I've never played The Sims or Everquest, but I've heard from others how much fun they can be as long as you have something else to do while you're playing. I never really understood how a game could be both fun and boring until I started getting into Evil Genius. It's a great game with a ton of style, which I "played" for several hours while washing a month's worth of dishes, studying my search and rescue manual, and practicing juggling. Interesting note, there's a keyboard shortcut combination you can enter which will kill your henchman. I don't really know what it is, but apparently a cat can do it when it's chasing a ball.

Earlier tonight I was playing Evil Genius, trying to steal something from China so I can move to the second island. Then my friendly computer assistant tells me that my bodyguard has been killed. "That's odd," I think to myself while looking up from Advance Wars. "My bodyguard should be in my Inner Sanctum, which is way fucking buried in my mountain lair behind all my minions and all my traps."

And in fact, my bodyguard is in my Inner Sanctum. Or perhaps I should say was. Also there, stealing my hard earned loot, are a squad of exceptional veteran soldiers and a bare-chested Chinaman super agent. WTF? Well, as it turns out, they don't have to wander along hallways like normal digital people, they can just lift up floor panels and pop up wherever the fuck they want to. So not only can I not stop them from breaking into the most well-defended part of my base, I also can't catch them on their way out. That's stellar game design right there.

Now, I'm pretty sure I know what I did wrong. I was generating too much heat, which means I was going too fast. Even though I was doing next to nothing (although I was kicking serious ass with Kanbei) I was still doing more than the game designers want me too. Seriously, what the hell? How long do I have to leave the game running unattended in between doing things? Should I have done the plotting before dinner, in preparation for staging the actual heist an hour later? I guess I'll find out tomorrow.

I've determined that the main problem with society is that an overwhelming majority of people are totally unaware of their own goal structure, acting only in their own stupid, short term self-interest, and lack any ability to rationally think for themselves. Anybody got a solution? Bear in mind that while my character has superpowers, I, sadly, do not.

But I digress, how come nothing bad ever happens to me? It's making me feel like such an asshole. A good friend of mine recently lost the use of an arm, and then got picked on by some assthumber who'd probably punch a baby in the face to quiet his own nagging inferiority complex. Course, fucking guy bolts as soon as someone with fully functioning limbs comes along. Apparently the assthumber looked like me, too, I hate copycats! I don't understand what is the fucking matter with these types of people, and I can only hope that one day this assthumber will be reprimanded according to the laws of nature. However, hope being an implement of the foolish, I'll probably just have to comfort myself with the fact that this son of a bitch, if some poor misguided girl ever has the misfortune to be made host to his vile parasitic spawnlings, will probably push her down some stairs or beat her for oversyruping his pancakes, thus preventing his genetic material from continuing to pervert our fine planet.

Since posting last night, I've heard from several people that the enemy agents will not tunnel into your base unless you have an area blocked off. Since I haven't blocked off any areas, this most likely happened because of minions putting loot or gold somewhere they shouldn't have. Which in a lot of ways is worse, as I at least have indirect control over my heat level.

We shall see what we shall see, when I try to load the game up again tonight. Before I do, though, I'm installing the unofficial patch which fixes a bunch of nagging problems the game has, like upping your minion limit and the fact that your henchmen may actually slow down missions on the world map. I think I may up my minion count to more than 150, though. It seems to me that an extra 100 guys running around would help considerably in all facets of the game.