Commander Keen: Goodbye Galaxy

This is the first game I ever played, meaning that it was always going to be fondly remembered by yours truly regardless of its quality. Thankfully this game (or rather games as this is a two for one deal) hold up remarkably well thanks to their solid gameplay and presentation.

I'll start off with the first game which is the secret of the Oracle, a game that remains the best in the franchise according to the fanbase. This is due to the vast level design as we have our hero exploring jungles, abandoned villages, caves and even a pond among many other locations which of course spices up the gameplay. The pond level in particular is often regarded as the rare underwater level gamers have a love for, although I'm not one of them as I feel the swimming mechanic is a bit stiff which would be fine were it not for the dreaded dopefish. Yes, this is where the infamous dopefish makes its first appearance as it appears as an enemy in this level that's so memorable it became a running gag in future shareware games in the 90s. This also applies to the Armageddon machine, but I have to say the controls are at their best in this title due to how easy it is to move keen around both on foot and on his pogo stick compared to the earlier titles. His gun is easier to use as well as it only requires one button to press in order for it to work as opposed to two in the earlier games. The enemies he faces are very creative as they include slugs, fire demons and rock monsters among others, the latter being a reference to the horror flick the hills have eyes showing Id software's pop culture knowledge in a kid’s game. Keen needs to traverse these levels in order to rescue magical monks to help him find a weapon that is planning on being used to blow up the galaxy which of course leads to the events of the other game in this pack.

Moving onto my personal favourite entry in the franchise, we have the Armageddon machine which tasks our hero of shutting down the titular spaceship by destroying its power sources which are heavily guarded by the many robots and energy monsters on board the ship. The gameplay is identical here to the other entry save for there being no underwater level and that certain levels can only be beaten by destroying a machine in them rather than finding the exit or a monk. I'll instead talk about the level design here as both games look immaculate for 16-bit era titles, this is more apparent in the secret of the Oracle with the different landscapes, however the Armageddon machine also uses a cool art style thanks to great colour palette choices. The real appeal of both games is the collectathon mechanic as keen has a sweet tooth in the series which he can satisfy by collecting the different alien candy in each level that I'm guessing aren’t far off from human candy. He can also collect raindrops and glasses of drinks in each game respectively where he earns an extra life for every 100 he collects, although the life count is redundant given how even on its initial release you can save at any point in the game. The enemies in both games are well thought out as opposed to them being generic and arbitrarily placed like in most platformers of the day, this is accentuated with the sound design which may seem tinny at first but works with the Sci fi elements the series is going for. The same goes for the soundtrack which is new to the franchise as the previous games lacked music due to hardware limitations, the songs are catchy and fit each level they're used in perfectly.

It's a great game to come from the shareware series as well as one that can rival the likes of Mario and sonic, check it out if you haven't already.