I?ve had a somewhat troubled childhood. Sure, my parents were loving and supportive, I was brought up on healthy food, my dad had one of the most awesome collections of music I?ve ever seen and as far as I can remember there was never an incident where I was locked in a cupboard. But I have memories of those times, of dark, foreboding images that kept me awake until the early hours of the morning. Images of murderous dark clouds and trees that stood and stared at you in silent accusation, images of gigantic demon birds that pecked at my head while laughing in undecipherable languages and worst of all, the image of a giant fish with a hungry look in his eye.
You see I had this friend back then; I won?t post his real name because it sounds stupid, but let?s just call him Gerald, I like that name. Gerald was a good friend. Despite his tendency to occasionally elbow me in the face he was pretty considerate and told funny jokes. One of the better reasons that Gerald was my friend was the fact that Gerald had a computer. On that computer he had the original Commander Keen. Gerald loved Commander Keen; he would play it for hours on end. I got to watch Gerald play, occasionally asking if I could have a go, until I had to go home again. Eventually I grew tired of this and decided I needed to procure a Commander Keen game to call my own. So I shamelessly begged my parents to get it for me (I was seven, it was cool to do that back then).
The game was Commander Keen: Goodbye Galaxy and it was the fourth game in the series, which meant it was part of the way through a storyline I hadn?t been following; this didn?t matter so much to a seven year old, and I gathered via playing the game itself that there were these old dudes who had locked themselves into cages by accident, and I had to go rescue them. The storyline didn?t matter though, what was important was that I was playing a Commander Keen game that Gerald didn?t have. It was better than his one as well. It was still very much 2D, but there were some serious graphical changes from the original, square blocks had turned into sloping hills, the ground beneath Keen?s feat actually had texture and even the background, which used to be blank, had turned into a forest of happy trees that winked at you occasionally.
Keen himself had gained some new moves as well. Whereas before his repertoire of moves consisted of ?Walk?,? Jump? and if Gerald managed to hit the right button by accident, ?shoot?, Keen could now climb poles and slide down them like a fireman, hang off ledges, Look around to get a better view and shoot his pistol in any direction (Side to side and up or down, but back then that was close enough to ?any direction?). Best of All, Keen could use a pogo stick. I loved that pogo stick, loved it like one would love a puppy that you had found out in the rain sneezing by all by itself. I would spend half my time just bouncing around the levels in my beloved pogo stick, forgetting all about the troubles of the world, and at that age there wasn?t that much in the way of troubles to forget anyway, so I was truly happy.
Now if you didn?t just start reading from this point you would ask me ?But Iron Ninja. It sounds like you had a wonderful time. What exactly was the cause of all these troubling memories?? Well I?m about to tell you. It was the enemies of Keen that scared me. Oh sure, at first they were just comical slugs that moved slowly and ?excreted? poisonous slime every so often. But then things took a dark turn. The first of the game?s horrors to affect me was the Mad Mushroom. As pixelated as he was, it wasn?t hard to see he had a crazed look in his eyes. The mushroom made his habitat in vital crossroads, goading Keen to get splattered beneath him as he bounced menacingly up and down. Many a time was I crushed beneath his fungal bulk, he gave it no thought, but I could tell he was taunting me. After meeting the Mad Mushroom things only got worse. There were many horrors that I faced, giant blue birds that chased me across the map with murderous intent, Spider like creatures that ran at superhuman speeds to catch me and Orange daemons that appeared out of nowhere (Or from the depths of hell itself) to fall down upon me with hatred burning in their eyes. But there was one horror above all others. Dopefish.
These combined horrors, though cartoonish and even cute in nature, were just so odd that it began to trouble me. When you?re seven, late at night with the lights off is not the best time to be in deep thought about things that want to eat you. I spent many nights utilising the ?blanket shield technique?, which for the uninitiated, is the belief that if you are completely covered in blankets, they will shield you from harm, however any exposed skin means instant death, this technique does not do wonders for your breathing. Eventually I stopped playing the game altogether and it lay in a corner somewhere collecting dust. At some point it was sold to someone in a garage sale and I never saw the blasted visage of Dopefish ever again. Until last week when I was heartily enjoying massacring countless villagers in Fable 2 and this happened.
My faithful 360 had once again decided to pop its clogs. After a few minutes of angrily moving furniture around I calmed down and thought about my gaming options for the next few weeks. I have a gaming PC, though by saying that I?m insulting all other gaming PCs everywhere. My PC slows down when I play solitaire on it; the original Half-Life caused it to have a nervous breakdown. So I had the option of either playing Zoo Tycoon, or finding some shareware games on the internet. Given that this isn?t a review of Zoo Tycoon I would hope it is rather obvious which option I went with. I don?t know what compelled me to get it, perhaps I was planning on proving to myself that I was a man now, and monsters no longer scared me. What I do know was that I could see him in the screenshots, I could see him and his stupid buck teeth, and I was going to best him.
I sat down, opened up the game and began to play. Suddenly I was a kid again, I was reliving the joy I had felt all those years ago, I shot my Neural Stunner at slugs and laughed at their confused faces as I sailed overhead on my awesome Pogo stick, I made death defying leaps across pits of spikes, I collected the candy bars, soda bottles and doughnuts that had made me feel as close to a badass a little kid can possibly feel. Much to my immense surprise, the game was just as good as I remembered it being. But some things had changed. No longer was I frightened of the Mad Mushroom, his pathetic bouncing only added to my amusement. Whereas before surviving the Mushroom was a game of chance as you dashed beneath him. Now I had the mind to notice the patterns he followed. I could now be the one doing the taunting. So I did, I toyed with the mushroom, running back and forth beneath him, sometimes on a pogo stick. His insane grin stayed in place, but I knew? I knew he was crying on the inside. And I knew that now, this game would no longer phase me.
Now that I had the patience and the reading skills, for the first time I actually read the introduction text and learnt the story. Turns out those old guys I was rescuing were Oracles, who Commander Keen needs to ask a few questions about some evil empire called the Shikadi who are apparently planning on destroying the galaxy. Instead of just asking one of the Oracles, Keen apparently needs to find all of them before they have enough knowledge to answer his question. It didn?t make that much sense, but just like before the story wasn?t so important, and I honestly preferred to think that I was helping the old dudes because they had accidentally locked themselves in.
Even now, despite having played games on high definition televisions, the game still looks good. It?s obviously still 2D, and there are many, many games with better graphics than it, but Commander Keen 4 has as much graphics as it really needs. It?s not top of the line, but it?s detailed enough to pass off as cartoonish, without things being so pixelated that you don?t know what they are supposed to be. Keen?s moves are well animated, as are all the monsters. I also noticed for the first time that when Keen fires his Neural Stunner upwards, he goes into a pose that reminds me of the posters for Tron or The original Star Wars. The sound however was something I must have forgotten about. The sound effects in Commander Keen comprise entirely of shrill beeping sounds. These get rather annoying after a while and I quickly turned off the sound altogether. Much like the story, sound is not something you need to enjoy the game, and I can?t really blame an old game for having old sound anyway.
Eventually I got up to the dreaded water level; my old nemesis lay in wait somewhere in the depths. I had faced the others, and laughed at the thought that I once feared them. Dopefish was the final test, I had only to face him, and then I could claim mastery over this game and finally move on.
Okay so maybe that?s not how it happened, but I did defeat him.
The difficulty was somewhat unexpected. Apart from the Dopefish and his lackeys I remembered the game being rather easy. Maybe there was something I had in my youth that made me better at timing jumps and judging the distances involved in death defying leaps. But now I found that I died very often. Like many older games it had a lives system, so as long as I collected enough droplets of lemonade I was never in danger of a game over, but my desire to hoard lives led me to saving often and loading whenever I made a mistake. I also noticed something about Keen?s death throes. Whenever he did end up in a death inducing situation there seemed to be a little mini-game involved, as the game would make Keen bounce around hitting everything lethal within jumping distance before finally falling off the screen. This is funny the first time but later on in the more challenging levels it can be downright infuriating, but I persevered and eventually reached the end, which turned out to be a set up for the next chapter.
Apparently this was meant to be a review, so I guess a summarisation of the game is in order. To put it very simply this is a fun game, the game-play is solid, the graphics, and while not exactly jaw-dropping, are just as good as they need to be, it has a storyline but it takes a back seat to the fun. I heartily recommend you obtain this game by any means necessary. Especially if you have unresolved issues involving Giant fish.
