@sundancer They’re moving from a rural area to a more rural area, and I need to be in the area I currently am for school. In fairness, I was planning to move out soon, but the suddenness of it took me a bit by surprise… Right at the end of the semester and beginning of exams is not the best time to suddenly blitz-clean the house…

) Is eastern a thing in your region?
Kind of … although it is mostly limited to lots of chocolate eggs (and chocolate easter bunnies)
And like Christmas it is the time of year were people pretend to be Christian again by making a big fuss about the Zombie Jesus story.
It feels weird to have a modern re-imagined version of that on tv (as if seeing wannabe b-list actors isnt’ bad enough … ).
Nothing has the potential for class like ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ did …

I remember going to a local theatre show of the same thing  (before commercial tv started to pretend it was ‘their’ thing).
It was kind of cool to see such a story life on stage, but I was too young to remember much of it.

) What do you usually do on that weekend?
in the before time we’d simply go to my parents, have a nice dinner and there’d be chocolate eggs for my nephews and niece.
Now we’ve got other things to worry about ( the big C … and the event ), which kind of makes me sad.

) Why do we celebrate Zombie Jesus with a heathen feast?
because that’s how you do conversions … make the heathens think you care about their feast and then corrupt it into something different.
It’s kind of fun seeing the hardcore fanatics complain about how ‘the media’ and ‘big business’ have turned it into a chocolate selling machine …
The only sad thing is that a different kind of cult is threatening to overshadow the zombie jesus party with some kind of enforced fasting (and midnight snacks to compensate … ).
And like all good sales men who smell an opportunity they’re bending over backwards to join in … (but lets not get into that).

Anyways …
Hobby stuff …
I was planning on doing something with Judge Dredd, but then ‘Evil Genius 2’ had to be released.

as with any sequel there’s people complaining about how stuff got dumbed down, but I kind of like it as they got rid of a lot of stupid time wasting and guess work.
A proper ‘tech tree’ to research instead of randomly combining objects in order to ‘discover’ new traps and gadgets is soo much better.
Animation in the cut scenes could be better, but it gets the job done.
The tutorial is great, although I think I may have to restart again now that I understand the mechanics a bit better.
However that is the ‘problem’ with ant-farm simulators like this.
It is great to see that they’ve included a sandbox mode too, because creating silly traps for enemy agents is kind of the thing in this game.

The evil genius themselves are now more than a different animation with a different passive bonus for minions and you’ve got 3 island maps to choose from as well.
The ‘cover operation’ is an actual thing, which is cool as trying to build a hotel/casino was something I kind of ignored in favour of lots of sentry guns that would wipe out most enemies …

Managing heat generated by your missions on the world map also feels more logical.

So … I am liking it.
I don’t get the obsession with season pass content (with zero information on what will be available … ), but I guess that’s ‘normal’ for games these days. I think I will have plenty of fun with the core game as it is

https://store.steampowered.com/app/700600/Evil_Genius_2_World_Domination/

39,99 Euro (currently 36) isn’t too bad for the core game.
60 Euro (currently at 55 Euro) for a few extras (a new campaign + map + evil genius) that may or may not be fun is a bit much. Did I mention that I dislike the ‘season pass’ concept ?
Anyways … I’m going to catch some sleep and do some hobby tomorrow if I can stop playing this game for a bit.

the only real annoyances so far are not being able to tag multiple (enemy) agents and only a single ‘faster’ speed.

a few more hours in and I learned a few things :
– don’t try to take over the world … focus on one continent at a time. 1 super agent is bad enough, you don’t want to be triggering multiple in addition to the ‘normal’ invasions that happen as heat builds …

– the automatic tagging needs to be unlocked with research and it does work. You need to remember that you need to assign zones first. I don’t know if the auto-capture and auto-kill commands are worth it, because my minions did get into fights despite the auto-distract setting.

– Agent X is a real *beep* as he teleports inside your base. According to Google there is only one other agent that does that. Everyone else simply ‘arrives’ at your door like the tourists do

– unlocking the second level is something I probably should have done earlier in the game, because it does make it easier to hide important bits from the enemy

And as with any of these ‘build your base’ style games you really need to think about where your rooms are.
The good news is that you can fill existing space with ‘dirt’ and then convert it to another room of a different size and type.

I do miss the loot missions from the first game, but at the same time the multi-stage missions for the loot does make it feel like a big deal. The pay-off for getting to the loot could have been better as it simply is yet another piece of furniture that you can install somewhere in your base.

It is funny to see that all of your minions have one or two quirks in there description (‘plays Barbarian in rpg’) and they are not the clones they were from the previous game. As a result you kind of feel bad when you execute them in front of their fellows in order to boost morale …

the little buggers do appear to be very hungry … because I’ve got a full mess hall practically 24/7

IIRC the previous game was capped at 100 minions. Now I’ve got almost 200.
The missions and cut scenes that are associated with the new henchmen types are hilarious.