User Reviews

The final chapter to the trilogy of Commander Keen(but not the last game in the entire franchise, fortunately, seeing as how the four to come after it are, no offense, great improvements on the trilogy(which, in itself, wasn't bad, and they certainly learned from their mistakes, absolutely no doubt about that))... after having saved the Earth, Commander Keen, the self-proclaimed defender of aforementioned planet(who most certainly has his work cut out for him in every one of these games), the secret alter-ego of the heroic and highly intelligent eight-year-old boy Billy Blaze, follows the alien mother-ship in his Bean-and-Bacon Megarocket to the Vorticon home planet, Vorticon VI, where he must find his way through the dark Caves of Oblivion, towards the Grand Intellect's Castle, and along the way, he will face one of the most dangerous and unpleasant areas that his adventures have taken him through... suburbs! When you're on an alien planet of deadly inhabitants(with lethal pets and toys), even small towns can be risky to travel through(and if there seemed to be many Vorticons in the second game, or it seemed as if they were set on killing Keen, you ain't seen nothing yet; the title, whilst rather a simple statement, pretty much nails it, really). By the end of it all, you will learn who the Grand Intellect is, and the very last level has you fighting him, as the first(and one of the only) boss enemies in the entire series. The humor remains about the same. The graphics are the same as the first two. The sound is, as well, but it isn't bad for its time. The controls are the same, and with how packed with risks the environment is, the dull reaction that they offer is most irritating. This game in the franchise also features a decoding of the alien alphabet in one part of the game, allowing the players to understand the many signs of this and the other two games of the trilogy, since they are all(I believe... it definitely would make reasonably good sense) written in Vorticon. Not an awful lot new is added, but what you saw in the first two is put to good use(and I believe this is the one that added the vertically moving platforms, as the ones in the second game were only able to move horizontally). This is definitely, by far, my least favorite of the entire series(and probably the only of them that I genuinely dislike, I'm afraid(then again, hey, six out of seven ain't bad)), mainly due to story being lame(I realize that these are children's games, but still, come on), the game-play being frustratingly hard(thank goodness they put in difficulty levels after this one!) and the various features missed in the previous two games being most sorely missed here(which is undoubtedly why they were almost all present in the very next released title in the series, Keen Dreams, the "lost" episode), where the lack of them are most painful. The game is much, much harder than the first two games, and here, the lack of in-level saving is most frustrating, due to the levels being longer and the enemies being tougher than the first two. I get that they were making the first trilogy as getting harder with each game(rather than letting the player choose how hard the game should be, with a difficulty setting, like in the second trilogy of games in the series), but this is just too much. The game was so darned hard that I found myself almost cheating(but only almost!), and finally skipping several choice-free levels(thankfully, there have been levels you could skip since the first game in this series, though this was the first(and if my memory serves me right, only) where I find myself giving up and skipping ahead), to the final level. Now, the good part is that this is the first (and again, one of the only)of the Commander Keen games to feature an actual boss enemy; however, he's darn hard due to the two-button shooting(which was, fortunately, fixed in the next game, first part of the second sub-series, Goodbye Galaxy!, or, earlier still, the next release, Keen Dreams, the "lost" episode of the series) and the lack of an in-level save feature(which was also fixed right after this game, and this was retained throughout the rest of the series). I know a boss is supposed to be hard to beat, but after shooting five out of ten important(heck, *necessary*) and ridiculously hard shots, you like to be able to save, so that you don't have to do it again, at the fear of breaking your darned wrist in the process, due to the difficulty of aiming, carefully planning to use the overly complicated controls to line up your shot, and then pressing two buttons at the same time at one particular half of a second. OK, I'm done ranting now. No, really. I suppose that the game is worth playing through if you're a really, really big fan of the franchise, but the story twist(which has been built up throughout the trilogy, making it fall on its face and land poorly) is ludicrously lame, so you shouldn't have to play it through just to get to the reveal(because the effort, to me, was by no means, in any kind of way, worth it)... heck, you can just PM me and ask, and I'll tell you(or, even easier and faster, eliminate the middle man and go read the franchise's entry on Wikipedia, which contains a detailed description). I recommend it only to the biggest fans of the Commander Keen series, DOS games and platform games. Everyone else(heck, even those that are one hundred percent certain that they belong in the first category), please think long and hard if you *really* need to play through this game, as it's considerably more frustrating than the first two, and much, much less of a good platform action adventure game than the last four of the franchise. 6/10