Summary
Don't mess with the Earth, and the Earth won't mess with you
The Good
The Earth Explodes is the second game in the
Commander Keen series, and it follows on from where the first one finished. While on his way home after taking a day trip to Mars and recovering the stolen parts of his ship, Keen notices the Vorticon mothership hovering above his home planet. It is ready to destroy its selected cities, thanks to the X-14 Tantalus Rays which are heavily guarded by Vorticon leaders.
The gameplay follows on from the
last Keen adventure. Keen starts off exploring the Vorticon mothership until he finds a door with symbols on top. If he enters it, the game switches to a third-person perspective where the object is to get to the other side of the level, destroying the Vorticons that get in your way.
The thing that I noticed straight away is the change of graphics. The gray background that haunted us in the last game has disappeared, and replaced by a pattern with white lines and looking somewhat like a chain-link fence. The items that you get for points vary, and not have you collecting the same thing, such as the lollypops from episode one. The game's ending looks great as you get to see Billy's house during the day. It is highly detailed even if it has EGA graphics.
I was impressed at the security that guards the Tandalus Rays that you have to destroy to save the cities, which include New York, Rome, Washington DC, London, Moscow, Sydney, Cairo, and Paris. The rays are covered by glass which you must destroy to destroy the rays themselves. There is a switch which must not be flipped. I found out, when playing the game for the first time, that all the switch did was fire a laser beam into the Earth and destroy it. The switch fools anybody into thinking that it actually destroys the rays.
The sounds are basically the same. Keen's walking sound is present in the game (in both perspectives), as well as Keen's pogo jump. The controls are easy to use, with three keys that you have to remember if you want to survive through a level.
The Bad
The same problem is present as it is in the last game. You keep firing your pistol by accident because you need to press two keys simultaneously: the [Ctrl] and [Alt] keys. Thank God that we only have to put up with this one more time in the
next episode.
The Bottom Line
The second episode of the Keen series, in which you have to save certain cities from destruction, has the same gameplay as its predecessor: top-down view for the world map, third-person for the rest. Even though the sounds and controls are similar, the graphics have been improved, with the background changing from a dull gray to an actual pattern. Like in the last game, you can save the game in one of nine slots, as long as you do it on the world map. Even though that Keen was made in the early nineties, this game can be played on modern systems due to the fact that there are no timer issues that you need to worry about.
