of the Evil Genius 2: World Domination was provided by Rebellion Developments for the purposes of this review.

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Evil Genius 2: World Domination

$39.99

9

Score

9.0/10

Pros

• More Evil Genius/colorful Dungeon Keeper.
• Fantastic art direction.
• Keyboard and mouse support with automatic of the entire UI changes.

Cons

• Some unintuitive decisions on controls/design.
• Blessed's casting seems like a waste of good money.