Commander Keen in Keen Dreams: Definitive Edition

While Commander Keen in Keen Dreams: Definitive Edition kind of checks off some of my old-school boxes, it's not a markedly high-quality release on the Nintendo Switch in 2020. By all means, wishlist it if you have fond memories of the original, the series, or late '80s/early '90s DOS games in general. Even then, wait for a sale; $14.99 is too much for this short "definitive" release.

It’s hard to recommend this game even to Commander Keen fans, as Keen Dreams is quite different from other Keen games anyway and is relatively unknown. Perhaps it’s worth a go for those who really miss the series and have too much money to spare, as you don’t get much in the way of gaming fun for the price. But what about those who’ve never had any experience with Commander Keen? You won’t be missing out on all that much if you give this game a miss, though at least the Definitive Edition offers some advantages over the standard version.

Keen Dreams ended up being a barebones port of a barebones game. While Commander Keen does have a reputation of being a solid platformer, this game certainly isn’t one of them, as the combat is bad and the few bits of “remastering” they tried doing here are just horrible. The speedrunning potential for this game ended up being a lot better than I realized, but with no in-game speedrun leaderboards there really isn’t much incentive to do so unless you want this game to be over faster.

Keen Dreams is far from the best that the series has to offer so here's hoping that we get to enjoy the commander's other adventures soon.