[LGR Theme]
[fizz, sip]
Aahhh!
You ever woke up with one of those really weird nasal abnormalities?
You know, the kind of thing where it feels like there's something in there, but
you know there's not. There's just nothing there.
But the more you start sniffing,
the more you get intrigued.
Kind of stays like this the next couple of days,
you really start to think about it again.
It's just so strange
and there that you can't help thinking about it.
[echoing] Have I grown something new?
Is there a new appendage inside of my nostrils?
[normal] Eventually, though, you get used to the idea and
it's not quite as interesting anymore,
and you pretty much forget about it.
To me, Commander Keen Dreams
is a lot like one of those nasal abnormalities.
Sort of strange and only comes up from time to time,
but when it does, it's just so awkward you have to just
set aside some time and take a look.
Keen Dreams is known
to some as "The Lost Episode"
or "Keen Episode 3.5."
Came out in 1991.
It was made by id Software, of course,
and published by Softdisk instead of Apogee this time.
It uses the same game engine as the Keen Galaxy series,
but it's missing a whole lot of the features.
We'll get to that here.
So it's generally accepted that the game falls between
the first trilogy
and the second series of games.
The story is that at the dinner table,
our hero Commander Keen, Billy Blaze,
refused to eat his vegetables
and was sent to his room, he falls asleep,
and wakes up tripping balls.
It turns out he is in the land of Tuberia,
brought there by the Dream Machine.
It is an evil land,
full of evil vegetables,
who have enslaved all bunches of children through their dreams,
holds them here captive, being tortured by the vegetables that they didn't want to eat.
The menus in this game look completely different from any of the other ones in the series.
There aren't as many options.
Pretty much you can only
choose what level of difficulty you want your controls,
and whether or not you want PC speaker sound
or AdLib sound.
There is no music.
Comparing once again to Galaxy,
you are Commander Keen
with all of his moves and abilities,
minus the ability to shoot his gun,
and minus the ability to use a pogo stick,
and also minus the ability
to grab onto ledges.
This makes the game
so much more challenging
than it really should be
in my opinion.
Especially if you're used to Goodbye Galaxy
and Aliens Ate My Babysitter and all that stuff.
In this one instead of his
stun zapper,
you have these little balls
that you throw
which temporarily stun your enemies,
turning them into drug-addled flowers.
It is referred to as "flower power" at least once in the documentation, so
I suppose that's very well what it could be.
The levels are your standard platforming fare,
complete with secret areas,
as all the Keen games do have
and are so famous for.
Very, very easy to get annoyed at this game, though,
just due to the fact that you can't grab onto ledges to pull yourself up.
You don't realize how much you miss that until you're without it.
And once again, you really don't realize how much you miss music until you're without it.
I mean, there's nothing, just
little bits of AdLib sound effects here and there
that aren't really that impressive anyway,
so just replace it with whatever the heck you want!
["A Volte Il Cuore" by Andrea Boelli plays]
Or maybe not that.
You can replace it with other AdLib music.
[AdLib rock music]
And also, the flower power leaves something to be desired.
Other than being ambiguously strange,
they have a bit of an arc to them
and they also bounce,
so it's kind of like, I don't know,
throwing pipe bombs or something.
Occasionally it can be hard to aim,
especially for creatures that go across the ground.
Speaking of creatures,
you have a very
varied
amount of creatures to go against
and turn into flowers.
Crazy
anthropomorphic vegetables,
such as apples,
peas,
grapes,
watermelons.
Those kind of things.
Okay, so there really are
for the most part vegetables like broccoli and asparagus,
carrots,
and of course, the Tater Troopers.
Many of these guys are extremely annoying,
especially with your flower power bombs.
They could be hard to hit,
or you just end up tossing one over them.
Now the flower power isn't the only available weapon in the game.
The whole point of this is to get through all of these levels
and eventually reach the end boss,
named King Boobus.
B-o-o-b-u-s.
Who is pretty much a large potato.
In order to defeat him,
you need to go throughout the levels and collect 12 Boobus bombs.
You need 12 of them to take him down, and in fact you can't even
enter his lair
without the 12 bombs.
You do that, you win the game and go back
to real life
with a newfound respect,
or hatred,
or phobia, of vegetables.
You can't use flower power against him, so it–
That's part of the problem of the game,
and in fact possibly its biggest flaw.
In order to beat the game at all, you have to know
where these bombs are.
You have to make sure that you'll get them in the levels that you need to.
If you fail to do this,
and exit a level without getting the bombs,
there's a very good chance that by the end of the game,
you won't have enough bombs
to beat king Boobus Tuber
and it will effectively be over and you'll have to start
the game from the beginning and be sure to collect the bombs.
Now, if you don't know this,
and just really don't pay attention,
this could break the game for you.
At the beginning of the levels that DO contain bombs,
you will get a message going into the level saying
that there are bombs in the level, so you'll know to look out for them, but
it's possible to ignore that, I suppose.
Not that this is a walkthrough or anything, but
the levels that contain the Boobus bombs
are Grape Grove, the Melon Mines,
Squash Swamp, Apple Acres,
and Spud City.
In fact, Apple Acres and Spud City each have six bombs in there,
so it's possible to get enough bombs
just in those two levels.
And then you can just go all the way to the top of the level map
and beat the game.
So, really, you can do a speed run pretty quick if you do that, but
you probably want to get a few extra bombs,
at least the first time around just to make sure you don't mess up.
Running out of bombs on the last level
and being unable to complete the game
is not exactly a dream scenario, if you ask me.
And the whole idea of this game being called Keen Dreams anyway
always sort of confused me.
If this were really a dream, wouldn't he have the ability to
use a laser gun or a gatling gun for that matter.
At least a pogo stick and be able to grab on ledges.
I mean, pfft, why couldn't he just
EAT the enemies! I mean, they're vegetables. I know he doesn't like them,
but that doesn't mean that he couldn't eat them.
I mean– you know, if it's a dream,
why not go all the way?
Though I suppose calling it Commander Keen Nightmare
might be a little bit harder to market to kids.
But it is id Software. It's not like they couldn't have pulled it off.
I mean, nightmares are kind of their thing.
When it all comes down to it,
is Keen Dreams a fun game?
For me, it's ALL about nostalgia.
I really don't like the game.
If it weren't for that, this would probably be my least favorite Keen game.
That blurry, rose-tinted nostalgia
comes and kicks me in the face every time I think about it.
I was rather young when I got this one,
and at this point, all I had ever played of Commander Keen,
which were some of my favorite games ever, were Commander Keen 1
and Secret of the Oracle,
both of which were free shareware games,
so when I got this one,
it was known to me as
Keen Dreams, or Commander Keen 13.
I got it from one of those shareware vendors
who labeled all of their disks with a number.
The way the label was made, it looked like
Commander Keen 13.
I was like, "What? Thirteen Commander Keens? I thought there were only five."
And in fact, there are seven,
with this one rounding out the Keen games
to a lucky number.
The controls are... annoying at best.
The level design
really isn't that great.
A lot of the graphics look pale
Just without spirit, I guess,
in comparison to Commander Keen Galaxy, at least.
The flower power is ANNOYING,
and of course, the potentially fatal flaw
of not collecting the Boobus bombs,
especially if you were not aware of that.
All these things taken into account,
it's actually, as far as Keen games go,
relatively weak, but it's still fun.
It's still a Commander Keen platforming game
and it is
capable of delivering literally minutes of enjoyment
to anybody that happens to come across it, so
feel free to peruse the wonders
of the Google webs
and partake of Commander Keen Dreams.