Keen vs Wolfenstein3d

[Ceres]

Recently I've been discovering the terrifying world of the old hits of my primary school era: Wolfenstein 3D and Spears of Destiny.

Until last year, I didn't know that the producents of those games and of Keen games are the same people This gives me much to consider. It seems hard to believe that immediately after creating the colourful wonderland of a child's imagination in "Commander Kenn" they were able to make a gloomy, mournful game about fighting Nazis in their dungeons... a game surely not supposed to be played by children (although they've played it).

But on the other hand, I realise that the harmony and innocence of Keeniverse is only apparent. And that the atmosphere of Keen 2 and 3... and even of the other parts of the series is somehow similar to that in the Wolfenstein 3D series.
Couldn't those scary Nazis of Spear be compared to Shikadis, Bloogs or Vorticons in some ways?

Yet one point: I think y'all know it well, but for me it's new and surprising: the last part of Keen games has identic or very similar music to the music of Spear of Destiny and Wolfenstein3D.

[StupidBunny]

My experience with Wolf3D is somewhat limited, and I've never played Spear of Destiny. However, if one looks at the timeline of id's games, one can see a somewhat gradual but very clear transition towards their current state...

Commander Keen, of course, is ostensibly a very kiddy game, but there are darker aspects of it, particularly in Invasion of the Vorticons, where Keen's killing of the enslaved Vorticons is referenced a number of times. (We even see a bit of blood with the Vortininjas. ) Between Keen and Wolfenstein, there were games like Hovertank 3D, which had the same cartoony look as CK but was straying more toward a serious premise. Catacombs 3D continued this trend. (There are a bunch of other games in there whose names I won't bother to remember.)

Wolfenstein, I suppose, was a natural evolution of this progression: it has a very serious premise with the usual sort of id-style humor appearing here and there (pac-man level, various enemy phrases.) And the graphics, though still somewhat cartoony, are more realistic, owing mostly to the 256-color capabilities. And obviously, if we continue down the timeline, Doom comes, which retains a bit of the humorousness, however dark it may be, and which has more realistic graphics and less gamey sound effects than its predecessors. Ultimately, we see that, by Quake and its descendants, the lighthearted spirit of previous games has been progressively phased out in preference for a much more serious, intense kind of gameplay.

Among id's 3D shooters, then, I'd say Wolfenstein is definitely the most reminiscent of Commander Keen.

[Commander Spleen]

I haven't studied iD's history that thoroughly, but the impression I get is that as the company evolved, different members became dominant in their influence upon the game concepts. At first, Carmack and Romero were mostly focused on developing the fast scrolling engine and were looking to go one-up (hehe) on Mario. Thus, Hall was able to pretty much monopolise the game design.

Romero's increasing influence is particularly evident in the Dangerous Dave series, and probably Bio Menace. When they struck raytraced gold, it seems inevitable that they should turn to first-person shooters. Carmack wanted to push the technological envelope, and the most obvious way of creating frantic arcade action in a 3D world is to throw in a bunch of weapons.

At that point, Epic Megagames pretty much took over the platform genre on PC (at least, they're the main company that comes to mind), but unfortunately their (nonetheless excellent) games didn't have quite the same charm as Keen.

Also, Bobby Prince did pretty much all their music in those days, so it's not that surprising that the Spear of Destiny soundtrack should have songs that are reminiscent of Keen.

[Roobar]

Now thinking about it, the humor in their games (as well as Keen references) really decreases by every game they release.

Wolfenstein: The idea of killing nazis by itself was hilarious. Though the similarities with Keen are just a few. The main menu is somehow identical to the Keen one. I remember Catacomb 3D got a paddle war in its similar to Keen main menu, though it was a creepy game.

Doom 1-2. The best thing in Doom2 is hanging Keens which, ironically, shows the end of ID games humor.

Quake 1. Ok, there is the Dopefish in all its glory, but it was so damn hard to find that most probably few people may even know about it. It was a big reference to Keen, but other than that I don't remember any fun parts. The multiplayer was fun, though not intentionally to be humorous.

Quake 2 is worser. It's fun in a gameplay sense, but the Dopefish reference is much cheaper. Actually it doesn't even look like a fish to me. Humor is almost 0.

Quake 3. Some says that there is one fish you can see from down below in one arena by using noclipping code. However, I didn't saw that.

Doom 3: There are no Keen references as far as I know or I don't remember. Though there are more fun non-Keen text messages. The only thing I remember is that this game was boring and far away from being scarier.

Quake 4: I don't know of any references. And btw the game was a bit more interesting in gameplay than Doom 3, but still was boring and far away from being fun...

I'm not even mentioning the expansion packs for these games. Though I didn't play any, I'm 100% sure there isn't any Keen references, nor they are more funnier. Btw if anyone knows some Quake 4 keenish references, please let me know.

[KeenRush]

Yeah, I think Tom's influence on those games after Keen isn't much, and soon he seperated from them and went on to his own ways, not caring about the direction iD had taken. But anyways, it isn't strange to me how the same people who had done things for Keen could come up with Wolf and stuff -- Wolf and Doom don't have exactly the best plots out there, and their violent themes not that difficult to think of... Probably they got such ideas from heavy metal.

[entropicdecay]

Personally I don't have the grudge some Keen fans sort of seem to have against Wolfenstein, Doom, Quake etc. (sorry if anyone's offended I called it grudge, but it really does seem that way to me sometimes) But I've never really played any of them except Quake 2 on the N64, and that was quite a while ago. So I can't really offer much in the way of thoughts on the differences between them.

Only thing I can think of is to say that probaby the difference in tone has a lot to do with the genre of the games and the target audiences (talking about target audiences kind of annoys me but it is probably the sort of thing considered in the design phase) of the games.

[RoboBlue]

I agree that id's games quickly became less enjoyable after they started focusing on FPSes, but I think that came from prioritizing realism and gore over creativity. I loved Wolfenstein, and Spear of Destiny to a lesser extent, but for some reason Doom always bored me to tears.

[VikingBoyBilly]

On the flip side, I was very familiar with Doom and didn't even know Keen existed. Then I read somewhere that Commander Keen was ID softare's first game, and thought "Well, maybe I should go try it." And, as you can imagine, Commander Keen is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT from what I was expecting. At the same time I tried out the original 2D Duke Nukem games, expecting myself to like those and not like commander keen so much, but it turned out to be the opposite. Duke Nukem is totally dull before Duke 3D.

Seriously, with a name like "Commander Keen" I really was expecting another grizzled space marine character like in DOOM, fighting aliens in a bloody gore fest. But instead it's about an 8-year old fighting aliens. Despite having completely different looks, I could see the similarities in how the Keen and Doom are structured overall: 3 episodes, with one shareware, each ending in a cliffhanger, and in each level the player must grab keys to be able to progress, etc. I dare say, I may have become a bigger fan of Keen than of Doom

@ Iv4n: Quake 4 was actually made by Raven Software for ID, not made by ID itself. Much similar to how Raven made Heretic and Hexen for ID software, except Heretic and Hexen were fantasy/Dungeons and Dragons style games which were very reminiscent of Raven's style. Eventually Raven started making dull, futuristic/realistic FPS games with little or no fantasy at all, including Quake 4. Gee, ID and Raven really suck compared to what they used to be, huh? And Apogee (or 3D realms, whatever) is still working on Duke Nukem Forever?

I think the Turkey Puncher game in Doom 3 was pretty fun

[StupidBunny]

Turkey Puncher was the fun part of Doom 3.

I actually really liked Hexen...it had some really awesome stuff going on, what with the ACS and stuff.

Although Doom is one of my favorite games, I've found that it doesn't have the same kind of lastability as Keen does. The Keen universe and games just click with me better in the long term. (Although I must say that mapping for Doom is really fun. )

[memsys]

Duke Nukem is totally dull before Duke 3D.

haha i have the complete opposite opinion

i like the pre duke3d games more i've played them over and over again and i still dont know the layout of some levels
as for duke 3d i played all the episodes 2 times and knew the layout
also before duke 3d duke was a character with both brains and brawl AFTER duke nukem 2 we was all brawl and no brain and very oversexed [is that a good english word ?]
the best duke game after duke 2 is imo duke nukem manhaton project the only downside of the game was duke himself