soundtracks,  video games

Evil Genius

18. December 2024 /
  • Information
  • Original Soundtrack

Year: 2004

Type: Original Soundtrack (OST) / Gamerip

Composer(s): James Hannigan

Number of tracks: 09 / 25

Rating

★★★★★

Stroke of genius

No, Mr Bond, I expect you to die!

Auric Goldfinger in Goldfinger

A phrase that, in my opinion, sums up the villain's existence perfectly and is much less hackneyed than explaining our diabolical plan to the hero again. But while in most games we are condemned to thwart the machinations of ingenious villains, in Evil Genius we do exactly the opposite.

The cover alone, with its bald-headed, monocle-wearing Blofeld lookalike, should make that clear. Like a typical Bond-villain, we can set up our own hideout in this 2004 strategy game, hire henchmen and give the heroes a run for their money. All this is done from the familiar Dungeon Keeper -top-down view, in a stylish comic look, with lots of charm, humor and the atmosphere of the spy films from the sixties.

Evil Genius would have been a real find for me, but somehow I never got around to playing it. I did consider checking out the sequel Evil Genius 2: World Domination from 2021, but it doesn't appear to be really noteworthy due to its DLC policy and also appears to suffer from various bugs. If Metacritic is to be believed, this does mean, however, that the game remains true to the roots of the series, as the first installment was presumably more of a hardcore fan's game, too.

Well, that saves me some time, which I'm going to devote to a short review of the BAFTA-nominated soundtrack (British Academy Games Award for Music). According to my research, there isn't actually an OST, but this is contradicted by an entry on VGMdb, which speaks of a commercial released score in 2011 with nine tracks. The website sierrachest meanwhile, shows the gamerip with 25 tracks; of course I listened to both.

James Hannigan, who I am most familiar with from Beasts and Bumpkins, Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 and the later Harry Potter-games, is likely to have made a significant contribution to the flair of Evil Genius with his composition - because the music is wonderfully cliché! Well, the genre has been established for a long time, but nevertheless we should certainly give this work some praise.

Featuring a jazzy big band, the score has a real agent feel to it, with everything screaming No One Lives Forever (Menu Four), Austin Powers (Sandbar) or even James Bond / The Incredibles (Menu 2). Sometimes serious, sometimes tongue-in-cheek, Hannigan's music skillfully rounds off the genre homage and lends it a certain seriousness and identity.

For me personally, the showpiece of the soundtrack is the Evil Genius-main theme, which comes across as very 'modern' in contrast to the rest of the score. The fanfares, the strings, it all seems a bit like Uncharted meets Narnia and feels as if the BAFTA winner wanted to flex his composer muscles a little ... which I have no problem with at all - on the contrary! The theme offers a wonderful contrast to what the score could have been: 'classic' video game music. In my opinion, the Spymovie approach fits much better, but it's still nice that it's included in the 'OST'.

The gamerip, however, has very little innovation in its agent backpack and combines many of the tracks from the album, providing little added value. Only the short Superagent-jingles for the agents of the respective factions (Brazil, China, Russia, America and Euro) are nice to have. All in all, the music for Evil Genius is a nice surprise that fits in wonderfully with the self-ironic game without drifting off into slapstick.

  • Original Soundtrack
  • Gamerip
No.TitleArtist(s)Ratings
01Evil GeniusJames Hannigan55/5
02Menu OneJames Hannigan33/5
03Menu TwoJames Hannigan44/5
04Menu ThreeJames Hannigan33/5
05Menu FourJames Hannigan33/5
06SandbarJames Hannigan44/5
07SambaJames Hannigan33/5
08Gameplay MontageJames Hannigan44/5
09Sea FrontJames Hannigan44/5
No.TitleArtist(s)Ratings
01Evil Genius*James Hannigan55/5
02Menu One*James Hannigan33/5
03Menu Two*James Hannigan44/5
04Menu Three*James Hannigan33/5
05Menu Four*James Hannigan33/5
06IslandJames Hannigan33/5
07Mission CompleteJames Hannigan33/5
08AgentsJames Hannigan44/5
09WorldmapJames Hannigan33/5
10Lounge 1James Hannigan33/5
11Lounge 1bJames Hannigan33/5
12Lounge 2James Hannigan22/5
13Lounge 3James Hannigan33/5
14Lounge 3cJames Hannigan33/5
15Lounge LongJames Hannigan33/5
16Game OverJames Hannigan22/5
17Tranquil 1 [Sea Front]*James Hannigan44/5
18Tranquil 2James Hannigan44/5
19Superagent BrazilJames Hannigan22/5
20Superagent ChinaJames Hannigan33/5
21Superagent RussiaJames Hannigan33/5
22Superagent AmericaJames Hannigan33/5
23Superagent EuroJames Hannigan33/5
24TransferJames Hannigan44/5
25CreditsJames Hannigan44/5

*Track contained in the Original Soundtrack

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