The premise is that you're one of three typical Bondian villains, each with his or her own strengths and weaknesses. Each villain comes with a henchman (more can be recruited later), a super powered minion whose abilities are far beyond those of ordinary men. Then it's off to a secluded island to begin building your secret underground base.

You begin with generic minions who handle menial tasks; these guys can train later to become higher-level specialized minions. Room construction means assigning the space and items. A minion will take money from your strongroom, run to the depot, buy explosives, destroy the area marked, take money from your strongroom, run to the depot, and buy each item one at a time. Bit slow, unfortunately.

Once your base is under way, you'll want to place minions on the World Domination map. This is where you can steal money (the only income, despite the later availability of casino tables), plot to reveal Acts of Infamy, carry out Acts of Infamy or hide from enemy agents. It's a shame the Acts of Infamy are handled automatically. I know, the game is long enough, but it'd be fun to actually conduct the missions as in the X-COM series. Do be sure to read the descriptions, though; they're great spoofs of spy movies.

Once you've got some good rooms going and higher-level science minions, the game gets more fun. You'll constantly be juggling Acts of Infamy, research, base defense and trying to keep pesky tourists from learning too much.

I really liked the research system: Scientists walk around your base and take note of different items. They then take their notes back to the Lab and the item is available for experimentation using whatever machines you might have in place. It's great incentive to place items and place them intelligently along major traffic areas.

The game isn't without its flaws. The do-gooder secret agents, for example, are invincible until you get to the second island. (And even then, it's a long slog before you can do away with them.) Speaking of the second island, there's not enough setup time. I had gotten maybe two rooms started when I was attacked by three (!) enemy superagents and two groups of veterans. There needs to be a longer grace period there. Also annoying is the slowdown even on high-end systems when you've got a full contingent of 100 minions. That in turn slows load times, which can be a pain.

Graphics are good, sparkling with a very intentional day-glo '60s feel. I would have liked to have seen some sort of variation based on the evil genius, though. The minion animations are a hidden pleasure. It's actually fun to zoom in close and see the animations for various characters and the items they use. Pity there's no real time to do this later in the game, when more elaborate objects are available.

As for the sound: Can someone please distribute that soundtrack? Because it's awesome. The title theme is just as good and in many ways better than your typical Bond opening song. The classic '60s spy-movie music continues throughout the game. Plus, zoom in as close as you can to your minions and you'll hear them interacting with each other and the base in that now-typical Simsish babble.

If you're at all a fan of the Dungeon Keeper series or campy spy films, give Evil Genius a try. Be patient until the game really gets rolling, and then you'll have ample opportunities to deliver your patented maniacal laugh.