The Armageddon Machine is the fifth game in the Commander Keen series, and the second part of the Goodbye, Galaxy! duo of games. We last picked up with the story with Commander Keen trying to rescue the Oracles on Gnosticus IV, and now head across the universe to stop the dreaded Shikadi from blowing up the universe and remaking it in their image!
The game has a similar setup to the second Keen game, in which you find yourself on board a huge spaceship, and must disable key components of the ship in order to prevent an alien race's dastardly plans from succeeding. It isn't original, but it works, as plot was never really the aim of Commander Keen.
The game is built on the same engine as Secret of the Oracle, so the gameplay remains essentially identical. The game has a new soundtrack which is pretty good but not as good as its predecessor. Like the previous trilogy, these games succeed or fail based on level design and execution, so how does this one stack up with Keen 4?
The level design here is not quite as good. The new ideas in level construction are nice, with new robotic and futuristic looking enemies for Keen to fight, and a more straightforward and less exploratory approach to level design. If Secret of the Oracle is more DuckTales than Mega Man, then The Armageddon Machine is more Mega Man than DuckTales. Straightforward level design can certainly work, but generally it needs to have excellent control mechanics and fun combat, and Commander Keen really has neither. Thus, the game's scheme works best with more exploratory and experimental gameplay, encouraging you to explore a vast world freely with imperfect controls, rather than being forced into the same difficult tight corridor.
To boot, some of the new enemies are positively infuriating, in particular, an electric dog that can jump, run WAY faster than you can, shoots balls of lightning, and behaves in no discernible pattern that I can discover. Your best shot against these little devils is to point and shoot, and hope he doesn't jump. Good luck!
On the other hand, some of the new enemies succeed extremely well, in particular huge and imposing red robots that shoot huge volleys of lasers at you whenever they see you. This encourages you to experiment with different ways of avoiding them rather than fighting them, and the programmers give you several clever ways in which to accomplish this.
Ultimately, this game is just not as good as its very good predecessor, and it largely falls on the vision of the game. The closed off nature of level selection and exploration leads to some of the most dull and repetitive Keen experiences yet, and due to the inclusion of some unfairly difficult enemies, the game feels far grindier than truly fun. All things considered, it's a fine game. But Secret of the Oracle was really the peak of this series, so I'd recommend this one only if you're interested in the conclusion of the story, or have a strong nostalgia for the series. I'll give it a 7.5/10.
I'm not going to be playing Aliens Ate My Babysitter, the sixth game in the Commander Keen series, for two reasons. First, I'm Keened out! I'll swing back eventually, but not for a while. Second, the sixth game isn't included in the pack of games I bought on Steam, so I'd have to figure out how to get an abandonware copy and brush up on my Dos emulation. Ugh. Next up in the home version of What I'm Playing will be an old member of the backlog I've been meaning to finish up for a very long time.
-TRO
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