Thanks to "Evil Genius 2," I now know why so many criminal masterminds are bald. Because I tore all my hair out in frustration. When a James Bond knockoff comes to your secret lair and kills your henchmen with exploding cufflinks, it's lunchtime for the henchmen forever.

Now, new henchmen must be trained to replace the old ones. This means digging into the pool of workers and sending them to the equivalent of a thug college. This means hiring even more workers, and Double Not Seven will have no more money on hand because they spent their money on replacing all the traps they broke. This meant spinning more money-making schemes, and more henchmen would be sacrificed to carry out those schemes, thus repeating the cycle all over again.

Being the villain's master is a big bald-headed headache, and "Evil Genius 2" recreates this villain's bureaucracy. Most of the time it turns out for the better, but sometimes it turns out for the worse. When all is said and done, it's a great management title that balances brilliant base-building with truly challenging plate-spinning. However, I do appreciate the mechanism to randomly shoot your minions. Because otherwise I might have torn my own skull off and thrown it at the screen.

In Evil Genius 2, in which you play as one of the cackling megalomaniacs, you build a secret lair on a volcanic island in the Pacific and use it to spread chaos around the world. You will build rooms to satisfy both the needs of your minions and your own dastardly desires, hire various types of underlings to fulfill your diabolical plans, set traps and obstacles to confuse enemy agents, and ultimately construct a terrifying doomsday device to bring the world to its knees.

This begins with the base-building bonanza. Unlike "Dungeon Keeper" and "Two Point Hospital," which offer rooms that can be built across multiple levels in the game, Evil Genius 2 allows you to build everything at once. From the barracks for your minions to the mess hall, training area, and the gilded Genius inner sanctum, the basic layout of the base is completed in the first five hours.

This part of Evil Genius 2 is pure entertainment; like "Two Point Hospital," "Evil Genius" boasts a lively, knockabout cartoon style. Your minions mine a room with a laser cannon suspended below a bulky bottom, and then use the same cannon to put objects and furniture into the room, where they fall into place with a powerful thud.

But the real fun here is the animation, meticulously detailed, comical and fun. The sight of the guards, dressed in red spandex like the evil Mr. Incredible, slinking down the corridors is awesome, a stark contrast to the superior, spindly gait of the scientists. But the highlight of Rebellion's animation is in the interrogation room, where his minions torture captured agents by tickling their feet and dropping sticks of dynamite into their knees.

It's a great game to watch in motion, which is just as well, because after this feast of construction comes a sort of fallow zone. After building the Inner Sanctum, Evil Genius 2 enters a holding pattern as the scientists begin to work on their ultimate goal of world domination while they gradually research new traps, upgrades, and room objects.

The emphasis switches to two things: expanding the criminal network around the world and defending the base from enemy agents. In the former, groups of minions are dispatched to set up relay bases in different parts of the world. Schemes can also be unlocked for greater income.

Schemes bring in much needed cash, but the minions dispatched to them do not return. This eventually leads to world governments sending agents to investigate and sabotage your lair. At first, these private detectives are so inept that they don't even notice when your secret lair erupts. But as time goes on, the agents become more numerous and more capable, with super agents like Agent X and Britain's number one spy, John Steele, slipping past your security with ease.

Unwelcome spies can be dealt with in a variety of ways. In the Evil Genius tradition, you can set up a variety of traps, from freezing rays and giant fans to scorching laser grids and shark-infested plunge pools. If these fail, the base can be set on high alert and the minions can pounce on enemy agents and force them into submission.

My favorite way to deal with agents, however, is to distract them in a cover operation, a glittering casino front complete with cocktail bar, baccarat tables, and stage shows. It's incredibly satisfying to watch the spies get ripped off at the roulette tables and go home more empty-handed than when they arrived.

As much fun as it is to enjoy these things, the middle game of "Evil Genius 2" inevitably feels somewhat empty. Part of the problem is that the missions that must be completed in order to progress are very lengthy. Each has four or five sub-objectives, some of which require completing multiple "side stories."

This long and complex chain of objectives makes it easy for simulations to creep in and sabotage your progress. In addition to money, there are many different resources that must be managed, such as "broadcast power," which is needed to expand and upgrade the criminal network, and "intel," which is needed to initiate more advanced missions. On the other hand, when a region's base stations reach their maximum heat level, the region is locked down. If a mission was in progress at the time of the lockdown, the mission will be canceled and must be restarted.

What doesn't help is that the missions are not always that engaging. While there are some cool concepts, such as kidnapping a rival crime boss or stealing the Declaration of Independence, most of the action happens off-screen. On the other hand, the cutscenes that end the mission are let down by poor voice acting. While the geniuses are all superbly acted, thanks in part to Rebellion's use of voice actors like Brian Blessed, the minions and subordinates are stilted and unconvincing, giving the impression that the geniuses are basically shouting at a mannequin.

As a result, I spent most of my time waiting. Waiting for new technology to be unlocked. Waiting for helicopters to transport minions to mission sites. Waiting to save up enough money to build a new room by digging for "hard rock," which is more expensive to mine than regular rock. Everything takes too long to solve and there is not enough happening to spend time on in the meantime. Of course there is a fast-forward function, but it is dangerous to use this. You might miss an agent sneaking into your base, or an area with an ongoing mission being sealed off.

This problem never goes away completely, but it becomes less serious once you start working on the doomsday device. At this point, you have unlocked enough new items and acquired enough funds that the base will need to expand considerably. The number of enemy agents has also increased, and some of them have slipped through security and blown up half the communications network. Your minions will be more diverse, the world map will unlock more lucrative missions, heat levels will be easier to manage, and you'll have more space to tinker with your base while other things are going on.

"Evil Genius 2" is one of the best management games when it's at its best. Not only is it imaginative and fun, it is genuinely challenging. It's fascinating to work out the finances while monitoring the world to stop a heat lockdown, or to literally shoot your way through the corridors as agents prowl the hallways in disguise, invisible to everyone but you. There are a few other cool features we haven't mentioned yet. For example, you can make rival crime bosses your henchmen, but only after you've thoroughly cornered them first. You can also brainwash enemy agents into becoming your henchmen, and sometimes your henchmen, unhappy with their situation, will try to escape from your hideout.

But there's no escaping the fact that the game's feedback loop is stretched too far: given that you can play as four Geniuses, even a 20-hour game feels more than tight enough. But with the overly long missions and the constant waiting for something to happen, this is stretched to 30 or 40 hours.

But despite the detours, in the end, "Evil Genius 2" does a good job of recreating the fun of a cat-covering, mustachioed, frenzied, calculating supervillain. On the scale of criminal masterminds, I would rate this film as Dr. Evil. It's funny and has the right tools, but it's far from a perfect Blofeld.