Posted on: April 11, 2021
Humble_B
Games: Reviews: 7
False Advertising
To be clear, my rating applies to the incompleteness of the package. I absolutely loved the Commander Keen games as a kid (and still do nearly three decades on!), but it's an utter travesty that a series with such promise was unceremoniously dumped so prematurely. This humble series of DOS games are among the finest games ever made (especially episodes 4-6 which improve upon the original trilogy in virtually every conceivable way). While it's hard to be mad at the same boys who since produced Wolfenstein 3D and DOOM, it's a shame that Keen was shafted as a result of iD's greed (sales were low due to iD trying to sell Keen 5 as a duology with Keen 4, and Keen 6 separately as a standalone full-priced release, which obviously didn't bode well with customers). Unfortunately, this "complete" collection omits no less than THREE Commander Keen games: * Commander Keen in Keen Dreams (referred to colloquially as "Episode 3.5") * Commander Keen in Aliens Ate My Baby Sitter (Episode 6, marketed as a standalone "lost episode" but was allegedly originally intended to be the fifth episode of the series) * Commander Keen [2001] (a reboot for the Game Boy Color, with many callbacks to episodes 4-6) Thank God that the proposed mobile abomination was since axed after strong backlash. Keen Dreams was sold via the shareware model, but the shareware version *is* the complete game, so it can easily be procured elsewhere, but it would have been nice to have it here as well. Episode 6 was licensed to FormGen back in the day, as was the Wolfenstein 3D prequel Spear of Destiny (with its once-rare mission packs). What confounds me is that Spear of Destiny was also trapped in licensing hell for a number of years, and has only fairly recently managed to escape, so I can't help but wonder... what of Keen 6? And for all of its flaws, it would have been nice to have an official re-release of the Game Boy Color game as well. Recommended, but know that what you're buying is not as advertised.
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